People take part in a pro-Palestine march in central London organised by the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, July 6, 2024
LABOUR Friends of Israel’s former chair Lord Walney called on ministers today probe candidate intimidation in the run-up to the general election.
The government’s so-called independent adviser on political violence alleged that a series of events before July 4 were part of a “concerted campaign by extremists.”
Aka John Woodcock, the former MP — who switched to Boris Johnson’s Tories in 2019 — has urged parliamentarians to to take a “zero-tolerance approach” with pro-Palestine groups and climate protesters, as well as accepted Israel lobby funding amid the Gaza genocide.
In a letter shared with the BBC, he has called on Yvette Cooper and Security Minister Dan Jarvis to commission a short inquiry to find out if groups in different constituencies were working together and to document what he calls the “dark underbelly” of abuse.
He wrote that evidence in the past few months suggested an intentional campaign “by extremists to create a hostile atmosphere for MPs” within their constituencies to pressure them to “cave in to political demands.”
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It comes as pro-Israel Labour figures were accused of mischaracterising questioning by Palestine protesters in a bid to shirk political accountability for their support of the ongoing Gaza massacre.
An F-15E Strike Eagle of the United States Air Force’s (USAF) 48th Fighter Wing, stationed at RAF Lakenheath in Suffolk, September 16, 2020
PEACE activists will camp outside RAF Lakenheath for 10 days as the Suffolk air base prepares for an “upcoming nuclear mission.”
Up to 50 members of Lakenheath Alliance for Peace set out on a three-day walk from Norwich to the United States Air Force base on Saturday and will set up camp there tomorrow until July 25 in their protest against nuclear weapons.
CND general secretary Kate Hudson said: “CND is a proud part of the Lakenheath Alliance for Peace and calls on everyone across Britain to get involved with this campaign.
“The return of US nuclear weapons to Lakenheath greatly increases the nuclear risk already faced by this country as it puts the whole of Britain on the nuclear front line.
“We call on the Labour government to explicitly refuse any US request to station their weapons of mass destruction here.”
Demonstrators during a ‘Kill The Bill’ protest against The Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill in London, January 15, 2022
LABOUR was urged today to scrap Tory anti-protest laws and reject harmful rhetoric used to stigmatise peaceful demonstrations.
Peace, pro-Palestine, environmental and civil liberties groups called on ministers to champion the rights to free speech by repealing the draconian legislation aimed at silencing dissent.
Amnesty International led the calls as it published a new report warning of an increasingly wide range of means to quash peaceful demonstrations and silence free speech across Europe.
It called on Home Secretary Yvette Cooper to urgently scrap the public order elements of the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act as well as the entirety of the Public Order Act and the Serious Disruption Regulations.
Kerry Moscogiuri, of Amnesty International UK, said: “The new government must seize this moment to halt the alarming march towards repression in the UK by repealing the anti-protest laws pushed through by the previous government and ending the harmful rhetoric being used to stigmatise those who peacefully protest.
Democracy is a precious, and essential part of our society. Our leadership must always be accountable to the people, and if they are not, we risk oppression. We are, without a doubt, lucky to live in a liberal representational democracy, and when the time comes to vote, we should. So why then, are people acting politically, with civil resistance, outside of this mechanism?
Over the last twelve months, thousands of people in the UK have engaged in peaceful resistance, and over a hundred (and counting) have been imprisoned. It’s not just in this country, in Canada ‘Save Old Growth’ are blocking motorways demanding no more felling of ancient trees. In France, Germany, Italy, Austria, Norway, the USA and Australia, ordinary people are resisting, disrupting transport and cultural activities – demanding that their states act to protect, not destroy, life.
They are ordinary people – coming together and acting out of love as much as fear and grief. Engaging in civil resistance, and defying a state, that while democratically elected, has proved deeply harmful. There’s no denying this harm – while the International Energy Agency has made it clear we can have no more new oil and gas development, the UK Government is ready to approve new oil fields and issue new exploration licenses, a death sentence for millions.
Our politicians say they are ‘committed to reaching net zero’. What they are actually committed to is kicking the can down the road and round the corner. Gambling on unproven or non-existent technology to reverse our dumping of CO2 into the atmosphere.
Instead of taking action, they’re making the problem worse for another 30 years, literally pouring fuel on the fire. The UK is the home of BP and Shell who are making eye-watering profits, and enjoying tax breaks to destroy life – because “pensions”, because “jobs”, because “economic growth”.
A stable climate is not a competing policy demand to be set against pensions, transport, or public sector funding. One provides the basis for everything else, there simply isn’t a contest. Our predicament is almost comically simple – either we stop the destruction of the global systems that enable ordered civil society to work or we lose everything we value, our traditions, our cherished landscapes and, crucially, democracy. There are no free and fair elections on a burning earth.
In 2019 the MoD published a report outlining what is coming if we don’t immediately reduce carbon emissions – “increased conflict over diminishing natural resources”. That’s code for war. War over food and water – and we know what war looks like, flattened cities, dictator warlords, child traffickers waiting on borders, tortured grandfathers – it’s being documented once again in Europe.
So what has happened in the UK to protect against this future? Traffic on the M25 has been disrupted, London bridges closed, oil terminals have been blockaded and occupied, football matches interrupted. Inept radio hosts have sparked viral memes about growing concrete and inspired themed stag nights. Just Stop Oil, Insulate Britain, XR and Stop HS2 have been painted on both the Left and Right as an eco-mob, eco-fascists, as selfish, naive and childish. But perhaps the most damaging criticism is that they are anti-democratic.
It’s as if every right and freedom we enjoy has been handed to us by a benign government. As if the Suffragettes never smashed windows, as if the race riots never happened, as if Stonewall simply wrote letters, as if those demanding disability rights didn’t chain themselves to railings and buses, as if the poll tax was scrapped due to reasonable debate and discussion or waiting politely for a chance to vote. Change requires citizens to stand up and resist harmful governments, it is part of democracy.
Resistance has nothing to do with “protest”. Protest is when you express your disapproval. You do not express disapproval when murderous governments engage in an act condemning the world to go over 1.5C in the 2030s – a death sentence for small island states and millions in the global south. Pakistan today demonstrates what we face – 33 million people impacted by floods and agriculture decimated.
We know what to do. It’s what the Suffragettes did, it’s what the Civil Rights movements did, it’s what everyone does when the inalienable right to life and a livelihood are violated. We engage in non-violent civil resistance.
What we must do now is block and disable the cogs of the machine. This is not a “tactic” – it is an act of self respect, an act of solidarity, an act of love and necessity.
We must resist now or we will look back with longing at all we have lost. The last 250 years of sacrifice and tears expended by generations to create decent societies is about to be snuffed out in the blink of an eye. The word betrayal does not cover the reality of what is going on. All our traditions, all our values, all that we claim to stand for is about to be lost.
It’s not about winning. It’s about doing what has to be done. Those who fought fascism in the 20th century, those who are fighting the oil companies across the global south, those fighting the Russians in Ukraine, they act because they know someone has to stand up.
The next generations are watching us. Can you feel the weight of billions of children yet to take their first breath? They are saying “Are you mad? Get out there, and stop this – or you condemn us forever”.
dizzy: 1. I submit that we exist in a plutocracy rather than a democracy. 2. I couldn’t find the MoD article containing the quotation “increased conflict over diminishing natural resources”. I suspect that it existed but is no longer published openly. There are plenty of official reports making similar points and it is a reasonable statement. For example the WORLD DEVELOPMENT REPORT 2011, ‘Resource Scarcity, Climate Change and the Risk of Violent Conflict’ Alex Evans, Center on International Cooperation, New York University, September 9, 2010 makes similar claims. Edit: Despite that article being a very wooly academic paper, I think that it does make that claim
Although the conflict risk posed by climate change and resource scarcity will almost always be better understood as a ‘threat multiplier’ than as a sole cause of violent conflict, a range of potential linkages between climate, scarcity and conflict risk can nonetheless be identified, whether through intensifying existing problems, or through creating new environmental problems that lead to instability.
USAID (2009). Climate Change, Adaptation and Conflict: A preliminary review of the issues. CMD Discussion Paper no. 1, October 2009
Climate activist targets Conservative election bus in protest at the government’s failure to adopt more ambitious climate policies
A Greenpeace activist climbed on to the top of the Conservative’s campaign bus this afternoon and unfurled a banner reading ‘Clean Power Not Paddy Power’, in protest at both the election date betting scandal engulfing the government and the Prime Ministers’ failure to deliver more ambitious climate policies.
Amy Rugg-Easey was able to get on to the bus at a campaign stop near Ollerton in Nottinghamshire, ahead of Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s appearance in the last televised debate of the campaign, which is being hosted by BBC in Nottingham this evening.
“We’ve had enough of this government lurching from one scandal to the next, while gambling with our future,” Rugg-Easey said in a statement. “We need clean power, not Paddy Power.
“Fourteen years of Conservative governments has left this country broken. Sunak has gone backwards on climate action, ditching key pledges and promising to ‘max out’ the climate-wrecking oil and gas that are the cause of the cost-of-living crisis and our unaffordable bills. Our rivers are awash with sewage, and our economy, NHS and public services are on their knees.
“Enough is enough. We’ve climbed onto Sunak’s battle bus today to remind the British public that it is the Conservative government’s consistent failure to deliver greener, fairer policies that has created the mess we’re in. Don’t back the wrong horse – a vote for the climate is a vote for a better future.”
Rishi Sunak on stopping Rosebank says that any chancellor can stop his huge 91% subsidy to build Rosebank, that Keir Starmer is as bad as him for sucking up to Murdoch and other plutocrats and that we (the plebs) need to get organised to elect MPs that will stop Rosebank.Image of InBedWithBigOil by Not Here To Be Liked + Hex Prints from Just Stop Oil’s You May Find Yourself… art auction. Featuring Rishi Sunak, Fossil Fuels and Rupert Murdoch.
