Manchester Histories Festival, and other matters…

I didn’t get back from Manchester until midnight last night/this morning, and seeing as how I’d gone out at 9:30, that’s a long day.

This weekend has been the tail end of Manchester Histories Festival, a largely free and very diverse event. I found out about it quite late, so decided to cram as much into Saturday as possible.

Manchester Histories Festival events for Saturday 3rd March 2012

The weather looked distinctly unpromising when I headed out at 9:30, a fine mancunian drizzle and grey skies suggested a damp day best spent indoors.

On my way down Mosley Street I was very aggressively (though I soon decided ‘desperately’ would be the better word) asked for money by a homeless guy I’ve given money to before. Everytime I’ve given him money it’s been the same story: He’s been kicked out of the house by his stepfather. I don’t know if he keeps going back or what, and it’s not up to me to make value judgements about vulnerable people, so I won’t.

This time he was very agitated, very desperate, and practically in tears because he’d been asking people for money for 12 hours and all he’d got was 20p. He wanted notes, but I wouldn’t give him any as it felt too much like being mugged. Also, whenever I have given him money in the past, it clearly hasn’t helped him any, and it became apparent after the first couple of occasions that I wasn’t doing him any favours in the long term. Of course, the agencies who might be able to help him – hostels, The Big Issue, Shelter, other housing charities, the council and social services – are all under the cosh of the recession.

There definitely seems to be more homeless people on the streets of Manchester than there was even a year ago, and what with rent increases, diminishing wages, negative equity/mortgage defaults, unemployment, cuts to benefits, anti squatting legislation and a lack of affordable housing, it will only get worse in the next few years.

Desperation really is in the air. You can see the signs more and more since the riots last year: people picking up dog ends of other peoples cigarettes from the pavement because they can’t afford to buy their own, metal thefts, the Co-Op being ram raided last month. Last week I encountered two young northern Irish lads with back packs asking for hostel locations.

To get back onto the festival, the first three events were at the Friends Meeting House on Mount Street near the Town Hall.

The first talk was by Alison Ronan, a historian at MMU who talked about Margaret Ashton, a suffragist and pacifist who was the first woman to be made a councillor for Manchester City Council. The title of the talk was The hanging of a pacifist: the story of the lost portrait of Margaret Ashton, Manchester’s first woman councillor.

She opened by discussing the portrait in question, and went on to fill in a lot of detail about the largely unknown Ashton’s life and character, her politics, associations and friends and allies. The portrait of Ashton was painted in 1925, and the council refused to hang it in the Town Hall. The pacifist stance she took during World War I being part of the reason. The painting was eventually hung in 2006 following a campaign.

I liked this talk but I found the atmosphere a little exclusive in that it quickly became apparent that the speaker knew half the audience. It was still an interesting talk about a hidden aspect of Mancunian and women’s history though.

The talk after that was given by Robert Poole, a historian from the University of Cumbria, about the Peterloo Massacre. He has a project going on at the moment in which a group of volunteers have been transcribing previously unseen written eyewitness accounts of the 1819 massacre.

The talk was an opportunity to share those freshly transcribed accounts, and he concentrated initially on eyewitness accounts from the authorities, all of which had a series of interesting inconsistencies. For example, a flip flopping in describing the marchers and crowd as both ‘A mob’ (suggesting mindless and disorganised behaviour) and military like (suggesting lots of organisation).

The eyewitness accounts of those in the crowd, or independent witnesses, made for much more consistent reading. There were some interesting details that emerged that I hadn’t previously been aware of, for example that Special Constables had been amongst those injured by the yeomanry and the cavalry. It was a very interesting and engaging talk, which I enjoyed a lot.

Also mentioned were the new plaque, which is red, not blue, and which was unveiled by the council in late 2007, and the symbolic re-enactments, the veterans stories that emerged years after Peterloo, and the march home by the Middleton contingent from the massacre, with the shocked and wounded survivors swearing they’d go armed to any protest they attended from then on.

The event after Peterloo was Dave Haslem and his Brief introduction to Manchester’s alternative music magazines. David arrived at this point, and we sat enthralled as Haslem spun us tales of Mole Express and City Fun. I didn’t feel that he covered the ’90s that well, but I think that this was because he was taking an evolutionary approach musically and so concentrating on dance fanzines, of which there weren’t that many.

There was time to kill after this event so we went to Cafe Nero with a lecturer from MMU who David knows, blogger Greg Thorpe, and Dave Haslem. This felt a bit weird as I’m not used to such exulted company, so I mainly kept quiet.

Afterwards David and I got some cake (and the best veggie sausage rolls ever) from Earth Café and mooched about the city centre for a bit, making our way down Market Street and observing the huge crowd watching the gaggle of children breakdancing. The dancing puppets man was also present, with his puppets I mean, not watching the breakdancing children.

Haslem had talked earlier about a history based workshop he had done with a group of young fanzine makers in the city in the weeks previous, including the makers of Things Happen. Five fanzines were produced from this, and were sold at the

Five fanzines, fresh as morning dew

The panel at the final event, Fanzines, was made up of a guy from Mole Express, Bob Dickinson, Liz Naylor and Dan Russell, who is part of the Things Happen ollective.

The guy from Mole Express seemed either reluctant or hazy, but did slowly start to warm up a bit. Dickinson, Haslem and Naylor discussed City Fun in the main. Dan was pretty quiet.

I hadn’t met any of the Things Happen people before, though I had heard of them. After the panel discussion we talked to Dan and the other people involved with the fanzine workshop and Things Happen, also Natalie Bradbury who writes the excellent Shrieking Violets, and is organising another fanzine convention at Victoria Baths.

We headed over to Hotspur House afterwards, which is an abandoned and derelict printing mill behind Oxford Road train station. The Things Happen people have a studio space there where they create design work, including their fanzines. They are also engaged in the process of clearing up and fixing up the mill, and developing spaces for other artists to move into.

Stuff Happens

The relationship with the council appears to be edgy but productive so far. Hotspur House is a derelict Victorian mill surrounded by hideous steel and glass yuppie developments though, and that makes it very vulnerable. You suspect that it’s the recession that has saved it so far, not any preservation interest by the council or the developers.

The space the group have is good, and they’ve fixed it up as well as they can with the resources they’ve got. Manchester Mule have an office on the floor downstairs, and other designers work in the building as well. I hope it works out for them, they seem a nice lot. Very focused as well, and idealistic in the nicest sense.

Read Full Post »

Wednesday 30th November 2011

Today was strike day.

As those of us picketing were expected to do so between 8:00 and 10:30am I got up at 5:30 and wearily got through the daily palavar of my physio exercises before having a slight crisis over what to wear for the day. Not in the sartorial sense, purely in the ‘should I wear a jumper?’ sense. After breakfast (always start a long day with porridge) I headed out to the bus stop and immediately cursed myself for not going for a jumper in the end and put my long sleeved fingerless gloves on to make up for it…

Oxford Road train station and the Cornerhouse

It was still dark when I arrived in Manchester so I walked fairly quickly down Portland Street and Oxford Road, taking in the mise-en-scene. The first picket I saw was a PCS picket nearish Portland Tower, followed by a UCU Salford one just down the road. On Oxford Road there was an MMU picket for either UCU, Unison, or both outside John Dalton building. A bus driver honked as he went past, and it was presumably a positive honk as one of the pickets raised his placard in salute.

It was gradually getting light as I moved down Oxford Road, and by the time I’d passed the picket outside the Tin Can it was pretty much daylight.

I arrived at my own building not long after eight, where I was greeted by three of my colleagues who had beaten me to the union office (for flyers etc) by mere minutes. There were no union reps about so one of my colleagues had stepped into the breach and was organising things herself, despite having only ever been involved in one other strike action before. We appeared to have been left to get on with it, so we got on with it and were pleased to be joined later by a further four colleagues.

So far as successful picketing went, we weren’t that successful as the only two people we persuaded not to cross the picket line were two people who’d already decided not to. We got a lot of indifference from people, including colleagues, and were blanked by a lot of people as well (again, including colleagues) but we did also get some supportive noises and good luck messages from people, even if they did cross our picket line. We were also given homemade chocolate chip cookies by a young UCU picket, coffee (unofficially) from staff, and tea from an ex colleague who is now a student.

We left for the union meeting/breakfast at Kro safe in the knowledge that we’d done the best we could with what resources we had, and that at least we’d now be fed and be able to get warm. Alas such was the turnout that Kro were completely overwhelmed, and the service was so slow that we had to leave for the march before most of us had had our drinks and food. We were in a minority of people leaving, as I don’t think everyone intended to march, or at least, not until they’d had their breakfast.

We had missed the student feeder march which left from All Saints park, so we hopped a bus and tried to get as far down Oxford Road as possible before hopping off and walking as fast as we possibly could in the direction of Liverpool Road.

As we got closer, we could hear the noise: a sonic sea of whistles and instuments that may or may not have belonged to the vuvuzela family. The sea of people was pretty damn admirable too, and it was headed up by a row of mounted police in high visibility gear. They weren’t allowed to strike themselves, so were on official business, but they looked magnificent. On studying the horses later in Whitworth Park, I noticed that they had the equine body armour equivalent of shin pads on, which suggested – along with the usual helmets – that caution was being employed. Either that or the police were worried that the horses knees might get cold.

Liverpool Road

The march literally set off from Liverpool Road as we arrived, so we carefully inserted ourselves in amongst a group of ambulance staff. I can’t remember the exact route of the march, but we did Deansgate and the area between Deansgate and Albert Square. The reception from people on the streets was pretty good, and there were quite a few points on the march where people had lined the streets and were applauding as we marched past. Albert Square was one point where this happened, but there were points prior to that, and after that too.

One low point was going past the banks/commerce area on Deansgate, where someone had hung a banner from an upper storey office block which read “Why should we pay for public sector greed?” This caused a lot of booing and hissing, plus one Unison bloke was so irate that he shouted “WANKERS!” persistently and loudly until we had passed. RBS’ offices, which had their own police guard on the doors, got even more boos.

RBS under guard

There was a nice part of the march immediately after these incidents when we came to pause for a few minutes by the John Rylands Library. Given that we weren’t going anywhere, we took it in turns to pose for pictures with our placards outside it’s magnificent Victorian facade.

John Rylands Library, Deansgate

Albert Square, what with the Christmas markets and decorations around the town hall, was very picturesque. We were applauded by crowds on the pavements here, which was a very touching and moving experience after the indifference encountered on our picket earlier.

Albert Square

Portland Street also went well, and soon we were on Oxford Road again. We had heard via a friend whilst going through Albert Square that our own building was possibly in lockdown, and we speculated as we marched as to whether it might have something, or nothing, to do with the frankly adorable bunch of students we’d left looking after the site of our picket at half ten.

That aside, the overall student response on Oxford Road was pretty disappointing, but we’d already concluded that those most likely to be engaged with the days events were probably on the march anyway. The response we got at the hospital end of Oxford Road as we headed for Whitworth Park was much better, as you would expect: lots of staff watching and applauding.

It took a long time to get everyone from the march into Whitworth Park for the speeches, which were polemical and rabble rousing in character, as was befitting the situation. I liked the UCU woman and the NHS Salford woman best. The UCU woman had great charisma and rhetoric, and the NHS Salford lady was wonderfully articulate and to the point. And very brave as well given she apparently hadn’t spoken to a crowd that big before.

After that, it was all over. Most of our colleagues had parted company with us pre Whitworth Park, so that just left three of us. We walked wearily back down Oxford Road and took refuge in a café where we had a long overdue cup of tea and compared digital camera pictures whilst discussing what we felt we could have done better so far as our picket was concerned. Since we’d been pretty much left to our own devices with it, and none of us had organised a picket before, we thought we’d done really well. But now we know we will have to organise it all ourselves then we’ll prepare accordingly next time.

The unions reckon 30,000 people marched today in Manchester, and I’ll be interested to see if this figure matches or differs from figures in the media and, if so, by how much and in which respect.

Read Full Post »

November 30th 2011: Public Sector Strikes, the personal take

This is an edited version of an email I sent to my local M.P about two days ago, regarding changes to public sector pensions. I did use the template on the UNISON site, but I took quite a bit out and put a lot more of my own experience in as I felt my MP would possibly take more interest if I did that, as it would show I’d made an effort and believed what I was saying. Haven’t had a reply yet, but I suppose I may well do eventually.

 

What do you mean it's the f***in' workhouse for me?

 

 

I work as a Library Assistant at………………….. and I am a member of (pension scheme). I am writing to you at this time because of the proposed public sector strike on Wednesday 30th November.

I would like to tell you some of the reasons why I voted yes in the……… ballot on strike action.

Aside from the information provided to me by my union and by my pension scheme about the proposed changes to my pension, I am also someone who reads a lot of different newspapers and current affairs magazines,listens to a lot of radio news, and generally takes a great deal of interest in politics and current affairs. Voting ‘Yes’ to strike was not therefore a decision that I took lightly.

I would also add that, although a library does not compare to a busy hospital or airport, the run up to Christmas is one of our busiest times at work, it’s also the time of year when a lot of people are off sick. Whilst no one will have their life or their security endangered as a result of my strike action, a lot of people will be very inconvenianced and no doubt extremely annoyed.

I am opting to strike because I really don’t feel as though I have any other choice. I feel as though I am being constantly attacked by the coalition government in every aspect of my life: my working life, my home life, my social life, my family life… I feel as though they have declared open season on everything I hold dear. Not just my pension, but libraries, universities, disability support, and my ability to financially support myself and live an independent life.

I am not wealthy, I have just under £900 a month to live on after tax, pension, national insurance and union membership deductions. I use a laborious budget system as this is the only way I can be sure of not running out of money each month.My rent is £299 a month, Council Tax is £78 a month because I live on my own in a studio flat, Gas and Electric are £50 a month, with an extra £10 a month allocated for the inevitable winter fuel bills, I allocate £20 a month to the quarterly water bill, laundry is £32 a month because I don’t own my own washing machine and instead use a launderette. The phone and internet is £35 a month as well. My contents insurance is £33.57 a month, I put £20 a month into an ISA because, frankly, I am expecting the state pension to be long gone by the time I retire, I spend £150 a month on food, my monthly bus pass is £62.70. The rest of the money goes on: stationary, stamps, subscriptions, magazines and newspapers (£14), Emergancies, repairs and replacements (£15), Prescription and non prescription medicine (£19) Household Essentials (£19), Fun (£19), Birthdays & Chrismas (£14).

I appreciate that that was probably very boring to read, but I have included it to demonstrate that I am not someone who ran around with a credit card when times were good who is now whinging. Despite having acted financially responsibly in the past, and continuing to do so, I feel as though I am being punished every day: when fuel prices go up, again, when phone and internet prices go up, when food prices go up, when the bus pass inevitably goes up (I was priced off the trains years ago), when the launderette puts its prices up, when the contents insurance goes up….

Now the government plans to tax my already extremely stretched income further by expecting me to pay double the pension contributions I already make. This is simply completely unnaffordable for me.

My parents both worked in the public sector and are now retired. My father has an NHS pension, but my mother succumbed to the propaganda from the Thatcher government of the 1980′s and opted out of the council pension package. She was missold a private pension which, over the years, has earned her consistently less than she would have received had she stayed with the council pension scheme. She only realised this about a year before she was due to retire, by which time it was far too late. I am detirmined not to repeat her mistake.

I would also add that I have experience of the private sector as an employee and would like to point out that, as a woman, I do feel more protected in the public sector, by and large, as opposed to the private sector.

I had 3 private sector jobs prior to my entry into the public sector, and one employer (the Co-Operative) were fantastic so far as working conditions and supporting their staff were concerned, but the other two employers I worked for were appalling.

One of them was a publishing company which had an endemic culture of bullying and sexual harrassment. The average time most people lasted working there was 6 weeks, I did 6 months. As the workers at the company were not unionised and the HR department was weak, the only recurse those being bullied and sexually harrassed had was the industrial tribunal process. At the time I left, three tribunals were in process against the company. The company folded about six months after that.

In the second case, I worked for a market research company, which operated zero hours contracts and didn’t pay sick pay for this reason. It also meant that you were never actually guaranteed any work despite being employed by them. On the plus side, if you got given a survey you didn’t like you could take a few weeks off unpaid, or longer, until you felt like working for them again – which was a common scenario. You, of course, were not paid for those weeks off and it was common for people to be working two or more jobs simultaneously. I also found out after I left that the smoking of cannabis on smoking breaks was pretty common there, and I was not surprised.

But how was I supposed to know they were the new Equitable Life?

I have included these examples as a way of explaining that my loyalty to the public sector is far from sheltered or sentimental, rather it is based on my own experiences throughout my working life.

I have been informed by my union, and have read elsewhere, that the ‘savings’ being proposed by the government in changing public sector pensions, including extra contributions and reduced entitlements, will, either directly or indirectly, go to the government, rather than be used to safeguard the pension scheme. It is, in effect, a direct extra tax being imposed on me, to which I strongly object.

In the run up to the strikes both the goverment and the media have churned out myth after myth, scare story after scare story about public sector pensions and public sector workers. We are lazy they tell us, we are greedy, we have ‘gold plated’ pension schemes and ‘gold plated’ wages. I hope the information I have provided above will demonstrate to you that they are wrong on all counts. I regularly read Private Eye, so I know all about Rotton Boroughs and council corruption, but nepotism, obscene pay packets and unfair working practices are, I would venture, probably more common in the media and in politics than they are at, say, Stockport Council. It would be nice if those slinging the mud would remember the adage that people in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones, but I shan’t expect that anytime soon.

Also, I  will have to work until I am at least 68 anyway, regardless of whether I work in the private or public sector.

I am aware that this is not the 1970′s, that the unions were smashed repeatedly in the 1980′s, and that the past cannot be recreated. I am not expecting to hold the country ransom. What I hoping for is an opportunity for the forgotten to be heard.

Rosie the riveter would have quite liked to have had a pension when she was too weary to rivet anymore

Read Full Post »

November 29th 2011: SCHNews on tomorrow’s strikes

Taken from SchNEWS, Issue 798, 25th November 2011

NOV 30: WE’RE ALL IN IT TOGETHER

As UK Prepares for Biggest Strike in Generations….

Well, it’s been a long time coming… Wednesday 30th November will see the first mass strike in the UK for four decades. 17 unions, including the biggest ones Unite, UCU, Unison, various teaching unions and PCS, have balloted to strike on pension reform which will see an estimated 3 million off work and, hopefully, cause massive disruption. Demonstrations and pickets are planned across the country – see
http://www.n30strike.org
for a complete list. Amongst the strikers are some unlikely suspects: 18,000 Border Agency workers are expected to strike leaving the government having to employ sinister private security firm Serco to take over for a day. Even the National Union of Probation Officers voted to join the strike four-to-one.

The government wants public sector workers to forgo 3% of their salary as pension contributions, which equates to a pay cut. So far workers have had to accept a two year pay freeze during a time of high inflation (in other words a pay cut), if they haven’t already been thrown out on their arse during the waves of mass redundancies (a total pay cut). The government’s arguments are designed to play on long term disgruntlement among the private sector that they have to deal with, on the whole, a shockingly shit pensions scenario and the public sector have had it a bit better off. Rather than aiming to sort out the private pensions mess which leaves millions in poverty on retirement, the PM wants the country to believe the public sector pensions are ‘gold plated’, unfair and unsustainable. Actually, most public workers end up with less than £5000 a year pension. They’ve also been reformed already: through a mix of negotiated and underhand changes, public sector pensions have bee!
n reduced to the tune of 25p in each pound over the last few years.

While the ‘official’ pensions reason is a biggie,  the day will be one of anti-austerity action on the whole. It was obvious a year and a half ago that austerity measures were going to cripple the public sector, but it’s only over the issue of pensions that unions have been able to come together in co- ordinated action. The government’s various cuts bills have been sector specific until now, and Tory anti-strike legislation forbids solidarity action – effectively making mass, cross-sector strikes illegal. This, combined with the timidity of the unions and their own stifling legal processes have delayed action until the shared pension cuts could become the focal point for general civil unrest.

Which is rich, considering unemployment is at a 17-year high thanks to government policy. They’re also attempting to rebrand it as a “take your child to work day” in an effort to avoid parents taking the day off to look after children turned away from closed schools. It’s not only the government who want to break the strike: One particularly bizarre measure is being taken by an academy school headteacher in London, who is bringing in ex-Army personnel, police dog handlers and CSI teams to teach classes next Wednesday.

The tactics for the day are to keep demonstrations and marches focused in local communities and for many dispersed actions as opposed to a mass gathering, but if you fancy hitting the road to get in on the action, the most fun place to be looks set to be London. Occupy have issued a call-out to congregate in the capital and ‘Shut down the city’ – the plans for which are to be confirmed…

In other union news, shining like a beacon of wildcat hope in the darkness, the Sparks electricians union showed how its done again this week by an unannounced occupation of the head office of construction firm Grattes Brothers on Wednesday (23rd). Continuing their protests against industry-wide collusion to cut pay and de-skill work, which has involved direct actions, walkouts and demonstrations, 150 Sparks have locked themselves in the Kings Cross premises.

Whether the country comes grinding to a halt or not, we’ll have to wait and see, but N30 has the potential to reinvigorate the anti-cuts movement and take it outside the Occupy camps. See ya on streets!

http://www.schnews.org.uk/stories/Nov-30-Were-All-In-It-Together

Read Full Post »

2nd October 2011

Feral underclass against the Tories

Today was the big march/protest in Manchester, called by the TUC but supported by a much wider base of groups. The main march was from Liverpool Road off Deansgate to GMEX where the Conservative Party conference is being held this week, but I’d heard that there was going to be a feeder march from University Place on Oxford Road and, given I’d enjoyed marching with the students last year, I decided to march from there instead.

The crowd by University Place didn’t seem that big when I arrived, but the police were out in large numbers again. Having said that, I think a lot of the mounted police were there to clear Oxford Road before moving on to other parts of the main march. We also had official observers this time, who were clearly labelled as such, and who were giving out ‘bus cards’ containing legal advice and phone numbers in the event of arrest.

The students had a giant black bird-like creature, made largely from bin bags and held aloft by giant poles. It had a pair of scissors for a beak and was called ‘The Culture Vulture’. There was also two or three mobile sound systems, a few people with drums, and quite a few protesters with dreadlocks. I’d say that the crowd was a mixture of students from both universities, academic staff, and unionists from both universities, plus some sixth formers and members of the public. Around half eleven a particularly boisterous young NHS contingent arrived, and my friend laughed upon getting a text from one of his friends to say that said NHS contingent had arrived fresh from chasing Tory delegates around the back of their hotel. Another of our friends arrived as the speeches were going on.

The speeches were a bit of a mixed bag as a lot of the speakers were from student groups, or the student union, and as such weren’t necessarily practised public speakers. The woman from UCU was probably the best, and there was also a speaker from Unison. The last of the speakers was an impassioned sixth former from Xavarian College, who was still speaking as we slowly began to form up and move out onto Oxford Road.

By this point we’d begun to collect an impressive amount of leaflets and flyers for various groups, including one for the current Jarrow March, which is taking place 75 years after ‘Red’ Ellen Wilkinson led the original marchers to London. The march is going on now, and whilst not passing through Manchester, will be passing through Sheffield next weekend. It is due to arrive in London on the 5th November, and the final leg of the march will be from Temple Embankment to Trafalger Square.

I picked up so many leaflets and flyers that, very quickly, I had to start decanting them into my bag. Upon arriving home and emptying my bag out I found three ‘Occupy! 2/10 Manchester Against The Cuts’ flyers, two flyers advertising a single by a band called Marivaux Horns, the profits of which will go to the student hardship fund, one flyer for an SWP meeting on Marx, Crisis and Revolution, one which was a timetable of discussions by the Northern Communist Forums at the Friends Meeting House, one flyer for the NHS Health Bill protest next Sunday (9th) in London (a protest called by UK Uncut, which is supported by Unite, Right To Work, Health Worker Network, and the NHS), one for the co-ordinated strikes on November 30th, another one about the 30th November but from Right To Work, one from Youth Fight For Jobs about the Jarrow March, and a massive Coalition of Resistance Newsletter.  When I emptied my pockets out, I also found DAN – the Disabled Peoples Direct Action Network (email contact only, to join the mailing list, danmail-subscribe@yahoogroups.com , and the Education Activist Network as well. I think I missed being given a few here and there, but had my friends and I emptied our bags out and compared notes, I think between us we would have had everything.

There was a young cub reporter from Key 103 moving around the crowd  by University Place, and that crowd was a lot bigger by the time we set out at about 11:50. Whilst there were a lot of people with cameras by University Place, the media seemed fairly low key and the police seemed friendly.

Progress down Oxford Road was slow and a bit clumsy, mainly due to the size of the group I think. We got approached by a woman from the BBC not long after setting off, who asked us if we were students. Two of us exchanged looks whilst the other confessed, yes, he was a student. They went off towards the very back of the march, but from what he said later his answers were probably too intelligent and literate to get used.

I’m not very sure of the route we took, but I know we turned off Oxford Road by McDonalds and started heading towards Deansgate. There seemed to be a period where it felt as though we were going round and round the town hall from various directions, but it’s probably more likely that we just went down every side street possible between Oxford Road and GMEX. Deansgate was good though: Our feeder march ended up in the middle of the whole march, which stretched all the way down Deansgate.

Culture vulture in flight on Deansgate

The Occupy! set peeled off at Albert Square whilst everyone else continued marching towards the party conference at GMEX. It was around this point that some protesters spotted some Tory delegates leaving their hotel and swarmed towards them, chanting ‘SCUM! SCUM! SCUM!’ and waving placards. We were near the back whilst this was going on, so we didn’t actually see much, just some men in suits trying to get through the crowd and a swarm of people in front of us.

The media were very much in evidence throughout the march, as were the police, and there was a helicopter overhead constantly throughout. Was it a police helicopter? or did it belong to Sky News?  As we passed GMEX both media and police were present and visible in high numbers. I noticed that the nearer we got to the conference the older and more expensively dressed the journalists became. I also, throughout the march generally, noticed two different police forces (GMP and Lancashire) plus Tactical Aid and police CCTV vans, all in significant numbers. I had my picture taken and got filmed a lot, so I made a big effort to look smiley, approachable and peaceful.

By the time we came to GMEX we were very, very strong...

Some of the marchers had brought their kids with them, and I spotted a toddler asleep on her mums shoulders at one point. I also spotted marchers representing Unite, UCU, the NHS (including a contingent from Leeds), and some WOBS (no, we didn’t know either, but it sounded cool) from Sheffield.

When we passed through Saint Peter’s Square there was a confusingly delivered call for all banners to be lowered until we were past the tramlines, which we eventually worked out was so that no one with a particularly high flying one would get themselves electrocuted by catching it on the overhead wires.

When we got past GMEX, the field was full of stalls and a stage had been set up at the far end for the speeches. We were starving and in desperate need of the loo by then though, so we headed over to Piccadilly for food, tea and relief.

Afterwards we headed back over to Albert Square to see how the occupation was getting on, and passed a group of people just off Saint Peter’s Square, who were petting and feeding the police horses. It probably did nothing for the animals digestions, but probably helped their nerves.  In Albert Square there were quite a lot of people sitting around whilst a smaller group played football as a soundsystem played Junior Murvin’s ‘Police And Thieves’.

After a bit of this we headed back towards GMEX, but people were heading back over to Albert Square by then as everything by the conference had finished. We  saw a very exuberant and slightly scary group of figures in David Cameron masks at this point, and not long after whilst we were heading back to Albert Square we got snarled at by a bloke in a grey suit, ‘If you push that in my face I’ll ‘ave yer!’ being the broad translation. This was ironic in that the incident occurred as we were strolling along with our placards unconsiously held at half mast, not really protesting demonstratively at that point.

Albert Square again

Things had livened up a bit by the time we got back to Albert Square again, but the rain was coming down quite hard by then. People danced to the sound system, now playing old school rave, under canvas held aloft on poles whilst protesters in harnesses scaled wet lamposts to hang banners. One of the banners already hung on the opposite side of the square read ‘If they won’t let us dream, we won’t let them sleep’, a reference to an idea put across on their flyers: that if enough protesters were in the square by nightfall, they would try to maintain a presence in the square throughout the night and see that the delegates in their nearby hotels didn’t get any sleep.

If you won't let us dream, we won't let you sleep

The police presence was robust but friendly at the point when we left, but I don’t fancy the occupations chances of an all night knees up: too many police, not enough protesters.

I overheard a nice conversation on the bus on the way home between a group of sixth formers who’d been on the march and one of their friends, who hadn’t. The one who hadn’t told them his mum had voted for David Cameron, and he freely admitted that he probably would have done too because he ”didn’t know anything about politics”. But since the election, and the protests, he’s done a lot of reading, he’s educated himself, and now knows a lot more about politics. He’d had a deadline though, so he hadn’t marched.

One of the group of boys who had been on the march got off at the same stop as me. He turned off down a side road just before I reached home, still carrying his placard.

Read Full Post »

A couple of dates for the diary…

It's going to be a busy few months...

Saturday 25th September – Peace and Social Justice History Walk

Assemble 10.45am at Robert Owen Statute, Corporation Street, Manchester

A guided walk visiting sites in Manchester city centre associated with the movement for peace and social justice. Lasting 2 hours this walk will be led by Michael Herbert (Red Flag Walks).

Booking is essential. Tickets are £10 and £5 conc. Contact Jacqui on 0161 273 8283

Also:

Manchester For The Alternative

Jobs. Growth. Justice

Join the TUC’s National Protest March Outside the Conservative Party Conference, Sunday 2nd October 2011

Assembling in Liverpool Road from Deansgate down towards Water Street.

Start time not listed yet. Check the website for updates:

www.tuc.org.uk/northwest

Read Full Post »

I heart MCR, Manchester Pride, and the WCML

For reasons I think it best not to go into, I had a pretty shitty bank holiday weekend. Sunday was best, mainly because it meant I got to undo at least part of the damage of Saturday (don’t ask…) but also I think it was probably the only day when it didn’t bucket down.

This is just a series of thoughts and bits and pieces, starting on Friday, going through to today…

Friday was I heart MCR day, and the idea was that employers in Manchester would let their staff out at 4pm to watch the events in Exchange Square and staff would go shopping. My own workplace did a partial sign up on this, the outcome of which was that I went home at 5pm with 1 hours time in liu. The staff who stayed later got more time in liu, and t-shirts.

On Saturday I headed towards town and made my way over from Ardwick to Oxford Road, and dinner at 8th Day to cheer myself up. Then I started to head towards town, with the idea of buying birthday presents in the Arndale (something I never do, but since I had to buy them anyway I thought I’d show willing…) and tea at Whittard as I had some back pay in August.

En route, I met one of my colleagues who was having a longer journey than usual between his places of work that day. Why? because Manchester Pride was on. I think it’s indicative of the shit few days I’d been having that I had completely forgotten this.

Apparently the religious right were out in force, picketing, but they were massively outnumbered by the Pride marchers and spectators. ‘Sodomites burn in hell!’ was the general refrain apparently, and just to keep in topical and varied they were also shouting about the evils of Coronation Street and Lady Gaga. One of the cast of Coronation Street was so peeved apparently that they got down off their float and started remonstrating with the bigots.

Another float was hurling free Fairtrade chocolate at people in the crowds, and one of the enthusiastic participants in the religious right lobby got hit right between the eyes by a bar of chocolate travelling at high velocity. Apparently it was probably an accident, but my colleague still wishes he’d caught it on camera.

Before continuing on his odyssey, he advised taking a right down Charles Street and going past the University buildings around there as the best route to Piccadilly.

I have some experience of dodging/navigating my way around processions, so I wasn’t too worried. I’ve been caught up at various times in Hazel Grove, Marple and Stockport carnivals on more occasions than I can count, and once you know that you can’t cross a parade line, no matter how much you want to, these things are easy to navigate… time consuming, but always fun.

Even skirting the back streets of Piccadilly and the village I could see and hear the parade, which looked magnificant. I wasn’t tempted to join in though as my joie de vivre was somewhat lacking, and also I always equate Pride with extortionate prices and lots of music I don’t much like.

In the end I decided it would be impossible to get to Market Street, so instead I walked it to the Appollo and got the bus home again. Or as far as Longsight anyway, as the scallies on the bus and the speed of the bus were driving me mad by then, so I walked it from Longsight instead. It was that kind of day really…

There appears to have been very little mention of I heart SLFD this past week or two, but I know of at least one thing that SLFD should be proud of: The Working Class Movement Library on Salford Crescent.

Thanks to the government cuts, and more directly, to Salford Council, the Library has lost a massive chunk of it’s funding this year and, as such, will have to make up the shortfall itself somehow. This will be very difficult, as £80,000 isn’t something you tend to find down the back of a sofa, and even if it was, they’d have to be finding it every year from now on.

I’ve visited the library a few times now, and I’ve always found the experience fascinating. The scope of the collection, and the size of it, is mindbogglingly huge and complex, and the staff and volunteers are a lovely bunch of people who always make you feel welcome and will always be willing to help dig things up for your research. I like this library a lot.

David has also used it, for his PHD in his case, and spent his time there engrossed in copies of Temporary Hoarding, the Rock Against Racism magazine. “WCML was great!” read the email I got off him. “Four page Gang Of Four interview with Lucy Toothpaste and Irate Kate!!!”

I knew exactly what he meant.

If you want to donate to the library’s fundraising appeal, please click here:

 If you wish to find out more about the library, and it’s amazing resources, please click here:

Read Full Post »

Peterloo

In the hot and humid early evening of yesterday, I trundled down Oxford Road in pursuit of food after work. 8th Day doesn’t seem to be doing evenings now that a substantional chunk of the students have gone home for the summer, so it was the Cornerhouse for me.

From the Cornerhouse I meandered towards Saint Peter’s Square, which is currently under seige because of the metrolink extensions (not started yet, so far as I could tell) and the radical overhaul of the entire area by Manchester City Council. The library and the library theatre have already fled the carnage, the war memorial and Peace Gardens are to be moved. In a few years time the place will be as unrecognisable to the average manc as it would be to a survivor of Peterloo today.

Matt Smith (no, not that one) local historian, political upstart, and – apparently – deputy manager at a branch of Asda, chose this day to mark the occasion of the Peterloo Massacre, a tragedy which occurred on the 16th August 1819, a hot day much like the 5th July apparently.

As with many of the various re-tellings and analysis of Peterloo (a dark satirical reference to the much celebrated victory over Napoleon at Waterloo, which occurred close enough to Peterloo to be in the minds of many at the time), Matt’s piece was an overview coupled with an exploration of the parallels between life for the average person in 1819 and now. There are parallels: a struggling economy, high food prices, and a overwhelming sense that things are going in the wrong direction and the wrong people are being made to suffer… But I always think it risks devaluing the importance of what happened in Saint Peter’s Fields (as they were then) on that day in August 1819 if we overconcentrate on the parallels with today, interesting though they are.

Having said that, Smith did an admirable job when it came to explaining the flaws of capitalism as a model (he likened it to a bus being driven over a cliff, with the surviving passengers having to pay the driver to buy a new bus, which  then gets driven over the cliff again, and the process is repeated ad neauseum) and the Rotton Boroughs style political arrangements of 1819 (Manchester had a population of approximately 1 million, only 145 people could vote, and only 1 person could stand as an MP).

You certainly couldn’t fault Smith on enthusiasm and energy, particularly during his agit prop moment as a smug Tory M.P complete with Lib Dem sock puppet, and I did enjoy his description of being filled with hope for the future of political protest upon coming across two men, who had previously been scrapping on the pavement, united by a common hatred, pissing up against a giant billboard of David Cameron just prior to the 2010 elections.

Matt Smith is not The Doctor, but you don’t need a sonic screwdriver to talk about history and politics. If it was 1981 I can’t help but think he would have joined The Gang Of Four instead…

The event is part of the Not Part Of Festival, a fringe festival in Manchester which runs parallel to Manchester International Festival. The name is an abbreviated way of saying ‘Not part of Manchester International Festival’, sort of ‘Off, off Broadway’ or perhaps ‘Off, off Saint Anne’s Square’ in this case.

I picked up a leaflet about the campaign for a proper memorial to the massacre, in which 18 people were killed and over 600 people were injured by sabre cuts and trampling. The previous memorial has always been deemed euphemistic and inadequate, and many, many people, including Mark Thomas, have  joined the campaign many years ago to have it removed and a proper memorial put up instead. With the re-development of the square, the council have promised a new memorial, but doubt is being expressed as to whether it will be any better than the previous one.  If you would like to read more about the history of Peterloo, and about the campaign for a decent memorial to the events, please click here.

Read Full Post »

Student Action Group at MMU today and tomorrow

From SCHNews, wish I’d found out about this sooner…

“ Network X, a gathering of non-hierarchical action groups is taking
place this weekend (15th/16th January) at MMU – Manchester
Metropolitan’s Student Union. Go along to join a working group
for action planning on cuts action, environmentalism, human rights and
anti-capitalism campaigns and meet the network of UK-based collectives
working on these issues. See www.networkxuk.wordpress.com“

http://www.schnews.org.uk/

Read Full Post »

THE WELL UNFAIR STATE (courtesy of SCHNews)

(This was penned by the SCHNews collective in Brighton for their weekly newsletter… see http://www.schnews.org.uk for more)

SCHNEWS SURVEYS THE GOVT’S PLANS FOR WICKED CUTS TO BENEFIT
SYSTEM

Tuition fees got you riled up? Wait ’til you get a handle on
what our Tory chums have got planned next – flagged up since the first
announcement of spending cuts, the recent consultation paper entitled
Universal Credit – is a massive demolition (sorry, overhaul) of the
existing benefits system. With all benefits and tax credits being
rolled into one system, the screws are gonna get tightened.

As part of their ‘divide and rule’ tactics, the present
government of millionaires claim that the coming cuts in benefits are
all being made against those out of work – in the interest of those in
work. This is a lie. In fact 80% of those in receipt of housing
benefit are working, and there will be cuts on Working Tax Credits!

The truth is that the proposed benefits cuts are not made against
‘dole scroungers’, they are made against all of us,
whether in work or out of work, on benefits or not. Their aim is to
lower wages and make us fight each other, rather than fighting against
them. Only the rich and the bankers who caused the economic crisis
will benefit.

According to Brighton Benefits Camapign, who alongside many around
the country are staging protests -’It is not time anymore to
have ‘disabled’, ‘single mothers’, or
‘dole claimants’ campaigns – this is an attack on
everybody, especially those in work, and we need to fight together.
This is NOT a struggle to protect the state and its benefits system,
but to defend ourselves from a vile attack from an entrenched gang of
millionaires and big businesses, who want to use the benefit system to
squeeze us and multiply their profits.’

Housing benefits will be one of the biggest casualties, decimated by
politicians who have never in their silver-spoon lives had to worry
how they’re gonna pay the rent.

SQUEEZE THE SPONGERS!

While Local Housing Allowances – the amount of housing benefit you
can claim – will be reduced across the board to match the lowest 30%
of rents in the area (rather than the previous 50%), there are to be
caps on LHA. This’ll cause many of the highest price property
areas, like inner-city London, to become stomping grounds of the rich
only, ‘cleansing’ the areas from ordinary tenants on lower
wages.

If your under 35 and single, you’ll only be able to claim for
rooms in shared accommodation. And if you’re on JSA and Housing
Benefits for a year, your housing benefit will be slashed by 10%,
along with the lower JSA you can receive and the hassle from the Job
Centre. In the government’s warped logic, the mass unemployment
caused by the recession and the fucked-up sky-high rents seen as the
norm are you’re fault. And you have to pay.

In the biggest assault on the poorest sections of society for a
generation, around 750,000 people are set to become homeless as a
result of these changes according to the Chartered Institute of
Housing. With an average decrease in benefit of £12 a week, many
households will be forced into spiralling debt. That’s mainly
working households, remember.

There’s another benefit that’s designed to ease the
poverty and inequality that’s a direct result of the capitalist
system: Tax Credits.

These are set to be abolished in 2014, and are being cut now.
Although Child Tax Credit looks safe for the time being, draconian
cuts are being made to Working Tax Credits. Parents will have to work
24 hours a week to qualify at all, and from April 2012, if your income
decreases by less than £2500 you’ll still not be entitled
to any increase in your Working Tax Credit. This’ll cause
extreme hardship. According to estimations made by the Tax Credits
Unit at least half a million working families will lose more than
£1,000 per year due to these changes.

DOLING OUT PUNISHMENT

If this makes you want to escape the rat-race and earn your crust on
your own terms, you’re out of luck. If you’re
self-employed you will have to prove your earnings work out at the
minimum wage for your hours. If you work less than 16 hours a week (or
even more) you’ll be categorised as an unproductive member of
society – and forced into the job centre to sign on and look for a
‘real’ job.

Finally, many of those currently receiving Disability Living
Allowance may lose their entitlement after it’s replaced by the
stricter Personal Independence Payment. Bizarrely, if you can use your
wheelchair, for example, you won’t be entitled to the mobility
component of the benefit.

All of this will be obsolete in 2014, when most benefits including
tax credits and housing are simply deleted in favour of a
‘Universal Credit’. In line with the government’s
plan to get us all slaving away at insecure and badly paid jobs, this
plays into the hands of the monster corporations who’d prefer
not to have to give us secure employment and decent wages. No wonder
so many big business bullies like M&S and Boots gave the
government their whole-hearted support.

This is the crux of the government’s ideologically-driven
assault on welfare state, and that old-fashioned idea that just maybe,
people have a right to decent work and a decent wage, to be able to
support and house themselves and their families.

Resistance is brewing. Across the land, people are realising that the
selfish, money-grabbing twats in power and their business cronies
can’t get away with it. With the biggest splashes so far coming
from the student demos and the tax avoidance actions prompted by
UKUncut (see SchNEWS 746,751), the coming months will see action on a
wider scale.

To read the full proposals
http://www.dwp.gov.uk/policy/welfare-reform/legislation-and-key-documents/universal-credit

Read Full Post »