Managing Democracy, Managing Dissent book review - published by Corporate Watch

MANAGING DEMORACY, MANAGING DISSSENT

Corporate Watch

Edited by Rebecca Fisher

 

How global capitalism is dependent on manipulating democracy in order to survive.

 

The two biggest political decisions taken in Britain this century are those that sent British troops to Iraq in 2003 and the £500 billion bank bail-out deal completed by the Chancellor of the Exchequer Alistair Darling in October 2008. Even though the latter decision let corrupt bankers off the hook and ensured a fiscal and public sector crisis for generations to come it was made even before any debate in Parliament had taken place.

 

And whilst the decision to commit armed forces to Iraq was made after a substantive Parliamentary vote it was taken after millions of voters had demonstrated against the war and opinion polls indicated massive opposition to the conflict, which more than a decade later is still ongoing.

 

Meanwhile in 2014 the Tory-Lib Dem government continues down a path it failed to let the electorate know about in 2010 as it fast-forwards the destruction of the NHS by passing control to the private sector and hedge fund operators.

 

When it comes to an increasing number of big – and little - decisions that affect them and their families then it appears the British electorate must be denied a voice. A situation that is largely replicated right across the globe.

 

Managing Democracy, Managing Dissent – Capitalism, Democracy and the Organisation of Consent is published by the not for profit research organisation, Corporate Watch. Rebecca Fisher edits the writings and they demonstrate how liberal democracy defends the unequal capitalist power structures from the potential good of participatory democracy. Increasingly this defence involves criminalising a much greater range of effective activities such as the ability of trade unionists to take secondary action in support of their fellow workers or students occupying their Universities in opposition to tuition fee increases.

 

Anti-terrorism legislation meantime is being extended to include an increasing range of activities that have nothing to do with terror but plenty to do with exposing corporate and environmental corruption.

 

Helping confuse people – and convince them there is no real alternative – is the corporate media, who have even co-opted previously progressive, pro-worker terms such as reform, which previously referred to enhancements in public welfare and now refers to eliminating labour rights and removing health and safety regulations. Similarly, the government is currently talking of economic recovery, which means the recovery of profits by the major companies whilst disguising the absolute absence of any recovery in living standards for the mass of people.

 

The book also details how corporate power and its mega-wealthy political friends have massively funded the promotion of their form of democracy across the former communist bloc, Africa and Asia and in doing so have ensured that liberation movements, which mobilised social movements to win power, have ended up attacking those who previously backed them.

 

This book therefore makes for unpalatable reading and it certainly has no happy ending, especially as it lacks solutions. However as a book, which lays bare the crisis facing working people if the vast majority are not to face permanent financial instability this is highly recommended.

 

Managing Democracy, Managing Dissent is edited by Rebecca Fisher and published by Corporate Watch. It is available to buy for £8.00 at http://www.corporatewatch.org.uk/democracy 

John McDonnell MP pays tribute to Malcolm Kennedy

Irish Post - 11 January 2014 

Frank Swift - Blackpool legend

From Blackpool Gazette in December 2013

Millwall supporter Robert plays his part

From Millwall programme on 1 January 2014. 

Frank Swift - a Fleetwood Legend

From Fleetwood Town programme for home game with Cheltenham on
30 November 2013

Charities under fire for using workfare schemes and backing benefit sanctions

From the current edition of the Big Issue in the North magazine - please buy the magazine when you see a seller.

The YMCA has defended its involvement in the government’s workfare programme after it was among a number of leading charities heavily criticised by welfare rights campaigners.

Under workfare, individuals must undertake work in return for their benefit payments or risk losing them.

Workfare had come to an end in Britain in 1948 when workhouses introduced in 1834 were abolished. Inmates had performed a range of tasks, such as sewing and weaving, in return for relief. However, the last Labour government introduced the New Deal programme, under which claimants lost their benefits if they failed to take up full-time education, voluntary work or a job placement with companies that included Primark.

Condemned

The current government has expanded workfare. These now include the mandatory work activity placements that last four weeks, which a Department for Work and Pensions report in 2012 showed did nothing for participants’ long-term job prospects.

Many of Britain’s major companies, including Asda, Greggs and Poundland, are known to have used or be using workfare. The same is true of many national charities.

Boycott Workfare, an organisation committed to “ending forced unpaid labour for people who receive welfare”, has condemned charities that provide community work placements under workfare. They include the Shaw Trust, Groundwork UK, the Salvation Army and the YMCA.

In December, the Edinburgh Coalition Against Poverty blockaded a Salvation Army store in the city for two hours after a member of its group was forced to work there or lose his benefits. The charitable organisation responded to its critics by stating: “It is offensive that volunteering and work experience can be referred to as ‘forced labour’ as we help support victims of human trafficking who go through unimaginable ordeals.”

‘New skills’

Liz Wyatt from Boycott Workfare said: “The motivation for many charities using workfare is because they can’t find regular volunteers who can commit to more than one or two days a week. Workfare provides an endless stream of workers at little cost to charities, who often become reliant on workfare workers to operate.”

Through the mandatory work scheme some charities can receive payments – normally around £50 week – while some also boost their income by administering schemes. The latter includes the Shaw Trust, which The Big Issue in the North approached without success for comment.

YMCA England does not receive any payment in exchange for work placements in its retail shops and community construction and gardening projects.

The organisation has justified its workfare involvement by claiming participants may get their first experience of a work environment or acquire new skills to allow them to get back into work.

A YMCA spokesperson said: “We have read media reports of bad experiences through workfare but we find it difficult to condemn any scheme that carries the potential to help individuals gain new skills or prepare for future employment.

“Anecdotal evidence reveals many people on our projects have progressed into paid roles within YMCA or in other organisations. We cannot provide any figures as YMCAs are independent charities.”

The spokesperson also defended the use of benefit sanctions against claimants who did not comply with workfare.

“Many young people felt sanctions could provide motivation to get some people into work,” said the spokesperson. “However, we have supported people not wishing to work at the YMCA to return to the Job Centre and find an alternative role.”

Withdrawn

But Wyatt said there is “no evidence that unemployed people or society at large is benefiting from charity involvement in workfare”.

She added: “No wonder therefore that many charities have withdrawn from the schemes as the public are angered by their involvement.

“There is no evidence that workfare increases the likelihood of finding work when there are so few jobs anyway. Workfare is about pushing people deeper into poverty and any charity that doesn’t recognise that is the case isn’t worthy of the name.”

In October last year, the Chancellor, George Osborne, said there was “no option of doing nothing” for welfare payments. He announced a £300 million nationwide scheme to force 200,000 long- term unemployed to undertake community work, attend a job centre every day or undergo an intensive programme to tackle their failure to find work.

Osborne’s statement came in the same month as it was revealed that benefit payments had been suspended 580,000 times to people who were ruled not to have done sufficient to find work in the previous 12 months.

Pesticide safety victory

A North West resident diagnosed as chemically poisoned has welcomed the government’s decision to alter the way the safety of pesticides is assessed for arable use.

The government move follows a long-running legal challenge by Georgina Downs, from Sussex, who was also left unwell by the use of crop sprays on fields next to her home.

According to the World Bank around 355,000 people worldwide are killed each year by pesticides.

Withdrawn

In March 2009, Downs
forced the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) to review its risk assessment for people exposed to agricultural pesticides used in spraying crops.

Its working group took until December 2012 to report to ministers, who have only just announced they will accept its recommendations.

The recommendations include assessing the effects of repeated exposures to crop spraying rather than single exposures, and separate assessments for children and adults.

Some crop sprays may now need to be withdrawn or amended.

But the working group exclusively concentrated its attention on crop spraying and did not consider other methods of pesticide application, including hand-held applicators.

Collapsed

Gillian Broughton is convinced it was the use of the latter by farm labourers in June 2009 that left her seriously unwell. She was walking on a footpath in Billinge, near St Helens, alongside a farmer’s field with her son, Paul.

She saw what were possibly rabbit warrens being sprayed with what smelt like cleaning fluid. She collapsed 48 hours hours later and was unable to get out of bed for weeks. Paul was also badly affected with rectal bleeds and was off work for six months.

After failing to get a diagnosis from the NHS, Broughton paid privately for laboratory tests that concluded she had been chemically poisoned. She has been unable to prove a direct link with the use of pesticides but has campaigned against their use in her area, supported by the local branch of the Green Party.

Broughton, who hopes to soon be fit enough to seek part- time work, said: “It is great to see Georgina Downs winning out on the way that the safety of pesticides on arable products is to be assessed. This now needs to be extended to all pesticides, as the very least that needs to be additionally achieved is preventing people becoming as poorly as me in the future.”

Downs said: “By accepting all the working group recommendations the government is finally acknowledging that the risk assessment approach they’ve relied upon has been inadequate – just what I have always argued.”

Ban

However, Downs wants a ban on pesticide use in the locality of residents’ homes, schools, playgrounds and public spaces.

“There has never been any UK assessment of the health risks for residents and others exposed over the long term,” she added. “Under European legislation pesticides should never have been approved for spraying in the locality of such areas.

“The existing UK policy has put rural citizens in a guinea pig-style experiment, for which many of us residents have had to suffer the serious, devastating and even fatal consequences.”