Community Journalist
Source: ‘The love letter to my neighbourhood that helped me flee my country’ – BBC News
This is a wonderful insightful letter from the journalist José Gregorio Márquez, who is writing about his believed Venezuela. It flows with love and wonder, but also heartache when he references the killings and disappearances in his country, and why he had to finally leave for Buenos Aires and start a new life.
I wrote this article some time ago, to be exact in Sep 2013, for another organisation, but it is time we think again as we are going through the sham elections for a new Prime Minister, and with the candidates who are standing:
Over the last few weeks papers, television and radio have been referring to Martin Luther King jnr’s speech ‘I have a dream’ which was delivered in Washington on August 28, 1963.
The speech was the high point of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom; which in itself became the focal point of a campaign against discrimination, voting restrictions, unfair treatment by the police and statutory barriers against social mobility and economic opportunity.
The impact of this speech was felt across America, and then across the world, and whilst MLK was not initially billed as the main speaker, his speech has now become synonymous with Civil Rights, and led within two years to the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the 1965 Voting Rights Act being passed in the USA.
MLK developed his commitment to a principle of non-violent action through the tutelage of Bayard Rustin, a man who was black, gay, and a Quaker. Bayard’s own life had been through many phases. Bayard was brought up by his grandparents acting as his parents, who were Methodists ( he later found out that his ‘sister’ was his mother). He was a member of the Young Communist League until 1941 after the Nazi invasion of Russia led the U.S. party to switch gears into building American opposition to fascism, and racial justice issues fell by the wayside.
Rustin was a deeply committed pacifist, owing largely to his Quaker background, and got thrown in jail for conscientiously objecting to service in World War II. It was his introduction of Gandhi’s tactics of nonviolent resistance (which he learned when visiting independence activists in India) to the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr which served as a platform for MLK’s enduring success in civil liberties along with his oratory.
Bayard being gay, and also that he had been arrested for 1953 and sentenced under the lesser charge of ‘sex perversion’, was often used by his enemies both in the establishment and in the civil liberties camp as an indication of his unsuitability. However, it is interesting to read the FBI synopsis on him:
A Federal Bureau of Investigation internal memorandum (25th January, 1966)
Rustin is a very competent individual who is widely known in the civil rights field. He is personally familiar with numerous individuals with communist backgrounds. As one of Martin Luther King’s closest advisers, he is in a position to wield considerable influence on King’s activities. Technical coverage of Rustin is an important part of the overall coverage of King, who is the most prominent civil rights in the country today. Because of the influence being exerted on King by persons with subversive backgrounds, it is necessary for us to maintain coverage of individuals such as Rustin. In order to fulfill the Bureau’s responsibilities to uncover communist influence in racial matters, it is recommended that technical coverage of Rustin be continued.
Bayard Rustin, has been a man written out of history due to his abilities and to him being black and gay; fortunately society has moved on today, and more importantly the USA has a black president who this year has recognised the importance of Bayard by awarding him Presidential Medal of Freedom earlier this month.
Unfortunately some 50 years after MLK’s speech, and it’s impact worldwide, I must report that civil liberties in the United Kingdom are under threat. Our freedoms, whether those of the LGBT community, black, white, religious or non-religious are important to us. History has shown that we must fight and succour our civil liberties; that we must not allow governments to sequester them in the pursuit of security. So having said this how do we in one of the first democracies of the world now have one and a half times as many surveillance cameras as communist China (Tom Kelly, Mail Online, Aug 2009). According to the Association of Chief Police Officers, as of Aug 2011, there are in actuality 1.85 million CCTV cameras in the united kingdom.
To this we can also see the implementation of ‘Stop and Search’. In June of this year, it was stated that there were a million stops each year, with only 9% leading to court cases (BBC, July 2, 2013). However an article in the Sunday Post dated August 25, 2013, said that in the last year the Scottish Police have actioned six hundred and twelve thousand (612,000) stop and searches in the last year – approximately a 50% increase, with only thirteen percent (13%) possibly finding anything!
I do not believe that England and Wales only did 400,000 stop and searches over this period, and looking back a few years ago I wrote about the police tactics of stopping people and confiscating cameras and videos during various times of unrest ‘in the interest of the public’. A tactic which has since been clarified as being unjustified.
Our civil liberties belong to us:
As for civil liberties, any one who is not vigilant may one day find himself living, if not in a police state, at least in a police city. Gore Vidal
Read more at: https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/gore_vidal_704644?src=t_civil_liberties
Civil liberties in the United Kingdom have a long and formative history. This is usually considered to have begun with the English legal charter the Magna Carta of 1215, following its predecessor the English Charter of Liberties, a landmark document in English legal history. However it could be argued that the Declaration of Arbroath of 1320 in Scotland was the first attempted implementation of civil liberties in part of the United Kingdom. Today the United Kingdom’s relationship to civil liberties has been mediated through its membership of the European Convention on Human Rights.
In other words, civil liberties are the “rights” or “freedoms” which underpin democracy. This usually means the right to vote, the right to life, the prohibition on torture, security of the person, the right to personal liberty and due process of law, freedom of expression and freedom of association.[3]
(Wikipedia, 2013)
I call upon everyone to monitor their police and security forces, their local and national government – don’t allow the United Kingdom to become a ‘police’ state.
Further Reading:
Wikipedia –Civil Liberties in the United Kingdom
Wikipedia – Bayard Rustin
The Atlantic – Article by Kerry Eleveld ‘Obama, Bayard Rustin, and the New LGBT Civil Rights Movement‘
Spartacus Educational – Bayard Rustin
Washington Post – Wonkblog – Meet Bayard Rustin, the gay socialist pacifist who planned the 1963 march on Washington
first published in 2008
”A strong commitment to civil liberties, once considered a defining British characteristic, has weakened dramatically over the past 20 years, the survey found ”
(Telegraph.co.uk 1:44AM GMT 24/01/2007)
National security is the first duty of government but we are also committed to reversing the substantial erosion of civil liberties.
Theresa May
As someone who was born into a service family, and who then went onto to serve in the Forces, with time spent in various areas of the world, I feel that the current debate and result is an insult to the British population.
The Government and its agents managed, albeit over a twenty year period, to contain and finally achieve a workable result for all of the people of Northern Ireland without resulting in a 42-day detainment. Indeed, all parties did agree that detainment without due process is counterproductive to the well being of the British people.
Why then have we now resorted to a further dilution of our civil liberties’ with the amendment to Habeas Corpus?
”The Habeas Corpus Act passed by Parliament in 1679 guaranteed that a person detained by the authorities would have to be brought before a court of law so that the legality of the detention may be examined. In times of social unrest, Parliament had the power to suspend Habeas Corpus. William Pitt did this in May 1793 during the war with France. Parliamentary reformers such as Thomas Hardy and John Thelwall were imprisoned as a result of this action ”
(http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/PRgagging.htm)
Loss of liberty and rights since 1997; a full list of these losses are contained on the Open Democracy Network and further information is also on the Liberty website.
This change in the law cannot be seen in isolation. Various governments have been eroding our rights and because it has been slow, and in a lot of cases, the changes have been slid through on the back of other innocuous legislation most people have not noticed what has been happening.
A lot of people will say that if you are doing nothing wrong then it won’t matter’, however a clear identification of the misuse of legislation was highlighted in May this year when it came to light that local councils through middle managers are able to authorise surveillance of people suspected of petty offences using powers designed to prevent crime and terrorism.
This to my mind is a clear misuse of the legislation involved, and signals that the government (both central and local) have no moral compass and will use any means to achieve their ends.
I regret the fact we as a people have lost sight of our rights and allowed ourselves to be blinded by very poor rhetoric and people who prey on fears, which may be slightly justified but not to the extent that we are being told, as indicated by the Head of MI5, Jonathan Evans.
Today I was in the ‘Self Help Africa’ bookshop in Botanic Avenue, when I came across two postcards which reflected the development of women in politics.
The first postcard Shows ‘Miss Kelly’ a champion Votes for Women seller’, on what was her pitch in Charing Cross.
This refers to the period when women were fighting for the right to have a vote during elections; suffragettes were members of a militant women’s organisation who in the early 20th century, under the banner “Votes for Women”.
The term referred in particular to members of the British Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU), a women-only movement founded in 1903 by Emmeline Pankhurst, which engaged in direct action and civil disobedience.
My second find was a postcard showing a group of ladies who were part of the Irish Women Workers’ Union (1911-1984). The Irish Women Workers’ Union was founded at a public meeting held on September 5th 1911 in the old Antient Concert Hall on Great Brunswick (later the Academy cinema on what is now called Pearse Street ).
The IWWU at it’s peak represented 70,000 women including, bookbinders, contract cleaners, laundry, print and electronic workers. They were instrumental in obtaining the right for two weeks annual paid leave for all Irish workers in 1945, something which no organised male worker had previously demanded.
What peaked my interest was the situation of two completely different countries, having spawned women’s movements because women had little or no rights, and were considered to be inferior:
‘Masculine prejudice is the major target: man’s opinion of the fair sex is due to nothing more than mere custom, and the male chauvinist viewpoint (to use a modern term) has neither a logical nor a scientific leg to stand on ‘
Today we still have problems accepting women in positions of power and also in politics; in the last few years we have seen the rise of ‘Times UP’, in 2017 a group of women published a letter which said in part:-
“The struggle for women to break in, to rise up the ranks and to simply be heard and acknowledged in male-dominated workplaces must end; time’s up on this impenetrable monopoly”…
Just as we have seen and continue to see the fight for LGBTQ rights throughout the world; something which the British Government has in past created the problem through it’s empire days, and even today it continues to on one hand says it is supportive, but on the other pays lip service to it when economics comes into pay (e.g. Middle Est, African Continent etc).
We have a long way to go in this world until we have equality for all, not matter what the gender, or where they live!
Further reading:
So when should we start worrying about our ‘Civil Liberties’?
The answer is off necessity at all times. If we as a nation are not careful then we lose our civil liberties; in the past, we have had police confiscating cameras and phones being used to cover demonstrations under the guise of ‘national security’, which was proved to be a falsehood. We have had people through the guise of rendition locked up without trial, and again later release and compensation paid.
In February 2009, Tracy McVeigh reported on a number of sold-out conferences which were about
‘The government and the courts are collaborating in shaving away freedoms and pushing Britain to the brink of becoming a “database” police state’
Have things changed and improved? That is for each of us to judge, but we need to realise it is our individual responsibility to monitor the government and hold them accountable, and that we do this be turning out to elections.
Further reading:
When I read this article, and also subsequent articles from other journalists, I was of a mind that it is what government does – changes the goal posts to suit it needs – in this case retrospective justice. However, during my research, I was taken to the following publication ‘The legislative sovereignty of the Westminster Parliament‘ and the following quote
Each Parliament is absolutely sovereign in its own time and may legislate as it wishes on any topic and for any place
also
Parliament has the power to legislate retrospectively as well as prospectively. This means that Parliament can render illegal and impose penalties on actions which were perfectly lawful when they were committed. Also, actions which were unlawful at the time of commission, may be rendered lawful or not subject to any legal sanction or proceedings.
So the end result would seem to be, that governments are unique, and resolve their issues in their own way, without necessarily having to conform to what previous governments have said. However, legislation is still legislation, and it would seem to me that for an integral part of a published Act of Parliament to be changed, then it must be debated in the House and agreed by both Houses. The Northern Ireland (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 2014 set the relevant date as being 1 January 2014, not 2017; so we must only assume from this change that ‘someone’ has something to hide.
Skating on thin ice – Retrospective Justice
So an end to donation secrecy in Northern Ireland. It’s been long awaited, but today James Brokenshire made good his party’s promise in their Northern Irish manifesto… From Hansar…
Source: End of donor secrecy (flick of a legislative wand and NI ‘dark money’ is a thing of the past)…
I am posting this article because I think there is a need for us to step back from the abyss in the United Kingdom and realise that the closure of libraries and associated resources (including school libraries) is detrimental to our future as a country and also for us as individuals. The first public library came into being with The Public Libraries Act 1850, and this gave local boroughs the power to establish ‘free’ public libraries. The Act was the first legislative step in the creation of an enduring national institution that provides universal free access to information and literature, and was indicative of the moral, social and educative concerns of the time.
Our libraries need saving now!
After nearly 170 years we are close to loosing that infrastructure for self education. The article below from Emily Prado, and in particular here paragraph just prior to the quote, ..Yet the recent election cycle and studies revealing Americans’ inability to sort clickbait from facts demonstrate how far from the truth this sentiment really is – ‘that libraries are not necessary’.
I am a long term self educationalist, with a passion for books and libraries. I access them through libraries, book shops, charity shops and also the internet. However without the library services of the past I would not be in that position today. Boys and girls require different stimuli and the libraries of the past allowed for this to happen, whether it was at school or in public libraries; now our future is looking bleak!
Further reading:
Libraries are radical, evolving resources that function with the sole purpose of providing free access to information for the masses and creating intellectual equality.
Source: Freedom of Information: Libraries in the Age of Trump
