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On New Year’s Eve, Extinction Rebellion (XR), the disruptive but non-violent climate activist group that did so much to propel the climate crisis up the political agenda in October 2018 and April 2019, occupying bridges, and, perhaps most memorably, occupying Oxford Circus with a pink yacht bearing the message ‘Tell the Truth’, directed at politicians and the media, announced a change of tactics.

“We quit”, they announced in a press release, stating that they were making “a controversial resolution to temporarily shift away from public disruption as a primary tactic”, in an effort to build a bigger and more inclusive movement “beyond traditional divides.” As they explained, “No one can do this alone, and it’s the responsibility of all of us, not just one group. It may be uncomfortable or difficult, but the strength of all social, environmental, and justice movements lies in working together.”

It was a bold move, although there was also a certain logic to it. After the actions of October 2018 and April 2019, tolerance for the group’s disruptive tactics had waned after a group of protestors blocked a morning rush hour commuter train at Canning Town, and the Covid lockdowns had then thwarted efforts to mobilise further.

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The news cycle seems so frenetic right now that stories barely get noticed before the media spotlight promiscuously turns to some other topic. A case in point, to my mind, is an important High Court ruling last week — that a decision taken by the Metropolitan Police last month, to impose a blanket ban across the whole of London prohibiting any assembly of more than two people linked to Extinction Rebellion’s ‘Autumn Uprising’, under section 14 of the Public Order Act of 1986, was “unlawful.”

The two High Court judges who issued the ruling — Mr. Justice Dingemans and Mr. Justice Chamberlain — said, as the Guardian described it, that “the Met had been wrong to define Extinction Rebellion’s two-week long ‘autumn uprising’ as a single public assembly on which it could impose the order.”

As Mr. Justice Dingemans stated in the ruling, “Separate gatherings, separated both in time and by many miles, even if coordinated under the umbrella of one body, are not a public assembly under the meaning of section 14(1) of the 1986 act.” He added, “The XR autumn uprising intended to be held from 14 to 19 October was not therefore a public assembly … therefore the decision to impose the condition was unlawful because there was no power to impose it.”

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On Monday evening, in response to the start of the second week of actions in London by the environmental campaigning group Extinction Rebellion, as part of their International Rebellion in at least 60 cities worldwide, the Metropolitan Police issued an unprecedented order, under Section 14 of the 1986 Public Order Act, which allows them to impose restrictions on any “public assembly” (an assembly of two or more people in a public place), if they claim that it poses “serious disruption to the life of the community.”

The order on Monday night stated that “any assembly linked to the Extinction Rebellion ‘Autumn Uprising’ … must now cease their protests within London (MPS and City of London Police Areas)” by 9pm, and even before it was issued police began clearing protestors out of their camp in Trafalgar Square.

Lawyers, civil liberties groups and some MPs immediately responded with understandable outrage. Jolyon Maugham QC tweeted, “We believe the section 14 Order is invalid — that it amounts to a huge overreach of the statutory power — and likely reflects the enormous political pressure the Met is under”, adding, “It exposes the Met to all sorts of risks — of legal challenges to validity, of civil claims for wrongful arrest with aggravated damages and so on — merely because this Government cannot tolerate peaceful protest.”

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I wrote the following article for the “Close Guantánamo” website, which I established in January 2012, on the 10th anniversary of the opening of Guantánamo, with the US attorney Tom Wilner. Please join us — just an email address is required to be counted amongst those opposed to the ongoing existence of Guantánamo, and to receive updates of our activities by email.

For the 16th anniversary of the opening of the prison at Guantánamo Bay, and the first anniversary of Donald Trump’s inauguration, a cross-party group of British MPs have written to Donald Trump, and to Republican Senators John McCain and Bob Corker, the chairs of two influential Senate Committees (the Senate Armed Services Committee and the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations), to urge action on Guantánamo after a year in which no prisoner has been released, despite five of the 41 men still held being approved for release, between 2010 and 2016, by high-level government processes established under President Obama. Throughout 2017, Donald Trump also made it clear that he has no interest in closing the prison, and would like to expand its use.

Almost as soon as Trump took office last January, a leaked draft executive order revealed that he wanted to keep Guantánamo open, wanted to send new prisoners there, and wanted to “suspend any existing transfer efforts pending a new review as to whether any such transfers are in the national security interests of the United States.” He also wanted to reinstate torture and the use of CIA “black sites.”

Trump’s enthusiasm for torture was immediately rebuffed by a wide range of critics, including many in his own administration and his eagerness to send new prisoners to Guantánamo has also not led to any new arrivals at the prison, for sound reasons that we hope remain flagged up throughout the rest of his presidency. Set up to be beyond the reach of the US courts, Guantánamo was never about justice or due process, but about using torture and abuse and then hiding it, and as the troubled history of the military commissions reveals, once prisoners have been tortured, it is difficult, if not impossible to bring them to justice. Trump’s advisers have undoubtedly also told him that US courts have a strong track record of successfully prosecuting those accused of terrorism. Read the rest of this entry »

Contact your MP here.

Last week, Britain’s Green MP, Caroline Lucas, with the support of five other MPs, tabled an Early Day Motion (EDM 1260), entitled, ‘The Closure of Guantánamo Bay,’ which states, “That this House welcomes President Obama’s latest plan to fulfil his pledge to close Guantánamo Bay by the end of his Presidency; notes that this is President Obama’s last year in office and that his first executive order in January 2009 was to close Guantánamo; further notes that a recent US Senate report recognised the systematic use of torture in Guantánamo; believes that Guantánamo is now synonymous with torture, rendition and indefinite detention, rendering it a symbol of human rights abuses; further welcomes the release and return to the UK of British resident Shaker Aamer from nearly 14 years imprisonment in Guantánamo without charge or trial, but notes that 91 prisoners remain in Guantánamo; notes that many of these have been cleared for release without charge or trial so should be released without delay; further believes that the remaining detainees should have their full human rights restored and should either be released to countries that will respect their human rights or be given a fair trial; and urges the Government to support President Obama’s effort to close Guantánamo Bay but oppose any moves simply to relocate detainees from Guantánamo to another detention facility in the US.”

This is a comprehensive synopsis of the situation at Guantánamo with just 300 days left of the Obama Presidency, as currently highlighted by the Countdown to Close Guantánamo that I launched in January with music legend Roger Waters — mentioning the 91 men still held, even though 36 of them have been approved for release, the Senate Torture Report, and of course the release of Shaker Aamer.

Caroline has persistently opposed the existence of Guantánamo, tabling Early Day Motions calling for the prison’s closure in 2010 and 2011 (EDM 1093 and EDM 2558), and she was also one of the founding members of the All-Party Shaker Aamer Parliamentary Group set up by John McDonnell MP (Labour, Hayes and Harlington) in November 2014, which played a major role in securing the release of Shaker Aamer from Guantánamo last October. Read the rest of this entry »

Where to begin in discussing Britain’s housing crisis? Since the Labour victory in 1997 we have been disastrously misled by governments prioritising an endless housing bubble as an alternative to anything resembling an actual functioning economy. The only break in this divisive and unfair policy came after the global banking crash of 2008, but since the Tories got back into power in 2010, via a coalition with the Liberal Democrats, the bubble has been back with a vengeance.

The latest phase of the revived bubble is, as is now taken for granted, promoted via interest rates that are permanently near zero, making savings appear pointless, and housing the only attractive investment — and also, of course, via the permanent wooing of foreign investors from every part of the world, who are somehow persuaded that the overpriced towers rising up everywhere in London are good value for money. With the addition of a shortage of supply, dating back to the enforced decline of social housing under Margaret Thatcher, who sold council homes but refused to allow councils to build new properties, and chronic under-investment for 30 years, it becomes possible to understand how housing is now out of reach for more and more of London’s workers — even professional couples with generous financial support from their parents.

As the Guardian reported in an article last September, “Revealed: the widening gulf between salaries and house prices”:

In 1995, the median income in London was £19,000 and the median house price was £83,000, meaning that people were spending 4.4 times their income on buying a property. But by 2012-13, the median income in London had increased to £24,600 and the median house price in the capital had increased to £300,000, meaning people were forced to spend 12.2 times their income on a house.

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There are so many horrible aspects to life in the UK under the Tories that it’s sometimes difficult to keep track of them all, unless you’re unfortunate enough to be affected by all of them — the unfettered housing bubble, for example, and the similarly unregulated private rental market, coupled with a sustained assault on social housing; the assault on the unemployed and the disabled; the demonisation of Muslims; the hard-hearted approach to the current refugee crisis; the refusal to tackle the tsunami of anti-immigrant hysteria that has gripped the country since the global banking crisis of 2008 and that has, in fact, more often than not been deliberately stoked by the media, largely with the complicity of politicians; the endless widening of the gap between the rich and the poor; the Prime Minister’s failure to challenge his own right-wingers and UKIP by refusing to call a referendum on Europe, which any credible leader would have done; and, of course, the remorseless assault on the NHS.

As I mentioned last May, just before our thoroughly depressing General Election, when our sole Green MP, Caroline Lucas, launched a Private Members’ Bill, the National Health Service Bill (HC Bill 37), generally known the NHS Reinstatement Bill, with the support of eleven MPs from four other parties (including Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell), “Ever since the Tory-led coalition government passed the wretched Health and Social Care Act in 2011 (after David Cameron blatantly lied to the British people, by falsely promising ‘no more of the tiresome, meddlesome, top-down re-structures that have dominated the last decade of the NHS’), privatisation of the greatest and most important institution in the UK, the NHS (National Health Service, founded in 1948), has been increasing to an alarming degree.”

As I also noted last May, I have been involved in trying to save the NHS ever since the Tories first got back into power in 2010. As I stated, “I campaigned against the passage of the Health and Social Care Act at the time (see here and here), and then became heavily involved in the successful campaign to save my local hospital, in Lewisham, in south east London, from savage cuts (see here, here and here). [In 2014] I campaigned to resist the Tories’ spiteful response to Lewisham’s success, which became known as the “hospital closure clause” (see here and here), and covered the People’s March for the NHS, a grass-roots initiative that involved a recreation of the Jarrow March from the 1930s to save the NHS (see here and here).” Read the rest of this entry »

Since Shaker Aamer returned to the UK from Guantánamo last Friday, much has been written — most of it, I’m glad to say, positive about a man so evidently wronged; held for nearly 14 years without charge or trial, and approved for release twice, under George W. Bush in 2007, and Barack Obama in 2009.

When Shaker returned — in part, I’m prepared to accept, because of the We Stand With Shaker campaign I conceived and ran with Joanne MacInnes — I wrote an article that was widely liked and shared and commented on, publicized the gracious comment Shaker made on his return, posted a photo of myself holding a “Welcome Home Shaker” card that reached over 20,000 people, and made a number of TV and radio appearances during a brief media frenzy that coincided with the long-overdue news of Shaker’s release.

It was so busy that I haven’t had time to thank the supporters who made such a big difference — John McDonnell MP, the Shadow Chancellor, who set up the All-Party Shaker Aamer Parliamentary Group and was its co-chair, the Conservative MP David Davis, the other co-chair, and his colleague Andrew Mitchell, Jeremy Corbyn (now the Leader of the Labour Party), and Andy Slaughter (the Labour MP for Hammersmith), who, with David Davis, visited Washington D.C. in May to call for Shaker’s release. Also noteworthy for her contribution over many years is Caroline Lucas, our sole Green MP. Read the rest of this entry »

I’m in a hurry, so please see below for the press release for tomorrow’s launch, in London, of We Stand With Shaker‘s new initiative, Fast For Shaker. This morning, I was at a meeting of the All-Party Shaker Aamer Parliamentary Group with MPs David Davis, Andrew Mitchell, Andy Slaughter, Tania Mathias and others, plus lots of campaigners.

Then I was in Kensington for an interview on London Live, about the launch of Fast For Shaker, which I hope is online somewhere. More info later. For now, here’s the press release. if you’re in London, please come along! Otherwise, keep signing up for the fast, and send in photos!

Celebrities, MPs and Campaigners Start Rolling 24-Hour Fast in Solidarity with Shaker Aamer, on a Hunger Strike in Guantánamo

MPs David Davis, John McDonnell, Caroline Lucas, Andy Slaughter, Tania Mathias, Tom Brake Attend, Plus Shaker’s Father-In-Law Saeed Siddique, representatives of Reprieve, Actor David Morrissey and Comedian Sara Pascoe Read the rest of this entry »

Today, following a meeting of the Shaker Aamer Parliamentary Group yesterday, which I attended, as the co-director of We Stand With Shaker, it was decided that an Early Day Motion would be submitted by Andrew Mitchell MP (Con., Sutton Coldfield), calling for the Obama administration to release Shaker Aamer, the last British resident in Guantánamo, from the prison, and to return him to the UK, to rejoin his family in London.

Andrew is one of four MPs from the All-Party Parliamentary Group who visited Washington D.C. in May to try to secure Shaker’s release. When the EDM was submitted, it was also signed by the other three MPs from the delegation — Jeremy Corbyn (Lab., Islington North), the frontrunner in the Labour leadership campaign, David Davis (Con., Haltemprice and Howden), the co-chair of the Shaker Aamer Parliamentary Group, and Andy Slaughter (Lab., Hammersmith).

Showing the breadth of cross-party support demonstrated by the campaign to get Shaker released, Andrew also secured the support of Tim Farron (Liberal Democrat, Westmorland and Lonsdale), the new leader of the Liberal Democrats, who spoke at the Parliamentary debate for Shaker in March, and Alex Salmond (Scottish National Party, Gordon), the former leader of the SNP, and early signatories to the EDM were John McDonnell (Lab., Hayes and Harlington), the co-chair of the Parliamentary Group, who established the group last November, Dominic Grieve (Con., Beaconsfield), the former Attorney General, and Caroline Lucas (Green, Brighton Pavilion), who has been a supporter from the beginning. Read the rest of this entry »