The politics of hope - Owen Jones

The politics of hope: Owen Jones at the Royal Spa Centre, Leamington.

An inspiring evening at the Spa Centre on Thursday evening. Owen Jones was articulate, inspirational and funny. There was no podium, no notes, he just walked up and down the stage delivering a message of hope. He started off by congratulating Leamington residents on our activism in the last few months, citing the demonstration in support of junior doctors, the work on refugees, the anti-racist work, the exhibition of paintings and drawings by children from Syria, and many more.

Some of the points he made in his speech:

• The gap between rich and poor is getting wider. Most people living in poverty are in work - they earn their poverty by going to work.

• The government and the powers that be want us to believe that injustice is like the weather - there is nothing we can do about it. But this is not true, we can effect change by organising and resisting. He used the example of the Suffragettes, the Trade Union movement, and more recently, the demonstrations against TTIP across Europe.

• Polarisation is the defining feature of politics today. On the one hand we have progressive movements, fuelled by anger at increasing inequality, movements like Syriza in Greece, Podemos in Spain, the election of Jeremy Corbyn by a huge majority of Labour Party members. On the other hand the rise of the right and the fascist parties, Golden Dawn in Greece, the Jobbik party in Hungary, Austria's Freedom Party. This polarisation is evident in the USA by Trump versus Sanders.

• Governments use the politics of fear which in effect means kicking those at the bottom and a deliberate redirecting of people's justified anger at the rich and the banks, towards the neighbour next door, the so-called benefit scrounger down the road.  In fact, the lavish benefit claimants are the banks. The real problem is tax avoidance which costs the UK £69.9 billion a year, while benefit fraud costs £1.2 billion a year. The politics of fear have another target, the refugees and immigrants.

• Those who want to improve society are branded as unpatriotic - the enemy within. The media frenzy against Jeremy Corbyn is a good example of this. And yet, what's patriotic about attacking the NHS and the BBC?

• The politics of hope is about building societies run in the interests of working people, not run as a racket for the mean and the greedy at the top. By looking at some alternatives across the world, we can challenge the inevitability of widening inequalities and injustice. The problem is that we have lost the confidence for an alternative, and this is what we need to build on. Everything we have, our rights, the welfare state,  the vote, were not given to us, they were  fought for. The Suffragettes were hated, reviled, tortured - their struggle is the perfect example of how to effect change. We stand on the shoulders of giants and we have to continue their work and not let them down.

• The Right use stories in their arguments and propaganda, while the Left use facts and figures. We are subjected to a constant stream of stories and this is what people respond to, people need stories: the refugee crisis came to the forefront of people's consciousness after the body of Aylan Kurdi was washed up on a Turkish beach. This should be a lesson to the Left.

Jones' one hour speech was followed by questions from the audience. The one that made me chuckle:  'if we were French, we would not be here listening to you, however pleasant that is, we would be out burning things. Why do you think that is?' The reply was that Britain has a  long history of resistance, starting from the Chartists to the recent strikes by the junior doctors.

A stimulating and uplifting evening.

A follow-up to the Greek fires

A journalist friend of ours wanting to write a report on last week's fires asked us if we wanted to come along, so we set off for Helioupolis. The Hymettus mountain, which you can see in the distance in this photograph, was our destination, the place where the fires erupted last Friday.






We reached the area where a member of the fire fighting team, an off-duty policeman, died. This is the boundary between the residential area and the mountain - remarkably, the houses were left unscathed

but not this caravan - even though it looks undamaged, except for the windows that were smashed by the force of the fire,

the inside is seriously damaged.

The burning smell was overwhelming: it will probably remain for the whole of the summer

until the autumn rains clear the atmosphere.

 

Two bee keepers who were smoking out the bees have been arrested, but the residents are convinced that it's the work of arsonists. 

 

 

 

We then moved on to the Helioupolis Volunteer Fire Protection hut. There were three vehicles stationed there, including a fire engine

volunteers and fire fighters were washing and cleaning the hoses.






These huge water barrels are permanent features in this area.




 

The devastation all around us is heart breaking

but again, fortunately, the houses were unharmed by the fire.

 

We then drove on to the Karea area, to visit the nunnery of Saint John Prodromos.

 

The flames surrounded the nunnery, and the nuns had to abandon their home, but we learnt that they had returned on the day of our visit.

this was such a depressing sight!

 

We talked to a man who was taking his dog for a walk. He told us about the human chain that was formed to bring water from the nearby supermarket all the way up to the mountain. Most of the wildlife, the partridges, hares and foxes managed to escape, he told us, but not the tortoises - hundreds have been found scorched by the flames.  So much misery and the destruction of a whole ecosystem!

 

 

 

 

 

We walked down the shady avenue away from the nunnery mourning the devastation that has been wreaked in the area. 

 

 



 

On the way back we stopped at an ATM as our friend wanted to withdraw her daily allocation of  60 euros. Contrary to what the media would have us believe, there are no long queues at the ATMs. We have been in Greece for over a week and not once have I seen more than one person at an ATM. People confirm this - yes, at some specific locations, at specific times, there are sometimes people queuing for money, but on the whole, there is no panic, no desperate scramble for money. The exaggerated, panic-inducing reports from the Greek and world media, are just not true.

How much more can Greece take?

We have been in Athens for six days now, and life has shrunk: the political situation of the country has dominated our thoughts, our reading, our discussions, our communication with friends and family, and in my case, my sleep. I am experiencing the situation as being in trauma, and the thought of what lies ahead fills me with dread.

The deal that was agreed in principle between Greece and its creditors on Monday means never ending economic, political and social depression in Greece. Greek assets totalling 50 billion euros are to be held as a hostage to ensure the Greek government carries out the draconian measures demanded by the creditors.  Every 'red line' the government had maintained has now been crossed, from pensions cuts to VAT increases, whilst the pace of spending cuts mandated guarantee continual misery.

The leaders of the Eurogroup, European Commission and European Bank have dogmatically followed economic prescriptions which have nothing to do with making people's lives better. They are concerned with protecting the interests of their own financial sectors. European leaders have employed the myth that Europe's taxpayers are funding the unsustainable lives of the Greek people. However, Jubilee Debt Campaign has shown that at least 90% of the 'bailout' funds to Greece have not gone to Greece at all, but to shore up the European banks that lent the money in the first place. They stand to make between 10 billion and 22 billion euros profit out of lending to Greece. The 'bailout', in other words, is a bailout of the banks, not of Greece. Whilst bankers are off the hook, taxpayers in Europe are notionally placed on it. The events in the last week have shown how this is a political, not an economic problem, aimed at subverting a left wing government and ensuring everyone dances to the neoliberal tune of the EU.

European leaders have been hell bent on humiliating and destroying a government which has dared to expose them. Now the Greek government is committed to attempting to implement its side of this economically catastrophic deal which will turn this crisis into a total catastrophe for Greece. Worse still, the deal contains two measures that strip Greece of its sovereignty. Firstly, the 50 billion of government assets which will be held as surety against the country's future 'good behaviour'. Secondly, the deal demands that the Greek government 'consult and agree with the Institutions on all draft legislation in relevant areas with adequate time before submitting it for public consultation or to Parliament'. Total loss of sovereignty, and Greece becoming a colony. This is the kind of deal forced on a nation defeated in war; no wonder that Yanis Varoufakis has compared it to a 'second Versailles treaty'.

As we were driving back home this afternoon, our hearts sank. This is what we saw. A huge cloud over the Hymettus mountain, moving slowly towards the sea. Strong winds and high temperatures fanned the fire: we could not see the source, but we knew it was over Helioupolis, a district very near where we live.

 

Listening to the news when we got home, we found out that the fire was indeed in Helioupolis. A local playground has burnt to the ground and the flames have surrounded the local church.

 

 

 

We read on the online version of Kathimerini that 'wildfires burned through rural land on the island of Evia near Athens and in the region of Laconia in the Peloponnese where one fire-fighting aircraft was forced to make an emergency landing... State television reported the fire's front was over 15 km long and one health centre in the region was preparing to evacuate patients. A police source said a 58-year-died after inhaling fumes and suffering respiratory problems'.

Six hours after these photographs were taken by Elisabeth, we can still hear the fire-fighting helicopters droning over our flat, going back and forth as they fly to the sea to fill up with water.

How much more can this country take?



Update, two hours after originally posting:

There are 52 fires raging all over Greece. Experts are confirming that it's the work of arsonists.

We are all culpable

I have stopped posting on politics for a number of reasons, but I feel that today, I want to share this powerful video.

I have watched with horror, disbelief and incomprehension what has been happening in Gaza recently. Incomprehension because I cannot believe that the world is allowing this to go on.

And I feel so powerless.

Chris Hedges' speech in 2010 after Israel's attack on Gaza in 2008-09 is as relevant today as it was then, and points to the sustained campaign to exterminate the Palestinian people in Gaza. He accurately predicted that 'Israel will from now on, speak to the Palestinians in the language of death'.

He says that 'the lesson of the Holocaust ... is that when you have the capacity to stop genocide and you do not, you are culpable, and we are all very culpable'.