A-Infos (en) Britain, Aanarchist journal Direct Action #41- Comments: Safety First; Lackeys of the Rich; Gaining Respect?; Supermarket Sweep:

Comment: Safety First ---- In late 2006, five prostitutes were murdered in 
Ipswich. This led to a public outcry that women were facing this level of 
violence. Central to this outcry was an initiative by the English Collective of 
Prostitutes, the Royal College of Nursing, Women Against Rape, National 
Association of Probation Officers, church people, residents from red light 
areas, anti-poverty campaigns, drug reformers and others, called the Safety 
First Coalition, which aimed to decriminalise prostitution. ---- Clause 150 of 
the current Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill introduces ‘compulsory 
rehabilitation’, but the Safety First Coalition points out that this does 
nothing to address the reasons women turn to prostitution.

There are no extra resources to address what the bill calls ‘assisting the 
offender to address the causes of their involvement in prostitution and to find 
ways of ending that involvement’.

If, as seems likely, women can’t break out of the debt, poverty, domestic 
violence, unemployment or addiction without additional resources, they’re likely 
to be back in the criminal justice system next time they’re arrested. Failure to 
be ‘rehabilitated’ will mean a prison sentence is more likely, making the cycle 
of ‘rehabilitation’, prison and poverty harder than ever to escape.

The state isn’t interested in women’s safety, despite claims otherwise. Since 
Labour came to power, it has further criminalised many areas of sex work and 
increased maximum sentences, some as much as fourteen-fold. Twice as many women 
are in prison, often for poverty-related offences. Women ‘rescued’ in 
immigration raids on brothels are not given help, but deported.

Women work in the sex trade for all sorts of reasons – they need a safe and 
healthy working environment as much as the rest of us.

For more info, contact The English Collective of Prostitutes and the Safety 
First Coalition at: PO Box 287, London NW6 5QU; 
ecp@allwomencount.net www.prostitutescollective.net

---------------------------------

Comment - Lackeys of the Rich

New Labour are the lackeys of the ultra-rich, it’s official!!!

Hot on the heels of the report by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation which showed 
inequality in the UK to be at a 40-year high, come revelations that the majority 
of the super-rich pay no income tax and top company bosses‘ earnings have more 
than doubled since 2002.

HM Revenue and Customs figures from tax returns for 2003/4, released under the 
Freedom of Information Act, indicated that only 65 out of 400 UK based 
individuals whose wealth or direct income would allow them to make £10 million a 
year or more, declared this as taxable income. In effect, this means that legal 
loopholes galore are being used to enable the rich to dodge paying tax. Mr 
Brown, as previous Head of the Treasury, would have been all too aware of this.

In addition, a separate report by the Income Data Services revealed that the 
average pay of Chief Executives of Britain’s 100 top companies now amounts to an 
average of £3.17 million, largely as a result of huge incentive payments. Whilst 
lecturing the rest of us about the need to accept below inflation pay rises, 
these parasites are laughing all the way to the (offshore) bank. Little wonder 
that, as the Rowntree Report observed, they live in areas segregated from the 
rest of society.

In a country with the 4th biggest economy in the world where, according to the 
government’s own figures, 1 in 3 children live in poverty, we should be left in 
no doubt whatsoever whose side Mr Brown and Co. are on. We need to get rid both 
of the rich who live in opulent luxury at our expense and the puppet politicians 
who protect their interests.

Comment - A Load of Hot Air: Why treaties and other reformist ‘solutions’ to 
global warming are a waste of time

Without question, global warming represents one of the most serious and real 
threats to the continued existence of humankind and planet earth today. Ten 
years on from the Kyoto Treaty, 3 separate United Nations reports warn that rich 
industrialised nations are rapidly increasing the pollution which leads to 
global warming, with “catastrophic” climate change predicted if current trends 
continue.

For us, these frightening events and predictions are no surprise. The 
catastrophic effects of capitalism on the eco-system are all too predictable. 
The corporate bosses’ imperative is short-term profits for shareholders, not 
long-term concern for the environment. Put simply, if they don’t deliver the 
bottom line, they’ll be out of a job. A CEO’s decision in London, Washington or 
Rome is more likely to impact on people thousands of miles away, so in their 
smug, self-centred view, what the hell.

The politicians’ primary motivation is to promote economic growth in a bid to 
secure and retain the support of big business. Hence it’s no surprise at all 
that George Bush’s election campaign was bankrolled by energy and oil 
corporations, nor that the US is now the world’s worst polluter by far. Without 
constant growth, the economy goes into recession and crisis.

But it now appears that after years of denial, some sections of the ruling class 
are finally waking up to the alarming evidence before us. However, instead of 
presenting a solution that deals with the root causes of the problem, the 
‘green’ capitalists and reformists alike suggest technological fixes, tokenistic 
lifestyle changes and treaties which, however apparently well-intentioned, are 
destined to fail. Kyoto didn’t work and neither will the recent Bali treaty.

Capitalism’s unrelenting greed acts without any regard to the havoc it wreaks. 
Only a society based on need and equality can master technology and productive 
forces in a socially useful and ecologically sustainable way which also enables 
our needs, wants and desires to be satisfied.

With oil reserves predicted to run out in the next 40 years, and rainforests 
being decimated at a frightening rate, the entire future of humanity depends on 
the ability of the dispossessed to seize back control from the ruling elites 
who, unless stopped, will lead us to the brink of destruction. Because, in the 
words of one Native American visionary, only when they have poisoned the last 
river, and cut down the last tree will they realise that money does not grow on 
trees.

     “Man’s (sic) most visionary dreams of liberation have now become compelling 
necessities… hierarchical society, after many bloody millennia, has finally 
reached the culmination of its development”

Murray Bookchin, Post-Scarcity Anarchism

     UN Facts and findings on Global Warming:

     Under the 1997 Kyoto Treaty, rich countries undertook to cut emissions of 
greenhouse gases by a modest 5% of 1992 levels by 2012. Ten years later, 
evidence shows that the economies who signed up to the agreement have instead 
increased emission levels by 11%.

     If everyone on earth emitted as much greenhouse gas as North Americans, we 
would need nine atmospheres to absorb it safely.

     Besides the US and Australia, which rejected Kyoto, China, India and former 
Eastern Bloc countries have also recorded vastly increased emissions.

     The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change predicts that if current 
trends continue, the Greenland icecap will completely melt, raising sea levels 
worldwide by 30 feet. Harvests in Africa could be halved by 2020, and the 
Amazonian Rainforests will turn to dry savannah.

     From 2000 to 2004, weather related disasters affected over 250 million 
people in developing countries.

--------------------------------------

Comment - Gaining Respect?

After the euphoria at the election of the 1997 Blair government dissipated the 
search began for a viable electoral alternative to New Labour. What emerged was 
the Socialist Alliance made up of various local alliances and left wing groups, 
the largest within which was the Socialist Party (ex Militant tendency).

The largest group on the left, the Socialist Workers' Party (SWP) did an about 
face to join in 1999, and immediately began manoeuvring to dominate the 
alliance. As predicted in Direct Action back in 2000, the Socialist Alliance was 
transformed into a one-member-one-vote political party. This new structure 
allowed the largest and most disciplined group within it, the SWP, to exercise a 
dominant and controlling role. Again, as predicted, the Socialist Alliance was 
riven by feuds, mostly concerning the behaviour of the SWP, which resulted in 
the Socialist Party leaving. After all, you cannot have two vanguards can you?

In 2003 the SWP led the SA into an alliance with George Galloway, key figures 
involved in the Stop the War Coalition, Members of the Muslim Association of 
Britain and the Muslim Council of Britain to form the Respect Coalition.

This was always a shaky alliance held together more by the principle of 'the 
enemy of my enemy is my friend' than common outlooks and goals. The SWP viewed 
Respect as a "united front of a special type" but many others wanted it to 
function as a proper political party.

Inevitably the tensions soon began to show. Firstly there was the revolutionary 
Marxist-Leninist SWP who saw themselves as the as the repository of political 
wisdom; people who see further and better than anyone else and assume that 
what's good for the SWP is good for the working class. Secondly, there was 
Galloway, who saw Respect recreating the Labour Party of Keir Hardie, and who, 
like Hardie, is an anti-Marxist socialist heavily influenced by religious ideas. 
Thirdly there was the Muslim influence with views ranging from those of 
socialists to overtly pro-capitalist small businessmen and often incorporating 
reactionary views on sexuality and women's equality.

It was bound to fall apart as these tensions developed. With Gordon Brown's 
decision not to hold a snap election last November the time was ripe for a power 
struggle. A letter from Galloway calling for reforms in its internal management 
was met by an attack by the SWP leadership who made bizarre claims of a witch 
hunt. Galloway was supported by Salma Yaqoob, the Respect vice chair. The SWP 
had previously been staunch supporters of both Galloway and Yaqoob. They thought 
they could manipulate 'Gorgeous George' by stroking his ego and even when he 
appeared on the appalling celebrity Big Brother, they continued to defend him. 
They saw Yaqoob and others as useful idiots but she proved to have more 
political nous then they'd anticipated.

October saw the split quickly develop. By November the locks on the Respect 
offices were changed by the Galloway faction while the passwords to the website 
were changed by the SWP. Two conferences were held on the same day after both 
sides attempted to pack the original Respect conference with pseudo delegates. 
All this resulted in a split with two rival Respects emerging.

Galloway, having learned his political infighting tactics through the 
manoeuvrings of the Labour Party, was able to outflank the SWP and their Central 
Committee resulting in them throwing around ever more fantastic accusations as 
they began to lose their grip.

Internally there were the expulsions from the SWP of three of their leading 
members who had sided with Galloway in the dispute, and the rupture deepened, 
with both sides disputing the conference delegation of Respect's largest branch, 
Tower Hamlets, which is in the constituency of George Galloway. Typically as 
when most left parties collapse, instead of losing a party, you gain an extra 
one. On November 17, instead of one conference there were two so three years 
after Respect was born it became twins.

There have been some other strange episodes. In that first frantic month of the 
split the Preston Respect councillor, Michael Lavalette, attacked George 
Galloway and tried to whip the ranks of the local SWP membership by claiming 
that Galloway was going to go on TV denouncing the SWP in public. The Preston 
Respect meeting on October 23rd was then packed with SWP members from all over 
Lancashire who "unanimously" declared support for the SWP view of Respect. Yet 
exactly two weeks later he appeared on the same platform as Galloway in 
Manchester and spoke of how much he admired him!

Meanwhile the SWP leadership levelled accusations at the Respect Renewal group 
centred round Galloway and Yaqoob that reflected the criticisms that those 
outside of Respect had been making for years - only to be accused of 
'Islamaphobia'. It is not clear what will happen next but their unholy alliance 
of fundamentalist Islamists and unreconstructed Trots was always an arranged 
marriage too far.

What hasn't helped is the revelation that in August 2007 John Rees, member of 
the SWP Central Committee and National Secretary of Respect, accepted $10,000 
from a Dubai business linked to privatisation schemes in Britain. He accepted it 
on behalf of the Organising for Fighting Unions campaign, after it was pointed 
out that Respect couldn't accept foreign donations, and used the money to pay 
off debts incurred by a conference they held in Shoreditch last year. Of course, 
within the SWP organisations the SWP support and promote are seen simply as 
recruiting grounds, and any money raised can easily be channelled from one 
campaign to another via the SWP.

Whatever happens the lessons are clear; working with the SWP in any alliance 
means working for the SWP. Their sole aim is to build their party. No matter 
what the rhetoric, that is all they care about. So end all coalitions that bring 
people together not on the basis of their common interests as a class but on 
cross class alliances which inevitably mean the compromise of political principles.

     As we go to press the news is that, due to legal reasons, the SWP faction 
cannot use the Respect name for elections. This means that they will have to 
find another one. It may seem a crazy suggestion for a Marxist-Leninist 
organisation but they could be honest and truthful and stand as the SWP!
---------------------------------------------

Comment - Supermarket Sweep: An everyday tale of global capitalism and it's 
devastating impact

Love 'em or hate them, there's no doubting that supermarkets are playing a 
bigger part in all our lives, shaping our environment, health and even the way 
we interact with each other. But plenty of people are voicing concerns about the 
behaviour of the supermarkets and their impact on us. Here's why.

Supermarkets have grown in stature in recent times, successfully squeezing out 
many smaller localised competitors in the process. Lord Sainsbury is a 
Parliamentary Undersecretary, 3 of Tony Blair's former advisers are now employed 
by Tesco. With powerful lobbying bodies fighting their corner, the supermarkets' 
interests are being well and truly looked after. With the big four (Tesco, 
Sainsbury Asda and Morrisons) now accounting for 75% of our high street grocery 
spending, it was anticipated that the Autumn 2007 Competition Commission Report 
might, at least, place some curbs on their expansion. Naturally, this 
expectation was overly optimistic: Their 'solution' to the problem of market 
monopolisation was, you guessed it, more supermarkets! This should come as no 
surprise, however. In 2000, the same organisation concluded that supermarkets 
did not have a monopoly in grocery retailing. The evidence needless to say, 
suggests otherwise. But the story doesn't end there…

Bad for local community, workers and environment

The effect of supermarket expansion on local communities and producers has been 
devastating. One of the tactics used by the supermarkets is land-banking, which 
involves them buying up land earmarked for development, to prevent their 
competitors from expanding. Combined with price-undercutting, possible due to 
their huge scale, competition is successfully eradicated. With 2,000 small 
retailers going out of business every year, the Parliament Shops Report (2006) 
predicted that the small retail market could cease to exist altogether by 2015. 
Supermarkets argue that they bring jobs to the local community, but the British 
Retail Planning Forum found in the 1990s that every time a big supermarket 
opened, an average of 276 jobs were lost within a 1.5km radius.

The Director of the Soil Association succinctly sums up the supermarket dynamic:

     "It's not a food chain so much as a fear chain. The supermarket directors 
live in fear of losing their market share and not being able to deliver endless 
growth to their shareholders. The supermarket buyer lives in fear of not meeting 
his or her targets and always wants to buy cheap and sell expensive, the packer 
lives in mortal fear of having his goods rejected or the price falling below the 
costs of production. How do you rebuild trust in a chain which is dominated by 
aggressive players and practices? This is what happens with the twin pressures 
of globalisation and concentration of power".

Not only do supermarkets want to control where we shop and what we buy; they 
also profit from our poverty. Tesco now operates nearly five million bank 
accounts, and like other members of the big four, have moved into the personal 
loan industry. Through loyalty card schemes, they gather vast amounts of data 
about us.

Supermarkets have helped to transform our high streets into bland, faceless, 
corporate monoliths, devoid of character and individuality. They have eroded the 
relationship between (local) producer and consumer, promoting intensively farmed 
pre-packaged food that has often clocked up an impressive itinery of air or road 
miles before it reaches the shelves.

The Financial Times reported in 2001 that a kiwi fruit flown from New Zealand to 
the UK emits 5 times its own weight in greenhouse gasses. Another bizarre 
consequence of the neo-liberal global market is the growing practice of food 
swapping between countries. In 2001 the UK exported 149,000 tons of fresh milk, 
and imported 110,000 tons. The milk in our supermarkets is more likely to have 
come straight from the (well-travelled) tanker rather than straight from the 
cow. According to CorporateWatch, the average supermarket vegetable travels 600 
miles. Add this to the excessive and wasteful packaging routinely employed, and 
it is easy to see why the supermarkets' claims to be green are frankly, laughable.

Action Aid exposed how workers on 'Fair Trade' banana plantations in Costa Rica 
and Nicaragua (which supply Tesco), are forced to work excessive hours with 
miniscule pay and no right to organise. Migrant packers in the UK, further down 
the supply chain, were also found to be subject to sub-standard working 
conditions. Wal-Mart, owners of Asda are renowned for their illegal anti-union 
and other labour-violating practices in the US. In contrast Terry Leahy, Chief 
Executive of Tesco, earns £1,500 per hour, and Tesco's profits for 2006 amounted 
to 2.2 billion. Wal-Mart's annual turnover is in the region of $300 million with 
its owners in the Forbes top ten rich list.

The fight against global capitalism

Global capitalism, governments and corporations enslave us and wreck ecology. 
Supermarkets, with their concerted market saturation, exemplify this. Making 
colossal profits on the backs of workers and suppliers and using aggressive 
marketing techniques, they damage communities by putting small localised 
producers and competitors out of business, and employ practices which are 
environmentally wasteful.

The movement against supermarkets has been unfortunately diluted by a 
single-issue mentality which has seen some campaigners appealing to politicians 
to legislate against some of their more barefaced abuses. Instead of viewing the 
big 4's (Tesco, Sainsbury’s, Asda and Morrisons) practices as being the 
inevitable symptom of a merciless profit-driven economy supported by corrupt, 
conniving politicians, a naïve reformist approach prevails.

Echoing high street trends globally, social and economic power is shifting 
intentionally towards a dwindling number of transnational corporations. More 
powerful than many governments, and supported by international trade 
liberalisation policies, the corporations now routinely relocate production to 
the poorest regions of the planet, where labour and production costs are 
minimal, dictatorships often rule and workers' rights are non-existent. 
Minimising costs, maximising profits is the corporations', and the 
supermarkets', maxim, regardless of the consequences.

Global capitalism is the prime cause of the acute ecological crisis we now face. 
Corporate profits are reliant not only upon intensively exploiting labour, but 
also the natural environment. Economic growth is founded upon new markets being 
made available. Capitalism's need for constant expansion exists in direct 
conflict with the finite resources the planet has to offer. As wars are fought 
over oil and clean water, rainforests are cut down, and the polar icecaps melt, 
the survival of humanity is threatened.

The struggle against the supermarkets is a struggle against global capitalism 
which can be won only by workers and local communities taking control through 
popular direct action. In short, the fight against the supermarkets must be 
generalised to a wholesale attack on the iniquitous systems and structures which 
enable them. Anything less is not enough.

     "European governments must face up to their responsibility for abuses 
committed by corporations based in their countries, which contribute to the 
widening inequalities between the industrialised and developing worlds.
     Food sovereignty is currently beyond the reach of the countries of the 
South, pollution is commonplace throughout the developing world, indigenous 
peoples are decimated and their cultures destroyed, all because of actions by 
corporations". (Susan George).
_________________________________________
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