Too young to know?

Last Saturday I was out protesting against the Government’s Workfare program. It was, all in all, a good protest, though I have plenty of thoughts on strategy for the campaign in future. One incident stuck out to me – a scene of about five seconds that massively wound me up, in which a mother demanded I not give her daughter a flier. I responded as best I could, but her final words on the matter were “can’t you see she’s only 14?”.

Surviving life in two cultures

One of the debates about the Church and Christian life that recurs in Soul Survivor is the difference between trying to expand Christian Subculture and actually taking Jesus’ messages of love, justice, forgiveness, etc to the people. Its a critical debate on one level, especially for a church so laden with its own peculiar culture that is butting up against many other cultures.

Phone Hacking: a crisis of agency for the rest of us

The unearthing of a hacking scandal at NewsCorp and the massive media circus of Murdoch ‘on trial’ before the commons select committee provided a spectacle that held what felt like the whole population in some sort of trance. It felt as if the whole of the establishment was just about to cave in on itself. The problem, and the reason I found the whole episode so difficult to deal with, was the impossible task of finding a way to do anything.

Guest Post: Society’s Disabling Restrictions

Amidst a rising tide of negativity towards disabled people in the press, Disability Rights activism is becoming more and more urgent. I got asked by Nicola Sleap if I would publish this article she wrote for SCM’s Movement magazine as a guest post. I’m glad she did, because unlike her, I’m not on the receiving end of this shift.

UK Riots: Hopelessly Violent?

This has certainly proven to be a year of unrelenting, if deeply contrasting uprisings, and it shows no sign of abating, with India the latest to enter the fray with anti-corruption protests that saw more arrests than our riots did. If its possible to make objective comparisons between the #ukriots and all the other uprisings of recent months, then I intend to do it.

Coalition of Resistance National Council Report

I wrote the following for the Common Wealth Network blog, so it has a fairly specific set of recommendations at the end, but I also thought that many of you would be interested to read about my experience attending my first decision making council in London for the Coalition of Resistance, a major endeavour to unite people against cuts and privatisations.

“The Tiananmen Question”

It is probably one of the most iconic protest photos in history. A single human facing down a huge, ugly symbol of totalitarianism. China’s recent history has shown that capitalism is more than capable of thriving in the absence of human rights and freedoms that many in the West have long contended go hand in hand with economic liberalism.

More than just words? A response to the TUC

Today has been a big day at the TUC. So big that the York Press rang me for a quote from York Stop the Cuts – Right to Work campaign. My response on the spur of the moment was that I “welcome” this announcement, but actually, I think that was too weak, but Union action can only be one part of the picture, and must not prevent a critique of modern Trade Unions from being put forwards.

The Cuts and Campaign Strategies

As you might imagine, the cuts aren’t just occupying a lot of my campaigning time, they’re also occupying some huge number of hours of discussions in pubs, cafes and at meetings. I really don’t think a good enough strategy has emerged for dealing with the cuts, and I feel that a lot of groups are far too hesitant to bring out a full scale debate in the public arena, despite a clear need to break the ideological consensus behind the program of cuts that is being unleashed.

Playing the role in front of us

Recently I’ve been doing some big reassessments of where I am and what I’m doing. Its a pretty tough process, and will involve pulling out of at least a couple of groups, somewhat facilitated by the range of fresh issues and challenges being foisted on the British activist in the wake of the change of government. Into this, I’ve been hearing, in more than one place, the need to “play the role in front of us”.