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Last night’s landslide victory for President Barack Hussein Obama was not only a victory for people of colour but also for people with foreign-sounding names.
Obama had faced ugly innuendos from some Republican campaigners who used his middle name to associate him with Islam – as if that automatically disqualified him from the presidency. It was indeed this very whispering campaign by senior Republicans – “Well, you know that Obama is a Muslim” – which led Colin Powell to intervene during the election. While some answered factually by stating that Obama is actually a Christian, for Colin Powell the response should have been – what if he is a Muslim? And thank god for such principled interventions.
We should applaud the American people for seeing through all that, and coming out in their millions to vote for Obama and for change in the USA. It has restored my faith in the human race and, although I’m not generally an admirer of the Sun, today’s front-page headline – “one giant leap for mankind” – summed it up exactly. Maybe it’s time for me to go back to NYC for the first time since the 11th of September 2001.
November 5th, 2008
While all the focus in recent times has been on financial markets and bailing them out, at City Hall on the 23rd of October I chaired a meeting of the London Markets Symposium, looking at the future for London’s street and wholesale markets. We had over 200 attendees and the newly appointed Chair of London Food, Rosie Boycott, on the platform, stimulating a very thorough discussion of the issues.
Rosie Boycott kicked off the morning with the keynote speech, giving us plenty of “food for thought” at the start of her reign as the Chair of London Food. The next speaker, Krys Zasada, gave us the national market perspective, suggesting there was a lack of leadership and not enough market champions. Mike McGill illustrated how Islington was regenerating its streets through its markets. Mike Brook from Wandsworth then gave us some market fundamentals and even some historical references to Adam Smith. And finally we had a stallholder’s perspective from Gary Marshall of the Covent Garden Tenants Association, bringing us back down to earth in our discussions by embracing markets with a direct ”touching, smelling and bartering” relationship with their customers.
All this prompted many questions from the floor, ranging from security concerns and the issue of deregulation of street markets to whether we could have a London-wide street license permit system for stallholders.
It all highlighted the vital role our markets play in the provision of London’s food, with an ever increasing and more diverse population. Indeed these markets have a significant role in relation to health, the environment and sustainability issues and are an economically and socially important part of London’s culture.
While the financial markets are understandably the centre of attention, we should not neglect our actual street markets which are often the hub of our urban communities. The re-launching of the Association of London Markets (AOLM) at the meeting will hopefully go some way to raise the profile of this often neglected but genuine retail choice. With our supermarket chains engaged in price wars over the credit crunch, wholesale and street markets may well come into their own during this uncertain time.
October 31st, 2008
China Daily has published my article ”Time for congestion charging in Beijing?”
You can also join in the discussion at China Dialogue.
October 29th, 2008
Having leafleted against the British National Party with Unite Against Fascism during the recent by-election campaign in Hampstead Town, I was pleased to see that the BNP candidate received a derisory 29 votes, a mere 1% of the poll. You might have thought that after this humiliation the BNP would have got the message that they are not welcome in north London, yet they are contesting the Kentish Town by-election on October 30 in another attempt to gain a foothold there.
Since the election of Richard Barnbrook last May we have had direct experience of the BNP on the London Assembly. It would be easy to dismiss Barnbrook as a joke figure, and his rambling, incoherent contributions at Mayor’s Question Time have certainly reduced him to an object of ridicule. However, London Assembly members have also witnessed the poisonous, divisive politics of the BNP at first hand.
In a recent intervention, for example, Barnbrook called for the abolition of the Notting Hill Carnival, one of the most popular annual events in London, which attracted an estimated 2.5 million people this year from across our city’s diverse communities. But what else can you expect from a party whose constitution states that it is “wholly opposed to any form of racial integration between British and non-European peoples”?
In recent years the BNP has tried to hide its fascist politics from voters and fool them into thinking it is now a more moderate, mainstream party. The skinhead bootboys have been kept out of public view, to be replaced by “respectable” figures in suits. However, the adoption of a more voter-friendly image hasn’t changed the BNP’s fundamental character. In terms of its leadership, core membership, political ideology and ultimate objectives, the BNP remains the racist, fascist organisation it has always been.
One of the leaflets the BNP has been distributing in north London illustrates this point. It features a photograph of a wholesome-looking white family accompanied by the slogan “People like you voting BNP”. The smiling couple in the picture are unlikely to be voting in the Kentish Town by-election as they live in Kirklees, West Yorkshire. But if they were on the electoral register in London NW5 they would undoubtedly give their support to the BNP, because they are two of the party’s longstanding activists – Nick and Suzy Cass.
Both of the Casses appeared earlier this year in the television documentary BNP Wives. In one revealing scene Suzy Cass argued that in order to restore racial purity white people should have more children, while a “birth limit” should be imposed on non-white families. How the latter policy was to be implemented – forcible sterilisation? infanticide? – she didn’t say.
In another scene Nick Cass proudly revealed a “tree of life” tattoo prominently displayed on his right arm. The anti-fascist magazine Searchlight commented:
“This symbol, also known as the life rune, is a favourite among nazi groups worldwide, several of which have adopted it as their logo. Under Hitler it was the symbol of the SS Lebensborn project, which encouraged SS troopers to have children out of wedlock with ‘Aryan’ mothers and kidnapped children of Aryan appearance from the countries of occupied Europe to raise as Germans. To white supremacists today the tree of life signifies the future of the ‘white race’. “
Nothing could better demonstrate the BNP’s cynical political methods than this fraudulent attempt to pass off two of its own hardline members as a normal family who just happen to vote BNP.
Resistance to the BNP transcends party politics. Supporters of the Labour Party, the Liberal Democrats, the Conservative Party and the Greens, whatever our other political differences, are at one in rejecting the racist ideology of the far right. It is crucial that this anti-fascist majority turns out to vote in Kentish Town on October 30, in order to ensure that the BNP once again receives a percentage of the vote that accurately represents their minuscule support in Camden.
The infliction of another humiliating defeat on the BNP will hopefully discourage them from making any further attempts to import their vile politics into the borough.
October 23rd, 2008
Amidst all the debris of the collapse of Anglo-Saxon finance capitalism, we only have one prominent politician on either side of the pond defending the spivs and speculators, and accusing their critics of indulging in “neo-socialist claptrap” – the mayor of London, Boris Johnson. Why should this be?
Well, firstly Boris is has a record of defending the indefensible, like a defence lawyer who knows his client is guilty as hell. Lord knows he has done this often enough in the past, both as a Telegraph columnist and in his former role as editor of the Spectator. His stance as an apologist for the Iraq war and as a climate change sceptic are two notorious examples of this. For Boris the defence of unpopular causes against the Left is probably an intellectual game as much as anything else.
He’s also a keen supporter of the City of London Corporation, an aberration in the governance of London, which is very much a relic from the medieval age. He forgets that much of the City’s recently improved performance is down to government legislation like the Big Bang at the end of the 1980s, and to competition in the form of Canary Wharf during the 1990s, both of which challenged the City’s monopoly over finance in the heart of London.
Finally, private equity and hedge funds were major contributors to his mayoral campaign earlier this year, so Boris has some favours to return. These extend beyond the field of journalism. For example, the co-founder of the private equity firm Englefield has been appointed by Johnson to the board of the London Development Agency, a position for which he will be paid £14,000 for a minimum of three days’ work a month. Lazarus gave two donations to Johnson’s mayoral campaign, one of £10,000 last October and another of £12,500 in February. Londoners need to be completely confident that the Mayor’s appointments are being made solely on merit. If donors to the mayor’s campaign are now being rewarded with paid positions in his administration it shows his promise to end cronyism was nothing more than empty words.
Capitalism is not going to go away – globally we are probably seeing the Anglo-Saxon form being replaced by Chinese state capitalism – but should we really be so reliant on financial services, as we have been for a number of decades in London, thus putting our eggs in one basket? Indeed an opportunity has now arisen, while the taxpayer “bails out“ the banks, for us to demand more investment in the real economy, like green technology and alternative energy sources; a move back to mutuality and co-operative ideals in the mortgage markets; and more accountability on the part of financial institutions to the rest of us like getting rid of tax lopeholes, if we are expected to assist when the sector is on its knees.
Boris would be much better off arguing for these things during the present crisis than defending the indefensible.
September 24th, 2008
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