The peacekeepers and the war officer: living dangerously at the bbc by allowing the bnp onto question time

The BBC has been at the forefront of producing some excellent documentaries about the rise of the Nazi’s to power and the horror of their rule in the 1930’s. Whoever allowed the bnp into their studios would do well to watch historical documentaries they funded and produced, that are available within their own archives and buildings.

Letting the bnp onto Question Time is alarming for every Deaf person who values diversity in society. The Nazi’s killed or sterlised deaf and disabled people as well as Jewish people, Trade Unionists, and just about everyone who disagreed with them.

Fascists play by totally different rules. It is too simplistic to say they are lying and evading arguments put to them, even though that may be true: it just doesn’t tell the whole story. One of the strategies of fascists is to make use of the media to try to influence people. But their target is not the ‘educated’ audience or politicians who already see through them, it’s the ‘mass’ who they are interested in, and their message is always intended to be simple and short…and emotive…to appeal to that mass. [In this case it's the 'fears' of immigration into the UK, terrorism by extremists passing as follows of Islam, the powers of the European Union, and many others.]

The points being made by liberals as to why griffin should appear are ridiculously, naively hollow. Their two key beliefs that (a) it is in the interests of impartiality, and (b) doing so will expose their racism and fascism, are not even the basis of an argument, but a shift away from it.  The issue here is not about ensuring impartiality and is even less about exposure of hidden beliefs.

I have tried to think of a metaphor that I’ll entitle ‘the peacekeepers and the war officer’.

The context of the debate is fundamental.  For griffin, the entry into Question Time is an essential part of a war manoeuvre. Real life peacekeepers would hardly see any sense of inviting a war officer into a room so they can argue about the merits of peace when the visit is considered by him to be a manoeuvre towards war.

It is griffin and the bnp who are constantly stating ‘indigenous’ British people are under siege by multiculturalism, i.e. using the language of war. They are said to be under attack, from immigrants, terrorists, followers of Islam, everybody who just happens to not agree with their politics. The action, the tactics, are ones being employed to suit peacetime, but the mentality or agenda, is one aimed for war.

It therefore makes more sense for the peacekeepers to keep the war officer out of the meeting, in order to keep the peace.

Was there some requirement to invite the war officer into the room in the first place? Was there a legal obligation? Was there a threat to the BBC by the public or politicians or others that they had to allow the bnp onto Question Time?

Impartiality, like choice, requires context, not mantra. There is certainly a liberal good that comes from impartiality, but allowing a fascist on a flagship political programme can hardly be deemed a liberal good.

It’s extremely dangerous that this has happened.  It is easy to lose faith, trust and hope in liberal polity.  ‘How can they allow it?’ But they did, that is the point, and the UK is not the only country to have done so; when France’s fascist Le Pen first took part in a Question Time style progamme his vote doubled. (As reported by the BBC on its own news website, are the invitee’s reading it?) It seriously exposes the shortcomings of liberals who try to do good.

I was utterly horrified with the programme. It was a hollow feeling to watch the Nazi totally outnumbered, attacked on all fronts politically, by the audience, panel and presenters.  You cannot choose an easier argument to win in a liberal democratic society. Almost too easy. But fascists do not care for liberals, they are not their audience. To fascists, liberals are part of the problem to be sorted out once power is achieved.  They have a broader perspective that goes way beyond the media.  The politicians and the presenter seemingly using a united strategy of bringing into the studio quotes that griffin had made and examples of his past violent life was futile in that regard.

It is absurd to see BBC liberals handing fascists an opportunity to promote their warplan.

The next time the BBC makes an excellent documentary about the rise of fascism in the 1930’s, those who are responsible for making the decision to let a 21st century fascist into their midst under the guise of liberal impartiality, would do well to watch their own programme. They might learn something from it.

Sign Language Planning: individual rights to group rights

I agreed to stand in for a speaker the week before last at the recent Applied Sign Linguistics conference at Bristol University and that gave me a good opportunity to bring together my own research and thinking on citizenship, language planning and minority group rights.

I refer to language planning in the status sense: i.e. raising the status of a language in society.  Language planning and minority group rights have been discussed by, amongst others, Stephen May, Gabrielle Hogun-Brun and Bernard Spolksy, who are all experts in this field.  All three recognise and include sign languages in their work.

The key finding of my research on citizenship was, unsurprisingly, depressing.  Deaf citizens did not feel they were valued as citizens by all sections of civil, political and social society.  It wasn’t that Deaf people did not feel citizens in any respect at all, they clearly were and did, but it was a ‘thin’ citizenship, rather than a ‘thick’ one that they experienced.  They felt passive rather than active citizens, not in and by themselves, that was how they felt perceived by majority society; it was empirical research evidence.

My thesis presents compelling evidence, but I paraphrase the marxist maxim: ‘you’ve interpreted the world, how are you going to change it?’  I wanted to look at the concept of group rights in my PhD in that regard; my supervisors, rightly and wisely, suggested that to do so would be to take on too vast a project.

Thankfully, Leverhulme and the University of Bristol have presented me with an opportunity to undertake a small scale post-doc research project on group rights, in far more depth than I could give it justice in my PhD.  What I am finding so far is incredibly fascinating stuff; still ongoing.

At the Applied Sign Linguistics conference, however, I raised the point of moving on from sign language ‘recognition’ (read ‘acknowledgment’) to sign language acts, or language planning; ostensibly to protect, raise and strengthen the status of sign language in society.  Such moves were long ago suggested by political activists and academic thinkers prior to the 2003 British Sign Language (UK) ‘recognition’ statement, who have always recognised the importance of the statement but at the same time consistently and continuously maintained it never went far enough. It is far more important than that though: language acts are as much about protecting language from demise, something that several thousand spoken languages are at risk of.  Skutnabb-Kangas is regularly warning the world that spoken languages are already experiencing genocide.

In the UK, the next step from language ‘recognition’ (read ‘acknowledgment’) unofficially at least, might be a BSL Act.

However, the question I am asking is : what might that mean in practice?  Any presentation to governments to introduce Acts carries with it the assumption that these will apply to individuals. Our society, after all, is liberal democratic, where the will of the individual is held as paramount; there might be some form of exemptions, but the individual right (usually of the individual parents) will always trump the group right.

Now, I’m not suggesting there is anything objectionable to individual rights; but Acts, arguably, need to be powered by board(s) of (liberal) enforcers, not simply ‘advised’ by them.  Empowering such a group or board is what makes a group right i.e. that group becomes self-determining since it holds the destiny of the rights of the group in its own hands, and not to a random government appointed board that, with all due respect, are not the best guarantors or protectors of the group (since they have other interests in mind). Group rights can be upheld to protect individual rights, providing such rights are promoted to protect the group from external protections (against the demise of sign language for example), and not to impose internal restrictions (enforcing members of a group to forgo a liberal right).

The key theorist I am referring to here is Will Kymlicka, who has come under some criticism, but whose arguments that minority group rights are key to liberalism, and are not in opposition to it, is a powerful one.  After all, citizenship is already a restrictive practice (not all people of a nation can claim citizenship of a country automatically, for example), and group rights are already favourable to dominant national languages, such as English for example.  Kymicka is an incredibly important theorist, for human rights scholars don’t particularly favour group rights over individual rights: Kymlicka argues by not incorporating minority group rights they are failing the liberal project.

The crucial argument here is the need for minority group rights, precisely because our society is multicultural and minorities within society often lack protection, recognition, respect and rights by majority governing powers.

Therefore, in summary, what I am presenting for argument is that it is not enough simply to push for a language planning or a language act, it needs to be backed up by minority group rights, where the minority group holds some form of power(s), and isn’t simply there to give advice to existing Acts.  When I wrote in my conclusion to my PhD of the need for a ‘Deaf Perestroika’, this is one of the things I had in mind. The situation was in need of radial structural changes to ensure language protection and promotion: the situation demands it.

This is all, of course, something I am throwing up for subject for debate, and one that has come about following my PhD research. My biggest concern is that powers do not afford minority groups (i don’t just refer here to sign language communities) ‘epistemic justice’.  In other words, the minority group is not given a fair hearing by government in regards to its rights, and so practices that disregard its concerns continue, or the minority group is given token recognition. Yet it is within the minority group where there exist experts who hold a valuable understanding of a group’s rights and responsibilities.

I am not aware of a debate within the Deaf world on minority group rights possibilities; although Kymlicka wrote an article on the subject in 1998 and Jan-Kare Breivik has also commented on the issue in his work, both concluded that they did not see such rights as feasible.  The work, on this issue however, has not, as far as I’m aware, been subject to empirical research or the intense scrutiny and debate I think it deserves.  I perhaps shouldn’t be too critical, however, for historically, Deaf Studies is still very much a discipline in its infancy and sociological research funding is hard to come by.  Organisations seeking to protect the interests of Sign Language have perhaps been most concerned with the immediate ways in which sign languages and Deaf people can be protected, particularly within the ‘developing’ or majority nations.  The mechanisms for doing so are with (individual) Human Rights frameworks. They work with minimal resources, and on the statute books at least, there are inclusions that seek to protect sign language (although I’m aware these have been open to criticism because it has been argued, at the WFD Conference in Madrid in 2007, that mainstreaming of deaf children isn’t challenged as strongly as it could be).

Yet at the expense of pursuing the ratification of the rights of sign language users at a formal and official level there is a risk of failing to address a common academic critique: individual human rights, after 60 years since the end of the second world war, continue to fail to prevent abuses in the hearing world, often by countries that are the strongest supporters of individual human rights (just ask Amnesty!).  There is also an imbalance in the focus of human rights abuses in some nations more than others. Uncritically accepting that (individual) human rights of sign language users be fought for through official bodies such as the United Nations is to bestow legitimacy on those organisations to decide what constitutes a right within the Deaf world.

‘Differentiated minority group rights’ would not ditch individual rights, but they might enable the minority group to be the deciders of what constitutes a right within their community and culture.

What I hope to have written here is the basis and framework for discussion and debate on the subject of minority group rights and Deaf communities that is, in my view, long overdue.

Being an examiner of a thesis – a personal view

Two weeks ago represented by far one the busiest of my academic career.

For the first time I assessed a PhD, a very interesting experience. For the moment I am limiting my entry to the practicals of the process and not of the individual in question (since the process is not officially complete as of yet), of which there would be so much more to write!  None of what is written here is referring to the exam I have just been a part of, but a generic assessment of the process itself.

I do wonder about the British system of two or three ‘experts’ examining a thesis in great detail, identifying it’s merit and originality and then having the power to award or not.  [Of course we must never forget that supervisors play their part in steering it through in the first place and are in a position to suggest whether a student is 'ready' to submit, which in itself carries great responsibility.] I would like the examination backed up by a ‘presentation forum’, where the work is presented to a wider (selective?) audience, who would then have the possibility to question the author too.  [Something they do in the USA I believe?] In future, that is something an author will be subject to anyway ( i.e. audience scrutiny), so that can be part and parcel of the examination process.  I wouldn’t favour a presentation forum alone of course; some people do need to give the thesis a rigorous examination, having been through the system and therefore in a position to proffer relevant academically rigorous questioning.

There is another point for this: it gives the audience the opportunity to see exactly what the candidate is put through in this examining; I have obviously been through it myself and it can be a tough process.

Then again, perhaps what we have is a pressurised enough system as it is!  All that said, I did enjoy the process, and of course reading and learning from the thesis itself.

Finally there is the ‘post-colonial dynamic’ of a Deaf person being in the role of assessor, but that’s for another night!

A Roadmap to British Sign Language & Linguistic Access in Scotland

I have just seen this document, a report on linguistic access in Scotland.

Amongst the interesting statistics are:

- that just 18% of D/deaf people have access to the internet, compared with 53% of the general population;

- there are just 65 qualified BSL/English interpreters, compared with an estimated 200 to 300 Communication Support Workers (though this figure seems to be in need of clarification and verification); and

- of the 1,026 people taking assessments for BSL in 2006, only 11 were at level 3, and none at level 4.

It cites a report that an estimated 1,000 more interpreters are needed to be registered in the UK to bring the country in line with the European median of one interpreter per 45,000 people, itself quite a low expectation.

My own contribution to the report, notes detailing briefly my research on citizenship can be found here.

John Clifford Blackman – obituary

The entry I’m about to write is personal, and refers to the first boss I ever worked under, as a cleaner at a printing factory, aged 17.  The experience of my time with Carmichael & Co. Ltd (Brighton) was so profound that it shaped my life thereafter. The reason for this entry is that he passed away on June 14th, which I found out about only recently.

Blackman, as I always refer to him, was a staunch right-wing Conservative Party councillor in Brighton, an arch-Thatcherite.  He was the Mayor of Brighton from 1984-85 and if you ever see a clip of documentaries of Thatcher dancing the night before the IRA bombed the Grand Hotel, Blackman is the Mayor seen in a dance with her. (His son, also called John, and also working at Carmichael’s, was even worse, a supporter of the arch-right wing Monday Club.)

Blackman set up his own printing business and it was quite a successful one.  It was also one that refused to recognise the trade unions, which at the time operated the ‘closed shop’, whereby you needed to be a member of one of the trade unions to apply for a job in the print.  Usually those working at Carmichal’s were not members of a union.

As a 17 year old I had no clue who I was working for, let alone the situation of trade unions.  I’d struggled to find jobs anywhere after leaving school, and got this one having been for loads of interviews.  Ninety percent of the time those jobs fell through because employers wanted me to be able to use the telephone. I’d already been working as a cleaner part time, notably at Sussex University.  When the job centre asked me if I had any other ideas of jobs I would like to do other than computing or clerical, I told him that I had an uncle who worked in the printing and that might be something I’d consider.  He pulled out a card for a cleaner/print room assistant at Carmichel & Co.  I went along for a job interview. It was a small company employing around 20 people.

A director guy with the second name of Beebe interviewed me, along with Blackman’s son John.  Beebe wasn’t convinced I could do the job; actually neither of them were.  It involved lifting stacks of paper into printing presses, and other manual labour.  Sure, I was some skinny guy back then, but I wasn’t entirely limp.  I kept telling them I could do it, no problem at all.   They summoned in Blackman, and it’s fair to say that if it wasn’t for his involvement I wouldn’t have got that job.  He said I should be given a chance. My first impression of him was as a very grumpy old man, who told me he had no idea what the wages where, ‘it might be nothing’.  I think it was something like £17 or £24 a week; whatever, it was quite low, but I was grateful to take anything.  (There was no DLA at the time!)

Working for Blackman wasn’t a relaxing or pleasant experience.  When he took me round the factory to ‘train’ me on aspects of the print, he would be explaining the names of various tools or equipment and then he would suddenly say ‘what is it?’ to ensure I had understood him.  It came so suddenly and out of no-where, taking me by surprise, but most of the time I understood him.  But I was nervous of the guy in those early years, so much seemed to depend on working to his satisfaction.  Once he asked to polish his car and gave me something; I had no idea what it was and began to apply it to the main body of the car.  Blackman came storming out: it was chrome polish I’d been given and I was only meant to polish the chrome parts of the car.  Blimey.  I had no idea cos I never imagined I’d be asked to do a job like that.  Of course, I was apologetic; for six months there were occasions such as these, with Blackman having little outbursts whenever I didn’t do a task to his satisfaction.

After six months I was expected to undertake an apprenticeship.  That was the norm for all print room assistants who worked at Carmichaels.  But unbeknown to me, he’d called in a lawyer of some kind, and they were advised to prolong the trial while they considered whether it was safe for me to work the print machines.  They were worried that if I was involved in an accident, the company would be liable having not taken the fact I was deaf into account. It may, therefore, require extra insurance for the company. They had contacted my former teaching assistant, Ms Taylor.  She had been the sole support I had during my time at secondary school, coming in once a week to help me out with English, Maths and any other subject. She had given me a positive report.

I was annoyed that my trial was extended for an extra six months, but didn’t complain.  It was hard, however, to dislike Blackman, as he did have a certain charm.  After a while of knowing him, it was possible to laugh at some of the comments and things he said: like when at lunch time I would sit reading the Sun or the Mirror, and he asked me why I read ‘that rubbish’, and ‘why don’t you read The Times’, little things like that.  He would glare at me and I would laugh, and he would just shrug and walk away.  When I got into a panic with printing taskes he would put it into perspective: ‘have you ever seen a man dying,’ he would say.  ‘Err, no,’ I would respond.  ‘You wouldn’t want to,’  he said.  Blackman had seen action, while in the Navy, in the second world war. You had to respect that.

I did get some experience on the printing presses, usually when a worker was ill.  I shouldn’t have been, for health and safety reasons (untrained, etc.) but I got work done for them.  But Blackman did something else, he gave me a go on the typesetting machine at Carmichaels.  I was getting experience in all departments, and after a year they asked me if I’d be interested in working as a full-time typesetter.  ‘You wasn’t very good working on the machines,’ he told me, although I’d hardly had much of an opportunity.  Still, it was very true my skills were better used in that department. His son, John, tried to train me, but was always leaving it until 4.30pm in the afternoon or getting called away, so I had to learn most of it myself, and with help from other workers who knew how to use the typesetters.  Rather strangely, one other woman would come in about once a week to do typesetting, and she had the same surname as me, and was called Sandra, so two S. Emery’s working as a typesetter in such a small printing company was rather amazing!

I continued, however, to get rollickings.  I recall one incident, before I formally began as a typesetter, Blackman was unhappy with something, or with a job I did badly.  I got a severe dressing down and was ordered to sweep the floors of the print factory.  It was utterly humiliating, but I didn’t feel I had a choice.

But Blackman gained my respect in perhaps a bizzare way.  When I was made Typesetter, I’d made a hash of some jobs, particularly with my spelling.  I still remember spelling principle rather then principal, for example.  Beebe mocked me: ‘you can’t spell can you’ and that was irritating, it was a comment Blackman would never have made.  There was one occasion where there was a problem with a job, and for the first time ever I defending myself.  Blackman respected my defense and left it at that, but from that point on, I found Blackman changed.  We would disagree over many things, and I found myself challenging and responding in a way that was impossible when I was a print room assistant.  I would do the same with Beebe and John.

I used to mess around a lot with my fellow workers; we got caught out doing some blatant stuff but Blackman never said anything, instead grumbled and muttered.  Then, once, from the far end of the corridor, I gave a colleage a gentle poked in the tummy and Blackman came storming over, summonded us into the office, gave us a severe bollocking, I protested but it was hopeless.  I’ve still got the letter of an official warning from him, for ’skylarking’.

I was confident enough, therefore, to challenge on a regular basis, my fears of Blackman having reduced.  I had also become more politically aware and asked to join the trade union the NGA.  ‘Blackman, that c***,’ they always said. They were delighted to have me as a member.  They wanted me to leave Carmichaels and join a unionised factory, but I wanted to stay on and fight for the unionisation of the company.  That couldn’t be done alone, of course, but had to involve other workers joining the union.  I managed to recruit a few others, sort out some problems that others had, and was really pushing on.  Whether Blackman was aware or not, I have no idea, but it did get bad.  I was always refusing to work overtime.  It got the extent that Blackman was training a young guy to take over from me, but Blackman couldn’t do very much because I worked hard and well.  The overtime issue came to a head one evening when Beebe and John sat down and told me that if I didn’t work overtime I’d be sacked. I relented and worked overtime in order to stay on, they let the poor young lad go, in tears; but it was obviously clear from that point on that my time was up there.

I handed in my notice soon after, having secured a job in Burgess Hill with the assistance of the NGA. My co worker told me there were tears in his eyes when he was talking to her about my going.  He wasn’t around on my last day so I never got to say goodbye to him; and when I visited the factory a few years later, he wasn’t in the office. I wrote to him for a reference a year or two after that, but, probably not surprisingly, received no reply.

That was some experience for a young lad who started there at 17 and left at 20.  But the trasformation I underwent when Blackman was my main boss was lifelong, changing me into something that was the exact opposite politically of what he was.  He was also the architect at giving me experience on Typesetting machines, which led to being experienced in a trade that was very well paid, and, providing you were a union member, very easy to find job a job in at a time when jobs were hard to come by.  I spent a further seven years working in the print.

I have a grudging respect for Blackman in that regard.  On starting at Carmichael’s he became a figure I respected but also detested and was angry with on a lot of occasions, but when I challenged, he returned respect.  His aggression towards me stopped and he treated me like any other worker.  All of that gave me a lot of confidence as a person and in myself.

It would be wrong to say I ever missed the guy, and hypocritical to write anything of a glowing tribute.  I am, however, extremely happy to have met him and had him as a boss, however hard going it was at the time.  What I will also say is that the guy will never be forgotten by me, even though he is gone.

While stuck at home with swine flu, blog links updated

Yay, it got to me, so what better opportunity, while under quarantine, to update the blog?

Apart from changing the appearance, I’ve added some links and a widget, here is a description of what I’ve added and why:

I’ve added ‘Valley of the Deaf’, the blog of a Deaf anthropologist in Adamorobe; now, that is highly worthy research of what I’d like to see more of, the lives of Deaf people residing in the majority nations, where 80% of Deaf people in the world live. Especially in villages where Deaf and hearing people both sign. What is life really like in the villages? What can we learn about villages where Deaf and hearing sign? Annelies gives us a first hand account.

I finally got round to joining Twitter – first suggested to me by Alison nearly 18 months ago (and shows how slow and far behind I am)! Have added that to the webpage; not sure what to make of it, but so far have enjoyed the way it enables me to keep in touch with friends and other people in the world.

For fun, I joined ‘Project Steve’: I’m number 1094! It’s a tongue-in-cheek parody of the creationists ‘lists of scientists’ who try to convince the public that scientists are rejecting evolution in large numbers.

Project Steve is poking fun at the practice of creating lists, by showing there are tens of thousands of scientists supporting evolution.  They chose the name ‘Steve’ after the late evolutionary biologist Stephen Jay Gould, who’s work I have admired for a long time.

One thing I learnt is that ‘Steve’s’ make up only 1% of scientists: they added me because my phd research is in the field of social sciences. I wonder if there are any other Deaf Steve’s on that list…  And little did mum know when she gave me the name that I’d end up on a list of project steve’s some years later!

Both the National Center for Science Education (NCSE) and Project Steve can be found on the links, including the ’statement’ supporting scientific evolution teaching in schools (a hot topic in the USA).

TigerD

BSL DVD of PhD ‘Citizenship and the Deaf Community’ finally ready

Blimey the time has really flown! Shocked, it was January 2008 the DVD’s were completed (was it really that long ago I set up the blog??), but after many delays, particularly checking the covers (my name was spelt ‘Seven’ on the originals ahem!), and the English headings within the DVD’s, they are now in my hands.

Now, this will be interesting.  I’m assuming it would be difficult to get it published in the form it is at present; written PhD’s are copyrighted, so only the British Library and the University where it was passed will be able to have copies (and one for me, of course). Hmmm, how will these two institutions keep the 19 DVD blockbuster, I wonder?

One company that produces DVD’s has already suggested looking at the possibility of marketing it, so the next step is to make enquiries. Otherwise, hopefully, I will be able to get clips of it up on a website. Actually, putting up clips is the plan anyway, regardless. I bought the domain name ‘deafcitizenship’ some time ago for that purpose, so as to make the site truly bilingual from inception so maybe there.

Hope to have fun soon!

Group Rights and Deaf Communities

I want to take the opportunity here to update where I am currently with the new research project with which I’m involved at the Centre for Deaf Studies, Bristol University.  Having revised and taught a Unit on ‘Deaf People in Politics and the Media’ at the Centre, I’m now in a position to move ahead with the research.

In a nutshell, it’s a two-year research project, part funded by the Leverhulme Trust, on the group rights of Deaf Communities.

Human Rights legislation is typically focussed on the rights of individuals, with little backing to the rights of linguistic and cultural minority groups (to self-determination, for example).  The research being undertaken, however, will explore the concept of group rights in relation to Deaf communities, something that has only been tentatively explored by scholars (such as Will Kymlicka or Jan-Kare Breivik, for example).

The research includes an empirical approach, using interviews and group and community meetings (currently being planned).  Some Human Rights laws do enable the claiming of rights as a member of a people (as opposed to an individual claiming rights as a member of a minority group), and there will be an attempt to explore the possibilities of Deaf people making claims under such laws.

Group rights are also about the protection of a minority group from harm; with fears that sign language is under threat from medical interventions such as cochlear implants and developments in genetics, the research will explore the possibility of Deaf people claiming rights as a group to ensure protection and development of Sign Language and Deaf culture.

Since education marks the point at which many deaf children come together to interact and develop their language and culture, there will be a particular focus on this field.

The research findings will be published in a suitable journal at the end of 2010.

Personally, I have high hopes that this study will also contribute to developments in Deafhood theory, and I am proud to add that one of the key project mentors is Dr Paddy Ladd, the other being Professor Rachel Murray from the Law Department at the University of Bristol.

Steve

London G20 Protests: From Peach to Tomlinson, has anything changed? (includes my eyewitness account of the protest)

The emotions I’m feeling at seeing one video after another being released in the mainstream media following the G20 protest on 1st April simply can’t be described. It’s sad and annoying that all this reporting is taking place only after an innocent guy, Ian Tomlinson, died after being struck by the police at the protest.  Had this not happened, it’s highly unlikely the media coverage would be what it is.

Indeed, the original reasons for the protest seem to have largely been forgotten.  Barack Obama was making his first visit abroad since becoming President of the USA.  People in UK were taking the opportunity to protest against the banks, Presidents and Prime Ministers who are presiding over a credit crisis that is leading to rapid job losses worldwide.

I was there at the G20 protests around the same time as Ian Tomlinson and saw what it was like and what was going on in the area.  I had given a presentation on ‘Citizenship’ in London that day, to an audience consisting largely of those who work with Deaf people, and when it was over I headed out to meet a friend who had been at the protest and caught in a ‘kettle’  near the Bank of England.

My problem is that what I saw from the police has been witnessed so often in my involvement in politics over the last 25 or so years.  Such experiences never diminish in their ability to shock but soon after I quickly start thinking ’seen it all before’; even the news reporting afterwards seemed to follow a typical pattern of cover up. 

Not this time.

I went to join my friend at the Bank of England protest but people were kettled in by that time. Luckily my friend managed to get out of the kettle and I met up with her; a group of us tried to go to various points outside of the kettle to see if there was any protest we could join and to see what was going on and a couple of us ended up unintentionally getting caught up in a police surge.

It’s a long story but we had gone down an alleyway to see what was going off with a group of protesters.  We’d witnessed these protestors running from the police, who seemed to be chasing them off with sheilds and batons.  There was a lull in this battle so we went to see what was happening.  Some protestors were sitting in the road and there appeared to be a stand off with the police.  Suddenly the police made a surge that blocked off the alley so we couldn’t escape down it; seated protestors were forced to stand up and move backwards by the sheer police attack, and so I found myself at the very front of it, aggressive cops shouting at us to ‘get back’  pushing at those of us in the front with their shields…only we couldn’t retreat because those behind were a stationary dense bunch of people many of whom seemed to be taking photos (!), plus individuals next to us kept pushing back at the cops.  There was also no chance of moving sideways into the crowd cos that was a far worse police onslaught. Protestors were occasionally running at the police lines with their arms up, and things like empty cans were being thrown at them, bouncing off their shields or helmets.

It’s hard to describe emotions at that stage.  For me it was not one of ‘fear’ because I was too busy thinking ’s**t, how the f**k do I get out of here’ and ‘hey hang on, I wasn’t meant to be part of this!’, and trying desperately to work out how to escape while keeping one eye at the aggressive cop in front. [As we've since learned, the police tend to hit people when they aren't looking.]  They are jabbing their shields at you, and all I can think of is trying to keep out of the way, afraid that if I get hit too much for no reason I will instinctively react, and make the situation worse for myself and those around me.

My friend managed, however, to push her way through the dense body of people, and I did too eventually, and once through we both ran as far and as fast as we could.  My biggest fear was that this was the start of a police riot, where the police chase people away, hitting out at whoever gets in their way, whether you are part of the protest or not. 

It was during this period of time that the police hit Ian Tomlinson, which leads me to believe there was a higher order going around at the time for the police to be more aggressive.

We then walked over to the climate camp protest site, which appeared to be even more tightly kettled in than the other one; it was truly very scary and as well as fearing for the people stuck inside and unable to get out, I felt utterly powerless to do anything to help them out.  I kept thinking: ‘if only there were another 10,000 people here…’

The police kettling was truly astonishing to behold, taking up huge amounts of police resources in terms not just of numbers, riot gear and shields, but of vans, horses, cars, etc; to ensure they could completely kettle people in. So that’s where the £7.5 million was going…

That experience by itself is emotional in a lot of different ways. But to see the shift in media reporting is truly unprecedented and adds to the emotional impact.  It seems clear at this stage that the rise of the use of personal video cameras is significant.  I followed the initial press releases that (wrongly it seems) reported Ian Tomlinson had died of a heart attack, and then, late on 2nd April on Indymedia I read the eyewitness accounts of Ian being attended to by protestors while police declined to assist.  These were highly significant because during these early post-protest stages of the story there were reports of police medics being hampered as they tried to revive Ian; soon the news story was being reported in a ‘balanced’ manner: a non-protestor suffering a heart attack, with the possibility that there had been contact with police so this was ‘being looked into’ (by the police), meanwhile the police report having come under attack from protestors while trying to revive Ian.

As the Indymedia eyewitness accounts make clear, however, it had been the protestors who had tried to revive Ian, the police then moved in and surrounded him. Some protestors did throw things at the police, but quickly stopped when they realised a man was lying suffering on the ground.  The heart attack story persisted though, due to the autopsy that had been carried out; but once the video showing Ian being hit by the police was released the entire story was turned on its head by the mainstream media, and the police really had very little option but to question the officer and re-do the autopsy.

It is plainly becoming clear by the day that without the various video evidence that is coming in, the original story would have persisted, with the real version kept out of mainstream news reporting.  The parallel here is the death of Blair Peach, which the media reported as ‘misadventure’…but back then there were no CCTVs, neither were there many handheld camera’s; then, as now, eyewitness accounts hold little real value in the media.

The police actions (hitting people with their batons) aren’t new (though the kettling is actually quite a recent tactic, first employed in London during the May Day demonstrations in 2001); the fact they are being shown on all the big hitting press websites (such as the BBC and the Sunday Times) is, for me, totally surreal.  I mean the airing of all these videos of police brutality as prime news just doesn’t normally get reported in this way.   Even more remarkable is the way the police are being portrayed as being well out of order here; that’s so unusual to see too.  Normally it might be the odd baton whack that gets reported or commented on, and even that will be lost under a weight of news stories of protestors burning a rubbish bin or something that makes what the police do appear justified.  And that kind of thing doesn’t happen here, not with our police force. Greece maybe, France probably, but UK?? 

It is so unbelievable to see a far more accurate depiction in the mainstream media of what really happens when you go on a demonstration in the UK that has been reported to have ‘turned violent’.

Some key questions for me are:

(a) it is right and just that the officer who hit Ian Tomlinson is charged and brought to justice, but it should not stop there.  What exactly is the role of the Territorial Support Group, the group of police officers who are organised specifically to deal with ‘violent protest’ (even though there wasn’t any on the day)? Who organised and ordered its actions on the day? 

(b) will there be an independent public enquiry into the conduct of the police, particularly their use of ‘kettling’?  It is totally absurd that the enquiry should be conducted by the police. And finally

(c) how many cover ups of police brutality have taken place over the years if, as seems likely, all that’s different about this is that the police got caught on video?

And this brings up yet further emotions, to the killing of Blair Peach, almost 30 years ago.  An innocent guy, a teacher, hit by a police truncheon on 23rd April 1979.  And all those protests I’ve attended over the years seeing people get hit and hurt by police actions, and then the next day zero news reporting about it; or, worse, all reporting heavily biased, as if the police were simply reacting to violent protests.  [Yes, to be absolutely fair, the deaths of people protesting is not high in the UK, which is how it should be anyway; and that perhaps is why this death holds particular shock value; however, the violence is very real and sometimes I have left demo's wondering how nobody got killed.]

You really had to be there to believe it was happening: the forces of the State using violence as a means to an end; the media reporting of the events being totally opposite of what you saw with your own eyes; and then day to day life going on as usual the next day, with me still boiling inside at the injustice of what had happened. It is an education about capitalist society, for sure.

After the death of Blair Peach the dub poet Linton Kwesi Johnson wrote and sang an emotionally powerful song entitled: ‘Reggae Fi Peach’: some of the lines went as follows:

“…deh Special Patrol…dem a MURDER-AH, MURDER-AH/we can’t let dem get, no furder-ah/
deh S.P.G. dem a MURDER-AH, MURDER-AH/we can’t let dem get, no furder-ah”

The SPG refers to ‘Special Patrol Group’, which was the ‘Territorial Support Group’ (TSG) all those years ago, and so all that seems to have changed are the initials; while the message of the song remains.

Peace.

Voices from El Sayed screening at Bristol’s Watershed: BSL explanation of background to the film screening

Just a quick blog posting, following the one by grumpyoldeafies today,  about the film ‘Voices from El Sayed’, showing at Bristol’s Watershed cinema, on Saturday 9th May, 3pm.

Click here for more info in BSL, including some background as to why the film is being shown at the Watershed cinema in collaboration with the Centre for Deaf Studies.

I am really proud that CDS have collaborated with Watershed to ensure this film can be seen in the UK.

If you are in UK nearby do try to come along as the film will not be shown anywhere else in the country.  It is also, I should add, an opportunity for a public discussion about the important issue of cochlear implants and the Deaf community.

Steve