Battle for Britain: Fighting the Tory Government’s Vile Ideology

A link to – and discussion of – my new article for Novara Media, about fundamental problems with a ballot taking place in New Cross for residents of the Achilles Street estate regarding a proposal by Lewisham Council to demolish their homes as part of a new housing development. The main problems are that demolition is environmentally ruinous, and, instead, the estate should be refurbished, but, shamefully, no money is being made available for it by either central government or the GLA. Also included: an analysis of the six ballots that have already taken place in London.

My report about an application for a judicial review, submitted by the NGO Reprieve and the MPs Dan Jarvis and David Davis, regarding the British government’s refusal to hold a judge-led inquiry into the UK’s post-9/11 complicity in torture, first promised by David Cameron over nine years ago, but not delivered.

I report on the Metropolitan Police’s outrageous decision to impose a London-wide ban on Extinction Rebellion protests (gatherings of two or more people), criticism of the move, a legal challenge, and, most particularly, how non-violent direct action has continued, with the numbers attending actions indicating that the Met’s move may have backfired.

As the second week of Extinction Rebellion’s International Rebellion begins, I report on the success of the group’s disruptive tactics, drawing in part on the campaigning group’s co-founder Roger Hallam’s new book, ‘Common Sense for the 21st Century.’

I look at the increasing violence of Brexiteers’ rhetoric regarding the UK leaving the EU, and my fears that the ideological civil war that Brexit represents is being stirred up by the disgraceful Boris Johnson and Dominic Cummings into a much more physical manifestation of a civil war, even though Johnson – and his backers – are only really interested in a no-deal Brexit as a way of making huge amounts of money.

My report about the Global Climate Strike on September 20, 2019, and, particularly, the protest in London, in which I applaud the young people fighting for their future, discuss the architects who were amongst the adults joining in, and ask what benefit there is in the criticism of Greta Thunberg and Extinction Rebellion by some anti-capitalists.

One year since campaigners – myself included – occupied the Old Tidemill Wildlife Garden in Deptford to prevent its destruction by Lewisham Council and Peabody, I look at how badly the council handled the occupation and the subsequent eviction, and ask if this and other campaigns have done any lasting damage to the fundamentally disgraceful ‘regeneration’ industry.

In my first article about Boris Johnson since he became the almost unspeakably unsuitable Prime Minister of the UK, I look at his chronic failures, and also profile his chief advisor, the alarming maverick Dominic Cummings, enthusiastically promising to deliver a “no-deal” Brexit by October 31 – in his case, to fulfil some warped dream of destroying the entire British political establishment.

My review of this week’s WOMAD world music festival in Wiltshire, looking particularly at how, although it was a wonderful festival, the global environmental crisis hung over proceedings, as, to my mind, it hovers over everything these days, demanding that we get involved in bringing down the entire suicidal capitalist system that is destroying us.

An article in defence of social housing – and calling for a massive project of building new council homes – on the centenary of the 1919 Addington Act, introduced by the Liberal (and later Labour) politician Christopher Addison, which established the UK’s first major council-led homebuilding programme.