Category Archives: Welfare state

If you think UKIP’s members are extreme, read its official policies

Posted on by symonhill

Nigel Farage has thrown out the latest UKIP member to provoke controversy through bigoted opinions. Farage says he wants to get rid of candidates with “extremist, barmy or nasty” views. But it is not individual candidates who are the problem. UKIP’s official policies are extremely nasty, based as they are on an ultra-Thatcherite free-market extremism.

Earlier this week, I blogged about David Silvester, a UKIP councillor in Oxfordshire who attributed the recent floods to God’s judgment on the legalisation of same-sex marriage (rather than the real sin of human-fuelled climate change). I have now lost count of the number of UKIP members that have been expelled due to racist, sexist or homophobic comments. Farage’s insistence that there are bigoted individuals in every party is true but now wearing thin as an excuse for the number of them who appear to have joined UKIP.

You only have to look at the policies of UKIP to see why. They want to make even greater cuts than the Tories. They are committed to workfare (forcing people to work for benefits, instead of paying them a wage). They want to withdraw from the UN Convention on Refugees, meaning the UK could turn back people fleeing persecution. They would also remove the UK from the European Court of Human Rights, meaning it would join Belarus as the only other European country that is not signed up to it.

Despite slashing the welfare state, a UKIP government would increase military spending by forty percent and push ahead with the renewal of Trident. The party’s education policy includes the promotion of a biased, pro-imperial teaching of history in British schools. They would not, however, teach about climate change, as they deny its reality. Their policies include investment in several new gas-fired power stations.

Shortly after his comments about expelling “extremists”, Farage gave us a reminder of his own perception of reality by claiming that women can succeed just as well as men at the top levels of big business – if, he added, they are prepared to sacrifice their families. Why anyone should be expected to sacrifice their family to “succeed” was not made clear.

Of course, the debate on the number of women on boards of corporate directors conveniently obscures the reality of sexism for people on low and middle incomes. But given the power of corporations, it is telling that Farage is happy with those who are wielding that power.

It is not individual UKIPers who are the problem but the party itself and its own policies. Expelling right-wing extremists from UKIP is like expelling sand from the desert. 

UKIP, homophobia and the real sin behind the floods

Posted on by symonhill

UKIP councillor David Silvester believes that Britain’s recent floods are the results of sin. You may be surprised to learn that I agree with him. There the agreement ends, for we have very different ideas about what the sin is and how it has affected the weather.

In a letter to a local paper in Oxfordshire, Silvester has blamed the foods on the recent legalisation of same-sex marriage in England and Wales.

I respect the fact that many people interpret the Bible differently to me, but Silvester’s statements about the Bible are simply untrue.

In his letter, he writes “The scriptures make it abundantly clear that a Christian nation that abandons its faith and acts contrary to the Gospel (and in naked breach of a coronation oath) will be beset by natural disasters such as storms, disease, pestilence and war.”

This is, to put it bluntly, nonsense. The scriptures make no reference at all to a “Christian nation”. They have no concept of a “Christian nation”. At no point in the New Testament is there any suggestion that Jesus’ followers should build a nation-state founded on their principles or expect any nation to prioritise them and their religion. There is certainly no suggestion anywhere in the Bible of a Christian coronation oath.

What Silvester is doing, like many before him, is rejecting the grassroots radicalism of the New Testament in order to pick bits from the Hebrew Scriptures (the Old Testament) that refer to ancient Israel. The people who use the Bible in this way then decide that the Bible’s comments on ancient Israel (or at least, the ones they’ve chosen to pick out) somehow apply directly to Britain as a “Christian nation” today. This simplistic approach manages to insult and misrepresent both Christianity and Judaism at the same time.

I don’t know if David Silvester sees any tension between the Gospel proclaimed by Jesus and the policies of UKIP (including even bigger welfare cuts than the Tories, withdrawal from the UN Convention on Refugees, a forty percent increase in military spending and denying the reality of climate change). I don’t know if he thinks that the UK was a “Christian nation” when Britain was engaged in the slave trade or when Britain’s rulers were committing genocide in Tasmania or suppressing religious liberty in Britain. But I do know that Silvester’s comments will attract more amusement than anger, at least in the mainstream media. Sadly, they will also serve to give people a skewed impression of Christianity. People who have never read the Bible may well assume that Silvester’s description of its contents are accurate.

That’s why other Christians need to speak up. Let no-one misrepresent us as being less Christian than Silvester and his allies, watering down the Bible or compromising the Gospel. We too should speak about sin. Sin is all that separates us from God, from each other and from creation. Sin has played a major role in these floods.

It is not sensible to say that any particular flood was caused solely by climate change. What we can say with confidence is that the frequency of floods and erratic weather conditions is a result of climate change. That change has been brought about by human beings pursuing the goals of capitalism led by politicians worshipping the idols of “growth” and corporations pursuing short-term profit.

Jesus’ solidarity with the poor is central to his teachings. It is at the heart of the Gospel. It is already obvious that the poorest people and the poorest countries will suffer the most as a result of climate change. Christians need to work alongside people of other religions and none in working for new economic systems in which resources are shared rather than hoarded or destroyed.

I don’t claim to live up to Jesus’ teachings. I’m not a better Christian than David Silvester. But I can see that sin is present in destruction, poverty and inequality, not in the love between two people who happen to be the same gender.

 

Anti-Roma prejudice and an unlikely prediction

Posted on by symonhill

Come January, the right-wing media in the UK might have some explaining to do. The Daily Mail (and their friends in UKIP and the Tory Right) have been telling us that Britain will be flooded by immigrants from Romania and Bulgaria, as the last restrictions on their immigration to the UK are lifted.

Some of the rhetoric gives the impression that you will barely be able to move in London, Dover or Skegness for the number of Romanians and Buglarians pouring off the boats.

I dare say that Nigel Farage and his friends will soon be brushing away the figures showing that Romanian and Bulgarian immigration is lower than predicted. Neither UKIP nor the Daily Mail let the truth get in the way of scaremongering.

Much of the coverage easily confuses “Roma” with “Romanian”. Last month, the Daily Star ran a front page attack on “Roma” immigration. It quoted the former Home Secretary, David Blunkett, who has suggested that such immigration could lead to riots.

I find it hard to believe that such immigration could really reach the levels of Polish immigration a few years ago; the UK was not in the middle of an economic crisis in those days.

The Sun said recently that that Romanians and Bulgarians would come to Britain for its welfare state and “generous benefits”. This is even more unbelievable, given that to get here they will have to pass through countries with considerably more generous welfare states (notably Germany).

One of the reasons that might help to draw migrants to Britain is the fact that they are more likely to speak English than the languages of certain other European countries. Ironically, the global dominance of the English language is an indirect result both of US global power and of the general British unwillingness to learn languages. These are both things that tend to be defended by the same people who condemn immigration to the UK.

In the 1930s, the Daily Mail ran attacks on Jewish migrants “pouring” into Britain. They were fleeing the Nazis.

Today, racism and xenophobia are still alive and powerful in the UK. The BNP may be disorganised and the EDL disintegrating, but the Mail and the Sun always had far more power than both of them. UKIP are considered a respectable mainstream force, as their racism comes with suits and smiles.

Decades after the Holocaust, anti-Semitism and other forms or racism continue to be powerful forces. The recent cases of children being snatched from Roma parents who don’t look like them shows crude racial bigotry hovering just below the surface of supposedly democratic state authorities.

I began this blog post on a train from London to Brussels. The journey took two hours, slightly shorter than the train trip from London to Manchester. To get on the train, I was required to walk through a metal detector and then display my passport. Why is this required for Brussels but not for Manchester or even the much longer journey to Scotland? Because of a series of historical accidents that divide people up into nations and nationalities.

Corporations can largely ignore these borders, moving money and employment wherever the mood – or the profit – takes them. The rest of us are confined by them, encouraged to define ourselves by them and to rate those of our nationality as being more worthy of life and work than those who live across an arbitrary border.

Lack of housing is blamed on migrants rather than on the failure of successive governments to build decent social housing and to stop people leaving houses empty. Low pay is attributed to migrants willing to work for less, rather than a lamentably low minimum wage.

It is common to blame our problems on those who seem different to us. I know that I can do this too. My prejudices are not acceptable either. The first step to overcoming prejudice, at a personal or social level, is acknowledging its existence.

Being British is part of my identity. So is the fact that I have a beard. These two aspects of my identity are of roughly equivalent importance to me. But I am constantly told that I must rate one of them as more important than anything else about me. Indeed, we are so accustomed to thinking in this way that we barely notice we are doing it.

When Jesus was asked “Who is my neighbour?”, he responded with a story about a man who showed love to a stranger despite racial, religious and cultural differences (commonly referred to as the “good Samaritan”). It’s time we recognised nationality and ethnicity for the arbitrary and trivial distinctions that they are.

Benefit payments and the Living Wage

Posted on by symonhill

UK ministers and their allies are fond of talking about the need to reduce the welfare bill. They give the impression that the welfare bill goes to feckless scroungers, but almost never mention any statistics about who is actually claiming the money.

In reality, less than two percent of the welfare bill goes to non-disabled unemployed people. The biggest chunk goes to older people in the form of pensions, but a sizeable amount goes to people in work. Much of this is paid in tax credits and housing benefits.

Tax credits go to people who are in work but who are not paid enough, while housing benefit is high because there is no cap on private sector rents (so in this case, the real benefit recipients are landlords).

This week is Living Wage Week, when faith groups, unions and individuals across the UK are pushing for all employers to pay a Living Wage. Payment of a Living Wage would reduce the welfare bill and, more importantly, tackle poverty.

Currently the vast majority of the UK’s largest companies do not guarantee a Living Wage to their staff. The organisation Share Action is urging people who own private pensions to email their pension fund about the living wage.

If you have a pension, you can urge the fund to add to the pressure for a Living Wage within the companies in which it invests. Share Action have produced an online form to make the process quick and easy.

This tactic is already working. When Share Action launched their “Just Pay!” campaign for living wages two years ago, just three of the biggest 100 hundred companies in the UK paid the Living Wage. Due to the campaign, ten more of these massive corporations have now responded to public pressure by signing up.

Although I don’t have a pension myself, I wish the best of luck with this tactic to those of you who do. If you want to find out more about the Living Wage, and what you can do to promote it, you can visit the Living Wage site and Share Action.

I love Britain. The Daily Mail hates it.

Posted on by symonhill

What is Britain? This question doesn’t seem to have been asked much in the many arguments around the Daily Mail’s vicious attack on Ed Miliband’s father. Ralph Miliband, the Mail maintains, “hated Britain”.

Is “Britain” simply a geographical area? Or does the Mail really mean the United Kingdom, which is a political entity? Or the British people? We talk so much about countries that we can easily forget that nationality is an abstract and ill-defined concept.

The Daily Mail‘s deputy editor Jon Steafel now seems to have come up with a definition of Britain that few British people would recognise.

Defending his paper’s claims, he attacked Ralph Miliband’s “views on British institutions, from our schools to our royal family to our military, to our universities to the church [of England]”.

Steafel’s implication is that to oppose powerful institutions in Britain is to hate Britain. This is nonsense. There is more to Britain than its rulers. It is possible to love a country’s people, to love it as a place and to oppose its political and economic systems. Indeed, love for a country’s people should surely lead to a desire to be rid of unjust institutions that harm them.

I’m not too keen on the United Kingdom as a political entity, but I love the places and people within it. You may be surprised to hear that I also love many aspects of its politics.

I love British traditions of free speech, religious liberty and fair trials (although they’re abused). We have these things because people went out and campaigned for them, not because our rulers kindly handed them down.

I love the radical traditions of England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland. Radical egalitarian forms of Christianity became popular in these islands in the seventeenth century, just after England had abolished its monarchy (over a hundred years before France did so; sadly, it didn’t last).

I love the stunning scenery in Snowdonia and the Antrim coast. I love the mix of cultures, languages and religions on the streets of London. I love the friendliness of Cardiff and the feeling of homecoming as the bus goes over Magdalen Bridge in Oxford. I love the rural Midlands roads that I walked down as a child, greasy spoon cafes in Birmingham, the sight of the castle in Edinburgh and the passion of people whose poverty is no barrier to resisting injustice. I love the British people.

The Daily Mail stirs up hatred of the British working class, British Muslims, British LGBT people, British people who were born outside the UK and British people who claim benefits. It is the Daily Mail that hates Britain.

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The above article appeared as my latest column for the website of the Ekklesia thinktank. Please see http://www.ekklesia.co.uk/news/columns/hill. 

Not the G8 – digital activism in Leeds

Posted on by symonhill

I am on a train that’s just pulled out of Leeds, following a great day at ‘Not the G8’, a conference run by the World Development Movement (WDM).

I was there because WDM invited me to speak at a session on digital activism. But I’m really glad they did, because the whole event was very good and I learnt a lot.

The day included a really helpful talk about food sovereignty by the writer Raj Patel. I have realised recently that WDM are very good at drawing the links between different issues – poverty, the environment, banking. In particular, they make clear that environmentalism is not simply a lifestyle choice for the middle class in the West but is an urgent concern for anyone who wants to tackle poverty.

I was asked to give a talk based partly on my new book, Digital Revolutions: Activism in the internet age. As usual, I Iearnt at least as much from the participants as they did from me.

At these sort of events, I fear that the attenders will expect me to be some sort of technological whizzkid, with answers to all sorts of questions about computer use. Anyone who’s watched me struggle to get my DVD player working will know that I am not that person. My book is not a book about technology; it’s a book about activism. It looks at the ways in which the internet has been used for activism in recent years.

I am not a net utopian – technology won’t save the world. Nor am I someone who dismisses the usefulness of the internet. Digital activism is an important part of many campaigns. It can also draw people into other forms of resistance. But digital activism is almost never sufficient on its own. When talking today, I focussed on examples of campaigns that have effectively combined online and offline activism. Examples include:

  • Tax justice campaigners who petitioned Olympic sponsors online to give up their tax exemptions at the Olympic Park. Several companies quickly agreed, probably because they feared physical occupations – which had greeted many tax-dodging stores the previous year.
  • Boycott Workfare, who have persuaded dozens of companies and charities in the UK to withdraw from workfare schemes. Some withdrew after physical protests and economic pressure. Others withdrew when bombarded with tweets and faced with humiliation online.
  • Disabled activists in York, who found a provision that required the City Council to debate any petition with over 1,000 signatures from York residents. Their petition and the council debate meant that cuts to local disability services became the lead news item on BBC Radio York – making many more people aware of them.
  • Lovers of peace in Israel and Iran, who set up “Israel Loves Iran” and “Iran Loves Israel”, two Facebook pages that built understanding across the divide and allowed Israeli and Iranian citizens to tell both their governments that they were “not ready to die in your war”.
  • Minority language activists as far apart as Wales, east Africa, Australia and south Asia, who use web-based resources to promote linguistic diversity and the rights of their communities.
  • The paradox of the Occupy movement, which combined the modern image of web-based communication with the old-fashioned image of debates in public squares. Both of them, at their best, are far more inclusive than mainstream political processes.

I was delighted that so many people got stuck into discussion about these issues. As my book has not long been published, this was on the second time that I’ve given a talk based around it. I will be doing so again at the Greenbelt festival in August. However, I’m very open to speaking with other groups. If you’re interested you’re welcome to email me at symonhill@gmail.com. I would love to hear from you!

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My book, Digital Revolutions: Activism in the internet age, can be bought from the publisher, New Internationalist, by clicking here. It costs £9.99 (0r $16.95 in the US). 

The Christian lobby group and the far-right party

Posted on by symonhill

I blogged earlier this week about statements from the homophobic lobby group Christian Concern ahead of the local elections. They encouraged people to vote for candidates opposed to same-sex marriage. Most of these candidates are likely to be UKIP or on the right wing of the Conservative Party. They are therefore likely to be very right-wing on economics. Until now, Christian Concern have largely avoided taking a stance on economic issues.

Today, Christian Concern sent out their weekly email bulletin, which includes a message from the group’s director, Andrea Williams, about the local elections. She writes in a celebratory tone. This is not, of course, because Labour have taken so many seats from Tories, but because UKIP have done so.

She writes:

“The local election results are showing massive losses for the Conservative party. This was by no means inevitable but David Cameron’s insistence on pursuing the same sex ‘marriage’ agenda has undoubtedly contributed to this dramatic result.

“His determination to dilute marriage has alienated not only Conservative supporters but voters at large. UKIP is notably the only party that supports marriage and their success in these elections is in large part due to that.”

Contrary to the above statement, there are in fact several other parties that oppose same-sex marriage (BNP, English Democrats, Christian People’s Alliance, etc), but Christian Concern seem happy to ignore them today.

Should we take this as indicating that Christian Concern is happy to support – or at least overlook – UKIP’s other policies? They include cutting taxes for the rich, raising taxes for the poor and people in the middle, increasing military spending, renewing Trident, going further than the Tories with cuts to public services, increasing workfare, banning all immigration for five years, withdrawing from the UN Convention on Refugees, scrapping human rights law and teaching children a pro-imperial view of history.

Do Christian Concern think that these are appropriate policies for Christians to support? I think they should tell us.

Same-sex marriage and the local elections: Who thinks they’re connected?

Posted on by symonhill

The “Christian Right” in Britain – inasmuch as it exists – is not like the Christian Right in the US. Over there, conservatism on issues such as marriage and abortion seems to go hand in hand with right-wing views on economics and foreign policy. Over here, we have conservative Christian lobby groups with a far more narrow focus. Organisations such as the Christian Institute, Christian Concern/Christian Legal Centre and so-called Anglican Mainstream focus largely on attacking LGBT rights. They also speak out against abortion, Islam and the supposed marginalisation of Christians in Britain.

But unlike their US counterparts, these groups rarely comment explicitly on economics or international relations. True, the tiny Christian Party adopts a right-wing stance on virtually every issue, cheering on Trident and tax cuts for the rich. In contrast, the (slightly older) Christian People’s Alliance is just as hostile to LGBT rights and Islam, but has a suprisingly good record of campaigning against the arms trade and talks quite a bit about poverty.

Shortly before the 2010 general election, Christian Concern appeared to endorse the candidacy of George Hargreaves, the Christian Party’s leader, in an email bulletin to supporters. The bulletin clearly provoked some negative reactions, as the group almost immediately issued another email insisting that they do not endorse one party or another.

This makes an email that they have sent out today particularly interesting. When giving advice to Christians about voting in tomorrow’s local elections, there is only one issue they mention: same-sex marriage.

Subscribers to their mailing list received an “action alert” today that declared:

“Please take the time to find out which of your candidates supports marriage as between one man and one woman before you go to place your vote.”

You might think that the afternoon before polling day is a bit late to be finding out such things. You might also wonder what local elections have to do with marriage law. The email declares:

“Local authorities hold a lot [of] power which they could use to penalise people or organisations who believe in authentic marriage, so it’s important that local councillors are pro real marriage.”

There is then a link to a leaflet produced by the “Coalition for Marriage” about the links between local government and marriage law. It consists largely of unsubstantiated statements. For example:

“Schools could be forced to promote the new definition of marriage in the classroom. The rights of parents could be ignored, and teachers who believe in traditional marriage could be pushed out of their careers… Churches that refuse to hold same-sex weddings may be denied grants or refused permission to hire halls from councils in the future.”

No evidence is provided to back up these claims (I hope that schools will encourage children to consider all sides of the argument on ethical, political and religious issues – as they are already expected to).

The only party that the email mentions by name is the Conservatives. Christian Concern quote a Daily Telegraph poll that shows:

“…that the plan to redefine marriage makes far more people ‘less likely’ to vote Conservative than ‘more likely’ to do so.”

Speaking personally, there is nothing that would make me “less likely” to vote Conservative, as there has never been any chance of my voting Conservative at all.

Will Christian Concern’s supporters vote primarily (or even solely) on the basis of which candidate or candidates oppose same-sex marriage? This could have alarming results. Of course, there are a few Labour, Lib Dem and SNP candidates who oppose marriage equality, but most anti-equality candidates are likely to be Tory, Independent or from far-right parties such as the UK Independence Party.

This is particularly relevant at a time when UKIP is under such scrutiny. Last week, their candidate Anna Marie Crampton was thrown out of the party for anti-Semitic comments on Facebook. When the story broke, one of the first to call for Crampton’s expulsion was Sam Westrop, director of the interfaith group Stand for Peace. He said, ““UKIP, to its credit, has expelled extremist and bigoted members in the past.” It is able to have done so only because it has had so many of them to expel.

Three years ago, I analysed UKIP’s policies and discovered remarkable overlaps with the BNP. UKIP are not only anti-European, anti-migrant and anti-Muslim. They also deny the reality of climate change, support an increase in military spending and want a flat rate of income tax (so milllionaires pay the same as cleaners and nurses). UKIP believe that the Tory cuts are not going far enough. Nigel Farage has described David Cameron, the man currently presiding over the destruction of the welfare state, as “a social democrat”.

And of course, UKIP is also strongly opposed to same-sex marriage. Winston McKenzie, UKIP’s candidate in the Croydon North by-election, made this one of the main points of his campaign, targeting religious voters with the untrue claim that the Tory, Labour and Lib Dem parties want to force churches and mosques to host same-sex weddings.

Mackenzie also described adoption by same-sex couples as “child abuse”. The party’s spokespeople disagreed with him, but they didn’t expel him. Instead, it was the head of UKIP’s youth wing who was forced out of his job for supporting same-sex marriage.

Is this the party that Christians are being urged to support tomorrow? Are Christian Concern simply naïve about the likely economic policies of most candidates opposed to same-sex marriage, or are they actively in favour of them?

IDS and the bishops: Some overlooked facts

Posted on by symonhill

I have often been critical of the Church of England’s leadership for being slow to speak out on issues of economic justice. I’m therefore delighted that 43 CofE bishops have criticised the coalition for cutting benefits (or technically, for raising them by one percent, which is below the rate of inflation and therefore a cut in all but name).

It’s good news that Justin Welby has backed their stance, in one of his first high-profile acts as Archbishop of Canterbury. I am hoping that this is a sign of how he means to go on.

Iain Duncan Smith, the Work and Pensions Secretary, has responded to the bishops with a statement that (while not containing any direct lies) gives a very misleading impression of the welfare budget.

He said:

“This is about fairness. People who are paying taxes, working very hard, have hardly seen any increases in their salary and yet, under the last government, the welfare bill rose by some sixty percent to £200bn. That means they have to pay for that under their taxes, which is simply not fair.”

There are several things that Iain Duncan Smith knows to be true but is not mentioning.

He knows that the majority of the welfare budget goes on pensions and other benefits for older people that the government is not, in any case, proposing to cut.

He knows that many benefits, such as housing benefit and disability living allowance, go to people who are employed as well as people who are unemployed. Some of those “working very hard” are among the beneficiaries of the welfare budget.

He knows that unemployed people, as well as working people, pay taxes. They do not pay income tax, but they pay VAT. Even homeless people pay VAT.

He knows that a major reason for the rise in the welfare budget is that tax credits are subsidising poverty pay, while housing benefit is going into the pockets of landlords at a time of rising private sector rents. But it’s not landlords and employers who will lose out from the coalition’s cuts.

Iain Duncan Smith knows all these things. But he’s not going to mention them. The bishops – and the rest of us – need to proclaim them loudly and clearly.

Living activism (ten years after the Iraq march)

Posted on by symonhill

Ten years ago today, I joined millions of other people around the world in marching against the planned invasion of Iraq. This morning, I was effectively banned from my local branch of Costcutter. It’s been a strange decade.

My conflict with Costcutter began when the manager told me I should not pick up and look at the newspapers before choosing which one to buy. I nearly always buy one (and sometimes more than one) and always put the others back neatly. But I often look at them before making my decision.

The manager told me this is not allowed. I politely asked for the reason, and he was unable to give one. He resorted to repeating that it was not allowed without explaining why. I find legalism like this particularly frustrating. At one point, he suggested that all newspapers basically carry the same news – an alarmingly inaccurate statement.

The discussion went on for some time. He told me I was not welcome to buy newspapers there. I told him I would not be buying anything else there either.

Of course, resisting unreasonable rules in local shops is a very trivial issue compared to resisting the invasion of Iraq. The invasion led to at least 200,000 deaths (by conservative estimates). Ten years later, international NGOs rate Iraq towards the bottom of the world’s league tables when it comes to political freedom and other human rights. The worst fears of those of us who campaigned against the invasion have come to pass.

And yet, many people who marched against the war feel that they made no difference. For first-time activists, it was particularly disheartening. At the time, I had little doubt that Bush and Blair would push ahead with their vicious plans regardless of our action, although I believe that we may have made them more cautious about starting more wars immediately afterwards.

Unfortunately, after that march, the anti-war movement effectively tried to replicate it with more central London marches characterised by long dreary walks and endless repetitive speeches (OK, some were better than others). I made this point when interviewed by Ian Sinclair, author of a new book, The March That Shook Blair. I’m about to go to the book launch.

A few years later, activism took a different turn. Groups such as the Campaign Against Arms Trade (CAAT) combined direct action with media activism and court cases. The coalition’s cuts agenda was greeted by a rise in nonviolent direct action greater than I dared to hope for. Imaginative actions by UK Uncut and their allies saw tax-dodging shoot up the political agenda.

Marches are sometimes important, but they are rarely, if ever, enough in themselves. We need more diverse tactics, more effective tactics and a greater understanding of active nonviolence.  More importantly, we need to root activism in our daily lives.

I’m not suggesting that alternative lifestyles are a substitute for explicit political campaigning. Rather, I believe we should seek to resist injustice in everyday actions and choices. As Jesus of Nazareth put it, they who are faithful in small ways will be faithful in big ways.

Challenging Costcutter’s unfair rule about newspapers is of course a minor example, but I’m glad I did it. There are many (greater) injustices around me that I fail to challenge. And of course, we are all complicit in the unjust systems that we live under and sometimes benefit from.

But I believe we can aim to live out our values in such a way that our very existence is an act of rebellion. It is something to which I aspire. I have a long way to go.