Civil liberties, justice, crime

Defend the right to protest in Glasgow!

Officials of Glasgow’s Labour City Council are recommending that the Scottish TUC’s anti-austerity demonstration of 20 October should not be allowed to assemble in George Square in the city centre. A “consultation exercise” currently being run by the Council also proposes that demonstrations should be replaced by “static protests” wherever possible, and that there should be a blanket ban on the use of George Square as a muster and dispersal point for demonstrations. Such recommendations represent a drastic curtailment on the right to demonstrate: By definition, the purpose of a demonstration...

Assange should answer rape charge, but is right to fear Sweden-US extradition

Ecuador has made the following absolutely clear: 1) Julian Assange can be questioned at their London embassy in connection with these allegations (at the moment he is only wanted for questioning); 2) If the Swedish government had given an assurance that Assange wouldn't be extradited from Sweden to US in connection with his wikileaks journalism, they would have asked him to leave their embassy and return to Sweden to face questioning long ago. To be fair Assange himself has said the same. If you recall, he volunteered to be questioned by the Swedish authorities in September 2010 before leaving...

Assange, Assad and anti-imperialism

I don’t quite know where to start unpacking the claim that socialist feminists who feel that Julian Assange has a case to answer are really “liberals” who “don’t mind being raped by imperialist ideology”. Yet such a contention — which would have been inexcusably offensive even if there were any indications that it was meant sardonically — was recently advanced in all seriousness by a Trotskyist bloke on an AWL woman member’s Facebook page. Although I have to confess that a shameful lack of knowledge of feminist theory leaves me open to much gentle ribbing from female comrades, even I was taken...

Pussy Riot: performance and protest

Nadya Tolokonnikova, Maria Alekhina and Yekaterina Samutsevich, three members of Russian punk band Pussy Riot, have been sentenced to two years in jail for “hooliganism” for performing their “Punk Prayer” at Christ the Saviour Cathedral, Russia’s main Christian Orthodox place of worship. As part of their trial on 8 August, the women read testimonies out in court. When each speech was met with applause, the Judge (Marina Syrova) responded: “We are not in a theatre.” It was an apt response, therefore, for London’s Royal Court Theatre to stage readings of the testimonies, translated by Sasha...

Julian Assange, free speech and rape

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is now holed up in Ecuador’s Embassy, west London, having been granted political asylum by Ecuador’s president, Rafael Correa. WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is now holed up in Ecuador’s Embassy, west London, having been granted political asylum by Ecuador’s president, Rafael Correa. Correa says he granted asylum to prevent Assange being extradited to a “third country”, meaning the US. There is now a stand-off between the British state — which wants to send him to Sweden, where he faces allegations of rape and sexual assault, following a completed process in...

Quebec government tries to ban protest

The student movement in Quebec faces an all-out offensive by the government. For more than 90 days, more than 150,000 students in Quebec have been on an all-out indefinite strike against Quebec government plans to cut education funding and raise fees by 75%. Demanding free education funded by taxing the rich, students have mounted mass demonstrations and confronted police violence. The government made a weak offer to representatives of the student protests at the beginning of May — but, following discussion in dozens of mass meetings around the province, students voted to reject it. Now the...

Police against Tories

On 10 May 20,000 coppers joined a Police Federation demonstration against cuts and reforms. On the same day just 500 public sector workers joined London’s strike day rally against pension cuts. Trade unionists should take note here — the police mobilisation put that of the labour movement to shame. In 2010 Tom Winsor, former government advisor on rail regulation under New Labour, was commissioned by Home Secretary Theresa May to review police pay and conditions. His report proposes a fundamental overhaul of recruitment and promotion structures, pay and conditions of service — including...

Alfie Meadows

On 18 April, a jury failed to reach a verdict on whether Alfie Meadows, the student activist nearly beaten to death by a policeman on a demonstration in 2010, was in fact guilty of violent disorder. Colin Goff, Vishnu Wood and Jack Locke were found not guilty of violent disorder, but Locke was found guilty of arson. The jury also failed to reach a verdict on Zac King. Alfie’s retrial is unlikely to take place before October 2012.

The police are racist!

On 30 March The Guardian published a video recording showing Mauro Demetrio, a twenty one year old from Beckton, East London, being subjected to racial abuse and violence by police officers in the back of a police van after his arrest during the riots in August 2011. In the soundtrack, one officer admits to strangling Demetrio and calls him a “cunt”. Another officer, PC Alex MacFarlane, can be heard justifying the assault because Demetrio would “always be a nigger”. A couple of days after the Demetrio recording, evidence was published that on the same day in August 2011, also in East London...

Student suspended two and a half years - for reading a poem

On Wednesday 15 March, a University Court in Cambridge ruled that Owen Holland, an activist in Cambridge Defend Education , was to be “rusticated” (i.e. thrown off his course) for two and a half years. His crime was to read a poem at a protest last term against David Willets, who was due to speak in Cambridge in a lecture series called “The Idea of the University.” Willets later left the talk without speaking, and the lecture hall was occupied. Holland has been singled out by University authorities and charged with the vague offence of “wilfully impinging freedom of speech” - the irony of...

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