In September the saints go marching

September is the month when Cardiff is at its most colourfully radiant. The leaves turning red, yellow and brown, and the arrival of thousands of new students from all corners of the globe turning the city into its vibrant best. This autumn there is also the small matter of the Rugby World Cup where Wales hopes to impress. Several matches would be held in the Welsh capital. Yet, rugby mad Wales is also looking to finally make its mark with the round ball. One of the most important football matches for the national team would be held in Cardiff when Wales takes on Israel on 6th September 2015. For Wales, a victory in this match almost guarantees qualification to next summer's European Championship. Not since 1958 has the country managed to qualify for a major international tournament despite producing some of the best top flight footballers to play in the English league throughout the barren years. As the world's most expensive player Gareth Bale drapes himself in the famous red and prepares to run havoc along the Israeli defence, darting runs (or perhaps a sedate walk) of a different nature is planned by a vociferous group of activists.  

Adam Johannes is the Secretary of the Cardiff Stop the War Coalition, who is planning to be present at a peaceful protest in Cardiff against Israel's actions in the Palestinian territories. This September, the sporting significance is just as remarkable as the planned protest organised by Johannes. The following letter was written to a local newspaper by Adam Johannes and others reflecting on an incident at the previous solidarity march in Cardiff when several individuals (including one person who had previously been convicted for a football hooliganism related offence) decided to hurl glasses, chairs, beer and racist insults at the peaceful protesters as the procession made its way across Mill Lane.

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Prison sentence not in spirit of justice

The Wales March for Gaza; called by Cardiff Stop the War Coalition, Cardiff Palestine Solidarity Campaign, CND Cymru and several trade unions last summer was extraordinary. Up to 5000 people from all faiths and walks of life peacefully filed through Cardiff City Centre.

With cross-party support from MPs and MEPs, many AM’s and councillors joined us on the day. This was not only the biggest acts of mass solidarity with Palestine in Welsh history, but one of the largest marches in the city in twenty years.

However, in unprecedented scenes, a peaceful demonstration joined by faith leaders, families and children was twice attacked by racist thugs, including a convicted football hooligan. What followed must stand as one of the ugliest public displays of racism seen in our city in recent times.

On St Mary Street, glasses were thrown from a bar by thugs chanting racist abuse. Children carried on their parents shoulders and others pushed in prams only narrowly missed being hit.

On Mill Lane, a chair was hurled at the march, beer was thrown on Muslim marchers and, once again, the most vile racist abuse chanted including 'Kill all the P***s' and 'Burn the P***'s kids means one less P***'.

How would anyone respond if glasses, chairs, beer and racist abuse were hurled at a group including families and young children? The police certainly did not intervene to halt the attacks and contain the danger; both to children and families.

Whereas some would say that scuffles should not occur on our streets, how many of those would fail to sympathise with a man who, having seen friends, as well as families and children racially abused and humiliated, sought to fend off their immediate attackers?

The partial defence of provocation exists to ensure that justice is tempered with fairness. It serves to safeguard against a false equivalence whereby the aggressor and victim are said to be equally culpable thus deserving of equal punishment.

It is shocking, therefore to hear that a demonstrator who responded to the racist attack has received a longer sentence, two and a half years, than those who attacked the march.

We believe that it is neither in the public interest nor the spirit of justice and proportionality for Yussef Asad to serve a prison sentence.

Adam Johannes, Cardiff Stop the War Coalition
Betty Hunter, Honourary President, Palestine Solidarity Campaign
Bethan Jenkins AM
Cllr Ali Ahmed, Chair, Unite Against Fascism Wales
Marianne Owens, PCS Union, National Executive Committee
Shavanah Taj, Wales Secretary, PCS Union
Shahien Taj & Shereen Williams, Henna Foundation
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An edited version of the above letter was published in S.Wales Echo on 24th March.
http://www.walesonline.co.uk/incoming/south-wales-echo-letters-monday-9915977



© TTR 

London riots need not be a prerequisite for illiberal lawmaking!

August is muggy. The balmy evenings of crimson glow across the horizon turns the ordinary man litigious and the not-old-enough-man into a tactile reactionary frenzy. Riots broke out this August in London, Birmingham and Manchester. 'Asleep in working Glasgow, asleep in well-set Edinburgh, Asleep in granite Aberdeen, They continue their dreams..'. Yet the youth of London, Brum, Madchester and the smaller cities where rampaging youths steamed along the streets like W. H. Auden's Night Train were dreaming of something else. What were they dreaming of? Politicians, litigators and intelligentsia debated as dawn broke out over the charred horizon now not so crimson, but ashen grey.

As planes landed one by one on ashpalt not too dissimilar in colour to the morning after the riots, Boris, Dave and others returned to the capital having cut short their summer holidays. Before the events in Tottenham I read in The Independent that the Prime Minister had gone back to the same busy cafe somewhere in Tuscany to tip the waitress who had not been tipped the morning before, apparently, for poor service. He returned to London on the first available flight after the riots had been raging for three consecutive nights to chair a meeting of COBRA. Cobra is the extraordinarily dramatic name for the civil contingencies committee which leads responses to a national crisis. On that very same night, heavy police presence ensured that very little happened.

The Coalition government had averted the crisis from turning into something far worse. Law and order was the order of the night again. After three nights of staying in largely due to a cold, my friend Charlotte decided to go to the pub again. As the police raided properties in search of rioters in the usual locations, they slept in Glasgow, Edinburgh and Aberdeen, and in my very own Cardiff dreaming of something no doubt very different from the near two and half thousand arrested elsewhere. What do teenagers dream of?

Much has been attributed to teenage gangs operating in deprived neighbourhoods. The youth vilified all over England. Yet so many of the rioters were not teenagers. CCTV pictures which in itself seems to have been accepted as a necessary evil have revealed faces of men and women, largely black and white, but a few belonging other ethnicities too were within an age range of 12 to 35. What is it that they all have in common? The obvious answer seems to be criminal intent. Proving intent to commit a crime isn't difficult after poking one's right hand through the broken glass of a convenience store to steal a packet of £1 Haribo sweets. They are all criminals. Lump them into the same jail cell and throw away are key. A 'broken society' has descended upon us as David Cameron had declared. To mend this broken society new laws on rioting are required in addition to those allowing councils the power to evict rioting families. The parents of the children rioting are brandished with the same brush. Theresa May, the Home Secretary alluded to possible new curfew powers for the police. The Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg had defended orange jumpsuits, Guantanamo style that could be worn by prosecuted rioters and made to clean up the streets themselves, and mend broken windows.

Broken glass can only be replaced not mended. The shards laying on the pavement and inside of shops get brushed up into dustpans by the broom-army and put away. The rioters are like the very same shards of broken glass. They have been broken. Perhaps they broke themselves. What started out as an 'old-skool' protest by the gangsta-designer label wearing black men in Tottenham soon became diluted into a general protest mele with the word protest losing any significance soon after dusk. New anti-terror laws and stop, and search powers brought in by the previous New Labour administration of Tony Blair, and never really repealed by Gordon Brown thereafter had often been misused by the authorities. The ethnic minorities have faced the brunt of it alongside the odd Holocaust surviving pensioner and Labour Party activist within conference settings. A young black man is more likely to be stopped and searched.

The criminal intent of the rioters in whatever capacity is unjustifiable in a civilised society. Clapham Junction is indefensible. Yet, by labelling each and every one of the rioters a criminal, and ushering in illiberal anti-riot laws ignores the social conditions that led to the first night of rioting in Tottenham.

Glasgow, Edinburgh and granite Aberdeen slumbers. Long ago the Night Mail Train stopped crossing the border whistling all the way, shaking gently but a jug in the bedroom. No jugs of water in Clapham bedrooms, only vials of Tamazepam and white-brown-black powder stains on the bedroom floor. This is England

© TTR