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I’ve been away
Meanwhile, back on the ground, in a place that may soon officially become “foreign parts”
– and before you ask, no, it isn’t foreign parts as far as I’m concerned –
meanwhile, I say, life and struggles go on against all the odds. According to today’s Libération, some 200 emergency hospital staff met at the weekend in 33 towns in France. It was a strike movement that has affected 65 of these services across France. At the weekend they decided on a day of action in Paris on 6 June. They have a platform of demands, and they are familiar ones:
- stop the closure of hospital beds;
- raise pay levels;
- increase staffing levels
The national strike committee comprises this group, representatives from various regions of France, plus a united front of trade unions comprising the CGT, Force Ouvrière and the SUD (I don’t know what the last one is). There have been a number of strikes in different places. Dr Francis Braun, President of the Emergency Services of France, has called for a half-hour stoppage today across France. “We have reached the end,” he said. “I have never known anything like this before. The services are at breaking point, saturation point, the point of rupture. Rarely have I seen such stoppages of work.”
This is where we will have to head too, in our own austerity-driven crisis. We need a similar movement of resistance, in solidarity with French and other EU workers. Such solidarity will be more difficult if we leave the EU. But it will have to be done. Or we’re buggered.
Les urgences, entre surchauffe et abattement
https://www.liberation.fr/france/2019/05/27/les-urgences-entre-surchauffe-et-abattement_1729921
Just a couple of points about Brexit
The truth is that whether we leave the EU with May’s deal, without a deal, or with a deal that looks more or less like the status quo (which must surely be the real meaning of phrases like “on the same terms as we have at present”) or with some other deal, or whether we just say, “I know, let’s just stay in, it was all a mistake, sorry”, socialists and anyone who thinks another world is possible will still have a fight on their hands.
Jeremy Corbyn said that one of the reasons we should stay was to preserve the workers’ rights gained in the EU. And, sure enough, those rights have often been better in other European countries than in the UK. I worked as an English teacher in France in the first half of the 1990s, and I was gobsmacked to find that, not only was there the right to join a union, you had the right for it to be recognised by the boss. If you wanted a staff representative you just had to ask. If you wanted a union rep, ditto. If you wanted a union rep (and at our language school there were just two union members out of a staff of about 35) an official from the union (in our case the CGT) would come and set up the operation. It meant that the boss was legally obliged to have annual pay negotiations with the union reps, among other obligations. None of this was perfect, but it was a good deal better than the situation in Thatcher’s Britain at that time. And French workers in their unions had fought for such rights well before the EU was even a twinkle in anybody’s eye.
But none of it was permanent either. Even before I left in 1995, there were rumours that these rights were under threat of being removed. One of my students said, “If they try that, there’ll be another revolution!” But Macron has made the most determined attempt so far to weaken and remove those rights. But even before Macron, in 2016, as Corbyn was saying we should remain in order to preserve workers’ rights, the government under Socialist Party president François Hollande was tear-gassing workers demonstrating against its own attack on their rights, an attack prompted from within the EU itself. I wrote in a blog in 2016 that
what was interesting in terms of Jeremy Corbyn’s argument was the claim by Danielle Simmonet from the Parti de Gauche (Party of the Left). She argued that the proposed law was not just a proposal by the French government. It was concocted by the government, the bosses – and the European Union. The proposed law is a “demand” of Brussels, she said, and a “deal” made with the European Union institutions themselves.[1]
So we can stay in to preserve human rights if we like, but they will not simply require preserving but vigorously defending, and probably will have to be fought for all over again. The same goes for all other rights, “standards”, etc.
If we leave the EU we will, for dead certain, have to fight to defend and extend our rights. The state will oppose us because it is a capitalist state, and thus not our friend. Even if we get a Corbyn-led government we will have to fight for change. John McDonnell spoke at a meeting in London recently and talked of “transforming the state”. He said this transformation would involve all of us in our unions, our communities, our pressure groups, etc., and in the Labour Party. The process needed to start now, he said, and it would be at least 10 years before we would see real progress (or as he put it, “two terms”). Of course, the state will resist any such transformation and we will have to hold a Labour government accountable and constantly keep it on track. It will be under enormous pressure to backtrack, abandon the transformation and return to “business as usual”. This will be the case in or out of the EU.
My main reasons for voting Remain in the 2016 referendum were about migration. I felt vindicated when it seemed that just the act of voting and getting their required result made so many people feel they then had the right to perpetrate racist attacks. It’s a small world and there can be no xenophobia or racism, no talk of “them” and “us”. We need to fight for free movement, which must be seen as benefiting both those who move and those who stay put and welcome the movers. A UK that bolts the door or pulls up the drawbridge against the antiquated figure of “the foreigner” will move further and further to the right. It will be going nowhere I want to go and nowhere I want to live. So I will probably vote Remain again if asked, despite the unfriendly – no, that’s too weak, think what they did to Greece – the vicious nature of what Yanis Varoufakis calls “Europe’s deep establishment”.[2]
[1] Defending workers’ rights against the EU: https://bobmouncerblog.wordpress.com/2016/06/12/defending-workers-rights-against-the-eu/
[2] Adults in the Room: my Battle with Europe’s Deep Establishment (2017), Vintage, London.
“Frankreich ist Weltmeister”, says Der Spiegel. But it’s only football
“It’s the right thing to do” – the politicians’ mantra to justify policy
When Home Office minister Baroness Williams and the French Ambassador to the Court of St James assured us that the demolition of the Calais refugee camp (“the jungle”) would not begin until all the children there were safeguarded, many people of goodwill believed them. Moreover, at a higher level, Home Secretary Amber Rudd and her French counterpart, Bernard Cazeneuve, also apparently agreed that children must be protected.
Yesterday’s Guardian report shows these promises to be empty words. Instead, children were abandoned,
“lured out of … the camp in the afternoon with the promise of transport to a reception centre where they could be assessed for asylum or reunification with families in the UK. However, after an hour, no bus had arrived. Police units emerged in force, with riot shields, teargas and taser guns, and began to kettle the group, pressing them into a side street in an industrial estate. Some of the refugees were in tears as it appeared that they would be sleeping on the streets again.”
Once news of this began to circulate, a badly acted charade took place, as Amber was said to have called up Bernard and told him that the children had to be “properly protected”.
Tell that to 16-year-old Hussein from Darfur, where he had already spent five years in a refugee camp. In Calais, after queuing before dawn on three successive days,
“he never made it to the head of the line to be processed, and on Wednesday night became one of the estimated 200 unaccompanied children left to sleep rough. Now he faces a second night in the grass with temperatures dropping and despondency setting in.”
Tell it to the despairing kids being helped by charity workers:
“An atmosphere of despair among charity workers was mirrored by the behaviour of the children, all aged approximately 14 to 17, some of whom huddled against the wall in blankets as the temperature plummeted. One Afghan teenager, wrapped in a yellow and green sleeping bag, said: ‘Fuck France, Fuck Britain. You are racists.’ He was in tears as a French volunteer tried to console him by asking him not to be angry with aid workers. He retorted: ‘You didn’t have to sleep on the side of the road last night – you have documentation, you have money. Fuck France.’”
The boy has insight. “No French or British officials were on the scene with the children,” says the report. Of course they weren’t. The agreement to protect between diplomats and politicians is a charade. Their intent is to punish, and to discourage others. That was David Cameron’s intent when he withdrew support from the Italian-based rescue operation in the Mediterranean in the days of the Tory-LibDem coalition. The song that was sung then was that these people must be taught a lesson – that they will die if they come to Europe. Stop rescuing them. We must let them drown.
It’s the same story now. Punish the kids who came, warn future migrants: “Don’t come here if you’re persecuted, or bombed out of your home or even out of your hospital. We don’t want you.”
You see, despite having earlier agreed, unwillingly and under strong pressure, to bring a tiny proportion of the children into the UK, what’s happened to these remaining kids in Calais is not a mistake or down to bad organisation. It’s deliberate. It’s policy. “It’s the right thing to do.”
And if you don’t like it being done in your name, tell your MP to object. Now.
Here’s the Guardian article: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/oct/27/calais-camp-minors-children-abandoned-uk-france-human-rights?utm_source=esp&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=GU+Today+main+NEW+H+categories&utm_term=196826&subid=12991040&CMP=EMCNEWEML6619I2
On the eve of a referendum …
Several friends have told me that they are voting Remain in the EU referendum – but with a heavy heart.
I’m voting Remain too, in spite of France tear-gassing protesting workers who are resisting their government’s, and the EU’s, plans to ditch their rights (Jeremy, don’t imagine the EU is on your side here) and tear-gassing (again by France) of refugees in Calais (ditto, Jeremy) and its refusal to allow aid through to Calais. I’m voting Remain because I don’t want Johnsonism and Goveism to have the whip hand in government and I also want to save Jeremy from the Blairites and the assorted Gawd-knows-whatites waiting to get rid of him if there’s a No vote. It’s not the right time to vote Leave.
If we get a Labour government committed to rolling back NHS privatisation, rejecting TTIP, bringing the rail network and the energy companies into public ownership, restoring the trade union rights that have been eroded since Thatcher and getting rid, amongst other noxious things, of zero-hour contracts, that would be several major steps forward. A Corbyn-led government could do that, and it could reaffirm the principles of the Refugee Convention rather than bolster the profits of the tear-gas manufacturers. The EU would certainly oppose such a Labour programme, since much of it would break EU rules, laws and protocols. Then we could oppose the EU, and then, if change proves impossible, vote to leave – and defend policies worth defending.
Will any of that happen?
Don’t know.
But if we vote Leave now, we are playing into the hands of the Right, including the very nasty Right.
Defending workers’ rights against the EU
A major part, perhaps the major part, of Jeremy Corbyn’s argument for remaining in the EU is that we will be able to defend workers’ rights across Europe if we stay in. We enjoy many of them, his argument runs, thanks to the EU and we can defend and maintain them more effectively from inside the club than from outside.
Whether we enjoy them “thanks to the EU” is debatable. But one thing is not. The French Socialist Party (SP) government is busy attacking workers’ rights in France like there’s no tomorrow. And the unions, through strikes and demonstrations, and protest meetings, are opposing the changes. According to today’s Observer, the argument
“boils down to whether it should be as easy in France for employers to sack workers, cut their pay and arbitrarily change their working conditions as it is in post-Thatcher, post-BHS Britain.”
A protest meeting of the Left took place today. One of the participants spoke of the “docility” and “treachery” of SP Members of Parliament and called President Hollande’s government “a government of the right”.
But what was interesting in terms of Jeremy Corbyn’s argument was the claim by Danielle Simmonet from the Parti de Gauche (Party of the Left). She argued that the proposed law was not just a proposal by the French government. It was concocted by the government, the bosses – and the European Union. The proposed law is a “demand” of Brussels, she said, and a “deal” made with the European Union institutions themselves. So how to break this deal? Danielle is clear: “To fight the [proposed] law we need a general rebellion … we need to [be] an insubordinate people.”
So, if we remain, it looks as if our rights will not be protected by the EU. Instead we will have the EU institutions themselves to contend with. Jeremy Corbyn paints too rosy a picture of workers’ rights in the EU. Judging by the current events in France, maintaining and defending them if we vote Remain will take just as much effort and commitment as defending them against Boris Johnson and Michael Gove: it won’t just be a matter of sending Hilary Benn in to the Council of Ministers. We will, beyond that (and perhaps instead of that), have to become “an insubordinate people”.
We can, of course, do that – In or Out.
Here’s the Libération article: http://www.liberation.fr/france/2016/06/12/loi-travail-valls-on-organise-ton-pot-de-depart-dans-la-rue_1458935
And the Observer article: http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/jun/04/observer-france-labour-unrest?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other
EU 2: You will be voting against migrants whichever way you vote
How to vote in the referendum if you support a humane response to the current migration crisis? Many in the No camp sound like they just want to “secure our borders” and keep the migrants out. But if we want a humane response what do we do?
In 2014, when rickety boats filled with people fleeing war and persecution began to sink, dragging their passengers to the bottom of the Mediterranean, or their bodies got washed up on the nearest shore, there were some who shouted, “Close the borders”. The Tory-led coalition (really the Tories dragging the pathetic so-called Liberal Democrats behind them) said, in effect, “Let them drown” and withdrew its support for the Italian-led rescue operations. Under pressure after this common Tory gut reaction Cameron said they would take in a tiny number of refugees – but not from the Mediterranean. They would take them from the refugee camps in Lebanon and elsewhere. Because, you see, people contemplating a journey across the Mediterranean had to learn a lesson: “Don’t set out in the first place.” So when, predictably, the drowning continued, presumably the Tories thought, “Don’t come whining to us – it’s your own fault.” By April 2015 there were fifteen times more deaths of migrants in the Mediterranean that year than in the whole of 2014.
More recently, during the crisis in Calais, in the camp called “the Jungle”, Cameron seems to have been forced (through actual or threatened legal action in the courts) to concede that at least some children there, with family in the UK, have the right to come here. But he’s done bugger all about it and most of them are still in Calais.
It’s arguable that if we vote to leave the EU we will be turning our backs on desperate people and putting their fate in the hands of a politician (whether Cameron or Boris Johnson) who would let migrants drown, let them rot in the garbage of Calais or send them packing back to where they came from.
So what would we be doing if we voted to stay in the EU? Other EU states seemed at first to be different. Germany took large numbers of refugees and there was talk of sharing responsibility across the EU states. But many were reluctant from the start, they couldn’t agree how this might be done and they began to squabble amongst themselves. So there was deadlock and some of them began to close their borders – those borders which, under the Schengen Convention, were the pride and joy of the EU, open borders within the Union. Another cry went up: “Schengen is finished.”
For those who don’t like the EU because they don’t like foreigners this is good news. For them the EU is finished, and good riddance. For those who hoped that the EU would provide a humanitarian solution it is bad news. So how to vote? Jeremy Corbyn is still optimistic as, on behalf of the Labour Party, he argues to vote Yes to the EU:
“‘There has to be an agreement all across Europe that [the EU states] all take a proportion of [the refugees],’ he said. ‘The problem is that the degree of inward-looking politics that’s going on has meant that Greece is making a huge effort, Italy is making a huge effort and Germany is making a huge effort. Every other country is putting barbed wire entanglements along their borders to keep desperate people out … Surely in the 21st century the least we can do is reach out and try to help these people in some way; by the political solution in Syria; by the support for what the Greek government is trying to do and take a proportion all across Europe.’”[1]
That, presumably, would be the policy if there was a Labour government. But yesterday the French began to bulldoze the people in Calais out of their makeshift homes. The French had originally said that the process of moving people would be done by gentle persuasion over many weeks, not with force or violence, not with bulldozers. The French Minister of the Interior spelt this out only last week: the government’s plan, he said, was not “to carry out a brutal evacuation of the camp by using bulldozers, this is not how we operate.” But yesterday the bulldozers appeared and the destruction began.
On Channel 4 News last night Krishnan Guru-Murthy asked Sylvie Bermann, the French ambassador to the UK: “Why did you say ‘no bulldozers’ and then use them?”
Bermann: I think we are using bulldozers to clear the camp, not to force all these migrants to go.
Guru-Murthy: But you said you wouldn’t.
Bermann: Well, our ministers said we wouldn’t force people to go, but at the same time what I cannot understand is – well, your reporter said it was filthy, stinking conditions. So how could you consider it better to live in these squalid conditions than to be relocated in accommodations [sic] where you have water, heating, electricity?
Guru-Murthy: But you don’t have enough space. There are thousands living there and there aren’t enough spaces in the shipping containers. They’re not flats, are they, they’re shipping containers, where you’re suggesting they go and live in?
Bermann: They are temporary accommodations, that’s true, but some of them will be relocated in other camps in France.
Guru-Murthy: Can you guarantee every one of them a comfortable roof over their heads?
Bermann: They will be relocated, but conditions will be far much better [sic] than it was in the Jungle.[2]
At the end of all this ducking and diving, there was no answer to the question, “Why use bulldozers when you said ‘no bulldozers’?” But then Sylvie is a diplomat.
So referendum voters who want a humanitarian solution to the migration crisis aren’t going to get one, in or out of the EU. The Tories will close the UK’s borders either way; the EU states will do the same; and France, our nearest neighbour, will bring out the bulldozers at the drop of a hat despite its much-vaunted pride in being the home of human rights.
How to vote? With some difficulty.
[1] The Guardian, 29 February 2016.
[2] Channel 4 News, 29 February 2016.
EU 1: Thinking aloud about some of the questions: workers’ rights
I haven’t decided how I’m going to vote in the EU referendum. If I vote to leave I will be joining a ramshackle bunch of characters including Michael Gove, Nigel Farage and George Galloway. Shouting with them from the sidelines, as Andrew Raunsley points out in today’s Observer (see link (1) below), are Marine le Pen and Vladimir Putin. And if the No camp wins we might even end up with Boris Johnson as prime minister.
All that is nearly enough to send me into the Yes camp!
But I’m also horrified by the supporters of continued membership who, one way or another, have got us where we are today. Raunsley’s list includes
“the chancellor, foreign secretary and home secretary, most of the rest of the cabinet, the great majority of senior figures from the opposition parties, the bulk of big business and the trade unions, the governor of the Bank of England, the president of the United States and the leader of every European country that anyone might conceivably have heard of.”
That’s almost enough to send me into the No camp!
However, it’s not about lists of clowns, bankers, politicians, or other Very Important People. It is, as Tony Benn always insisted, about “the issues”. Take, for instance, the question of workers’ rights. Would it be better for workers’ rights if we stayed in or if we left?
Let me suggest one argument for staying in. Many unions are saying that workers’ rights will be better protected if we stay in. But I notice the biggest French union, the CGT, says that the latest “reforms” of the Code du Travail announced by the French government will take France back to the 19th century (see link (2) below). And this in a France firmly entrenched in the EU. This game of “reforms” is the game all governments want to play, and no country’s workers are safe, and this suggests that there are no automatic guarantees of workers’ rights in the EU and that whether we’re in or out we’ll have to defend the rights we fought for. M. Martinez is calling on French trade unionists to do that now in France. So the argument for staying in to protect workers’ rights doesn’t seem to be a particularly strong one.
Unless, of course, we add M. Martinez’s element of workers taking action to defend their rights. Then, if we stayed in, it would be easier to join them and any others across the EU doing the same. Wouldn’t Brexit leave British workers weaker against Cameron, and other workers in Europe weaker against their own governments? I think solidarity is better than isolation. And perhaps solidarity across the EU could change it to the advantage of workers beyond the wildest dreams that Cameron has of changing it to the advantage of his rich, arrogant, corporate buddies.
That’s my first thought, anyway. More to come as the campaigning goes on.
(1) Andrew Raunsley’s article: http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/feb/21/eu-refendum-tory-party-uk-at-stake
(2) Article in Libération: http://www.liberation.fr/france/2016/02/19/martinez-le-nouveau-code-du-travail-un-retour-au-xixe-siecle_1434633
“We are Charlie Hebdo”, and that means we are against racism and Islamophobia
I used to live in France, so the Charlie Hebdo attack doesn’t seem far away. And coupled with the horror of the attack itself it looks as if the response (or, rather, the reaction) will be predictably bad too.
There is, as Tom Robinson sang in 1970s and 1980s Britain, “panic at the county hall” – and in the French government, and here, there and every place where politicians, police officers and hack journalists gather.
What we can be pretty sure of is that there will be an open season on Muslims, in France and across Europe, including the UK. In France Muslims already experience Islamophobic attacks, suffer social and economic inequality and are subject to discrimination. Ethnic minorities are not officially recognised in France (even if you’ve managed to become a French citizen, the message is “Forget where you came from: you’re French, and only French, now”). But the police, on the other hand, “recognise” your ethnic status so that they can stop you, search you and arrest you at the drop of a chapeau. In the Charlie Hebdo case there have been several arrests already, including an 18-year-old who “handed himself in”, according to The Guardian, though the reason he went to the police was apparently that he saw his name as a suspect on the social media and wanted to make it clear he was at school at the time of the attack and had nothing to do with it. As for the press, a number of gun incidents around the time of the shootings are being subtly linked with the Charlie Hebdo attack, while at the same time claiming that no link is intended.
One result of the Charlie Hebdo killings is that there have already been attacks on mosques and individuals across France. The far-right Front National led by Marine Le Pen, with its record of racist attacks, will seek to gain from the situation. And the mainstream right will keep up with their rhetoric, and form electoral pacts with them, and the mainstream left will be cowards.
Charlie Hebdo is against racism, xenophobia and Islamophobia. If “We are Charlie Hebdo” in the UK, let’s say that too and not join in the panic.
Qatar, football and a bit of French history
The country preparing to host the 2022 World Cup is in the news again. Qatar’s treatment of foreign construction workers, hired to build the infrastructure for the event, has shocked FIFA, the UEFA president, the International Labour Organisation, the International TUC and even the British government (The Guardian, 3/10/2013). The Nepalese government claims that 70 Nepalese died in Qatar since the beginning of 2012, and The Guardian reports: “Hundreds more are thought to have been injured in falls and accidents with machinery and vehicles.” The paper’s investigation suggests a worse situation: it found that “44 Nepalese workers had died in Qatar between 4 June and 8 August this year”. Undeterred, the Qatar government is ploughing on towards more exploitation: as unions predict 4,000 deaths “before a ball is kicked”, Qatar “is expected to bring in at least 500,000 more workers on top of the 1.2 million, including 340,000 from Nepal and more from India.”
One of the names appearing among all this is that of former French footballer Zinedine Zidane. He was once an icon among the “beurs” of the poor French “suburbs” – the banlieues; “beurs” are, like him, descendants of Arab immigrant parents. The Qatar story is a reminder of how he lost his iconic status.
To begin at the beginning. In the summer of 1998 there were claims that France had entered a new phase in its history, when it would be able to see itself as a diverse society, “a France”, in the words of anti-racist campaigner Harlem Désir, “rich in all its children whatever their origin.” France’s multi-ethnic football team had won the World Cup (Zinedine scored two out of the three goals against Brazil) and it seemed that the country had experienced a catharsis. President Chirac and prime minister Jospin watched the match in the stadium and, on Bastille Day two days later, Chirac “hailed his country’s victorious team … as a beautiful image of France and of the strength of its multiracial society.” Discrimination, division and racism belonged to the past.
However, the catharsis turned out to be little more than an emotional spasm and France’s social harmony has proved very fragile indeed. Le Pen came second in the first round of the 2002 presidential elections and in 2005 rioting broke out in the banlieues. The riots began in Clichy-sous-Bois when two boys, aged 15 and 17, died climbing an electrified fence while fleeing the police. They spread throughout France, with petrol bombs being thrown and cars set on fire. Interior minister Nicolas Sarkozy called the protesters “scum”, but it became clear that Clichy was a catalyst for protesters with a range of grievances about discrimination, marginalisation, racism and inequality. “It’s unfortunate”, Nadir, from Aubervilliers, told the newspaper Le Monde, “but we have no choice.” According to sociologist Eric Macé, among the causes of the riots were “the highest unemployment rates in Europe, racist discrimination and growing urban marginalisation and, since the beginning of the 1990s, a stigmatisation of the youth of the working-class suburbs which makes them appear foreign to French society and constructs them as a menace …”
The fleeting hopes of 1998 seem foolish in this light. By 2006 Zinedine was no longer an icon to beurs. He came from the Marseilles bidonville (shanty town) of La Castellane but in 2006 one of the fans of the Paris-Saint-Germain (PSG) football team told Le Monde,
“His image is too pure. He is afraid to say what he is, that he is a beur … like the rest of us. And to tell the truth about what it is like to be an Arab in this society.”
The stands at PSG’s ground were the scenes of what Le Monde called a
“civil war … between two sets of supporters. These are the predominantly white “Boulogne Boys” of the Boulogne Stand (who are alleged to have far-right links) and the mixed-race and Arab fans … who gather on the Auteuil terraces.”
Football did not heal the social divisions of France.
Today Qatar is thought to have paid close to £2m pounds to get Zinedine as bid ambassador for the country and Zinedine has earned his keep. Ignoring the lessons of post-1998 France he declared his faith in football’s ability to build bridges and inspire hope. “When I think of all the youth of the Middle East”, he said, “what they’re missing is an event like the World Cup.”
No, Zinedine, wrong answer. They actually need a number of other things first. Just like the people of the banlieues in 2005 – and, come to that, today – they need an end to poverty, unemployment, marginalisation and discrimination. Together with the Nepalese and other workers, hired to build prestigious sports palaces in Qatar and make profits for the already-rich, they need trade union rights and protection from murderous employers. And after that, do they need the World Cup? Not really. They will no doubt need football, but the World Cup is run by the rich to profit the rich.
What they can do without is a celebrity who has forgotten his roots to tell them what they’re “missing”.
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