At this time of flag-waving, when the government hopes the upcoming Jubilee and Olympics will create a ‘feel-good-factor’ to hide the devastating impact of their unfair and unnecessary cuts programme, we must question and debate what this country is really about and what we, as a society, with progressive, democratic values, want it to be. This is the first in a series of blogs published this week on why we must take action now to fight against the cuts.

The Jubilee is a celebration by the rich for the rich- we should instead celebrate a multicultural Britain and stand up against the cuts by Zita Holbourne, Black Activists Rising Against Cuts

When the Royal Wedding took place last year, it was estimated that it cost the economy £5 billion with an estimated £20 million of taxpayer's money spent on security alone. The Royal Wedding offered nothing for ordinary working class people apart from the local authority grants for street parties. These were offered at the same time that funding for much needed services, that communities rely on, was being cut by the same local authorities. Anybody that dared to express a dissenting view publicly was promptly removed by police.

The ‘pomp and glory’ of the Queen’s Jubilee will offer much the same as the Royal Wedding - a celebration by the rich, for the rich- while the royal family for me is a symbol of the legacy of enslavement (from the Transatlantic Slave Trade) and Empire. This symbol does little to encourage me to participate or indeed feel welcomed to participate in the celebrations.

Whenever I see the British flag waving I immediately think of the BNP who have incorporated it into their logo, while fascists have also selected St George's Day as a key date for parading their hatred. I have to laugh when I see that because it would seem that the racists and fascists couldn’t be bothered to look into St George’s ethnicity and heritage. But on a serious note, I think we need to reclaim both the British flag and St George’s day because neither should be a symbol of racism in the UK.

David Cameron has declared that multiculturalism has failed and is dead- what does that say for the multicultural communities that make up our society? Does this failure apply to the old British cultural tradition of a street party bringing neighbours together to celebrate?

There’s little to celebrate for the vast majority of working class people in the UK today – frozen pay, job cuts, having to work longer to receive our pensions whilst paying more in and getting less out, young people cannot afford an education and over a million of them cannot get work, the welfare state is under attack and facilities we might have once enjoyed in our communities have been cut.

So why not use the street parties as a coming together of minds and hearts and use the opportunity to mobilise and build campaigns to defend our multicultural societies, stand up against the discrimination of cuts impacting on black communities, women, disabled people, young people, children and the elderly in a show of strength and unity.

We support UK Uncut’s Great British Street Party for public services, rights and a welfare system.

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BARAC together with other organisations including trade unions will be organising a public meeting to coincide with the opening of the Olympics on the theme of global human rights. To get updates on this please join our email list: barac.info@gmail.com.

You can also connect with us via our website, www.blackactivistsrisingagainstcuts.blogspot.com facebook ‘black activists rising against cuts’ and twitter BARACUK.

This is a creative call out!

May 26. Get it in your diary...

On May 26, in towns and cities around the UK there will be anti-cuts street parties themed around the year 1948, (the year when the NHS and welfare state were born & the last time the Olympics were in town). People will be gathering to protest, party and picnic, talk, listen, and try to define what we want for our future. A future uncut.

This is an artist call out, wherever you live in the UK, we're after your creative contributions, performance, readings, music, song, poetry, film, paintings, activities, games. It can be anything. Something that needs an audience (we can help with that bit) or just bring your own DIY activity to share.

You can read out loud, get interactive, messy (paints, pens, lego?), work with a small group, one person, or a large crowd. It can be for kids and grown ups – themed (NHS, Women, Welfare and Real Democracy are the 4 different blocs for the London protest). Content can be political, vintage1948 or just about JOY.

It’d be great to have as much creative activity as possible and we hope you are able to come along to support and be part of your nearest street party (here's a list of all the towns and cities in the UK where they are happening).

And if you can’t be there in person, you can send us something. We'll read it out/perform it for you. You'll be with us in spirit.

We want the day to be positive, defiant, hopeful. Packed with good ways of sharing thoughts, ideas, resistance.

If you've got something to share, please bring it on the day. Email ukuncut@gmail.com with your ideas and/or questions and please help us spread this call out far and wide.

See you there!

More info here: The Jubilee is a national sedative- this is a national wake up call!

Check out our 1948 Street Party call out video

Please note our 4 LONDON MEETING POINTS

#futureuncut #May26

written by Cat, an Art-Uncutter/ UK-Uncutter...

Photo credit: DulcieLee

Common Sense, Common Good, Common Wealth by Dan Hind

(Dan will be speaking at the Great London Street Party on Saturday May 26th)

Let’s start with the good news. The argument about capitalism is over and its opponents have won. The crisis that began in 2007 has exploded the old common sense about political and economic organization. We now know that an unexamined credit system presents an irresistible temptation to insiders. Unregulated markets are an absolutely terrible at securing the common good. Our current arrangements are bankrupt, both literally and intellectually. The apparatus of expertise and prestige that was used to silence opposition to the demands of the rich has collapsed.

Now the bad news. The guardians of this old common sense have, for the most part, refused to admit that anything is amiss. Politicians aren’t fools. They have no choice now but to ignore the obvious and act as if they know what they are doing. They were the advocates and the beneficiaries of what turned out to be a gigantic irresponsibility laced with outright fraud. But so what if they were wrong? They are, after all, in Britain at least, still in charge.

Many in the media, too, cannot bring themselves to admit that they missed the biggest story of their lives. An unsustainable debt bubble inflated while they chatted to their prized contacts in the City and in Westminster. To admit failure would raise awkward questions about the structural weaknesses of print and broadcast journalism. Broadcasters and newspapers cannot illuminate what other powerful interests want to leave in the dark. Their best policy is to stick to the consensus that exonerates them, for all its manifest absurdity.

But there are reasons to be hopeful. The occupations and assemblies in Britain last year, for example, were obviously part of a much wider phenomenon. They consciously imitated Occupy Wall Street, and ran in parallel with occupations in hundreds of other cities worldwide. They were also one point in a series of moves against the established order. They followed, and were influenced by, what happened in the Arab world and in southern Europe. Events in one country inspired people in another. Techniques and styles of action were adopted and adapted to local conditions. This process is going to continue, in ways that are hard to predict. This international dimension makes it more difficult for its critics to dismiss what is happening as a jamboree for extremists. It is the established order that is looking increasingly extreme.

The sequencing is unpredictable. Progress is very far from certain. The governing powers still have some cards to play. They are brilliant at framing matters in simple, easily understood terms that are radically misleading. And the media, as I said, are in large part taking their cue from them. And yet there are signs that their combined power to set the terms of debate is waning.

We are starting to see important changes in the electoral field. Until recently, voters were content to punish incumbent governments for high unemployment and cuts in public services. This has benefited established right-wing parties in many countries. But people are starting to support parties that offer some substantial hope of change, even if it means dispensing with dogmas about the need to satisfy the markets. Politics is no longer defined, implicitly or explicitly, as ‘arguments about things that the rich don’t much care about’.

Greece, which has been living with the policies favoured by the extremist centre for longer than most of Europe, is moving towards a radically different politics, in which the shortcomings of capitalism as a system can be openly acknowledged and addressed. This would have been impossible to imagine in the years before the crisis began.

France has elected a socialist president. Responsible opinion rushes to assure us that François Hollande is a moderate, a technocrat. But he was elected against an upsurge in support for both the National Front and the Left Front. As an aside, the leader of the latter, Mélenchon will run against the former, Marine le Pen, in June, in what will be an important test of the relative strength of those who blame immigration and those who blame the financial sector for the crisis. At any event, President Hollande knows that he cannot govern from the extremist centre without putting his presidency and his party in grave danger. The French socialists have seen what happened to Pasok in Greece. Elites, too, are capable of learning from events elsewhere.

In Britain, too, there are signs that things are changing. In March, in the Bradford West by-election, George Galloway took more votes than the three main parties’ candidates combined. The news media presented this as a setback for Labour. There was more to it than that. And this month a clear majority of the electorate didn’t bother to vote in local elections. Average turnout was around 32%. This and Bradford West are evidence for a remarkable indifference to the political drama staged in Westminster.

The occupations last year derived some of their energy from the exhilaration of trespass. Faced with the transgressions of the governing powers, people transgressed back. They gathered where they wanted and took control of their immediate circumstances. There is an important lesson here, for those who are sick of the shambling, mumbling imitation of public debate that currently surrounds us. And there’s a challenge, too. Can we show the same energy in an effort to occupy and transform the governing institutions of the country?

As movements of protest become movements for change, their challenge to the existing order becomes ever more pointed. The stakes get higher. We can no longer be content with complaint. If we are serious, we need to meet and deliberate, on our terms, in ways that seem right to us, about our response to an ongoing, and deepening economic, social, and environmental crisis.

I am not suggesting that we form an Occupy party, or anything similar, at this stage. I am suggesting that we meet as political publics, and establish programmes that address the needs of most people in the country. The candidates and the campaigns can come later. First we must discover the extent, and hence the limits, of our power. In assembly we can do far more than we realise, far more than our opponents want to admit.

Most people want to be able to discuss the future in ways that respect evidence and reason. At the moment mainstream political and economic debate has a fantastical quality. Only those claims that conform to the old, exhausted dogmas can be permitted a hearing. Capitalism has failed. So we need more capitalism. Finance has proved ruinously expensive. So we need to set finance free.

It is time to break out of this suffocating nonsense. And we’re the only ones who can. Whether that’s bad news or good news depends on what we decide to do now.

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Dan Hind is an author and journalist. His publications include The Return of the Public and the e-pamphlet Common Sense: Occupation, Assembly, and the Future of Liberty.

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