What’s happening on the 26th March?

This article titled “David Cameron is uniting Britain. Against him” was written by Dan Hancox, for guardian.co.uk on Monday 28th February 2011 17.42 UTC The era of identity politics has brought us many great things, and it would be foolish to disparage the self-definition and empowerment achieved by minorities of all kinds. But if it has a failing, it is that it has atomised us, and made us lose sight of what once was called “the commonweal”. I miss the times when musket-carrying rebels would stand against tyrannical kings, unfurl a scroll and declaim a list of grievances that would take 17 hours to read – because they covered everything. Muskets aside, this time may be upon us again. Despite failing to win a majority when up against a desperately unpopular prime minister, in only 10 months, the coalition government has achieved what seemed impossible, amid the isolated melancholia of a late capitalist downturn, and brought Britain close to a point of genuine national unity. Against them. As their arbitrary, scatter-gun assault on the commonweal continues, they will push more and more groups into solidarity against them – for it is the transgressive word “solidarity” that has been 2011′s rallying cry, from Wisconsin to Tahrir Square to Westminster Bridge. Already, David Cameron’s government has managed to make us believe that it hates trees, children playing, children reading, poor children, vulnerable children, poor students, the poor in general, women, higher education, culture, young people, old people, poor people having somewhere to live, rich people having to pay fair taxes, the free assembly of peaceful protesters, the north, the environment, charities, disabled people, people having jobs, civic engagement, public safety, libraries, the National Health Service, public transport and all public services. The challenge is to make it clear that, to coin a phrase, we’re all in this together. UK Uncut has done brilliantly to get its message on corporate tax avoiders into the Daily Mail on an almost weekly basis, but why shouldn’t it? Mail readers may hate paying taxes, but that’s all the more reason why they should be angered by Barclays’ reluctance to do so. With the TUC rising like lions after an extraordinarily long slumber, the mega-demo against the cuts on 26 March has to draw people from all walks of life, like the Daily Telegraph readers at the Iraq war protests Mehdi Hasan refers to in his great speech on the cuts. Both the word and the Twitter hashtag “solidarity” have been scrawled across the map of the world in 2011. Failing to find any updates from the Wisconsin trade union protests on the BBC, Sky or CNN 24-hour news channels on Sunday, I went on Twitter and discovered @brandzel‘s extraordinary live web stream. When I tuned in, he was wandering around the occupied state capitol building, interviewing people and commenting on this extraordinary political moment. “It’s funny,” he said to himself, and to thousands of people watching around the world, “‘solidarity’ used to be a hard-left, old-fashioned word to me, but it’s completely changed now, it’s something universal.” Armchair cynics who gripe that there’s no point in protesting if you don’t have a unifying plan or ideology completely miss the point – no one ideology would ever unite groups as diverse as those who will suffer from the Tory cuts. What are we for? Everything they’re not – everything they’re destroying. New Labour failed to “make the case” for social justice and the welfare state, its hand-wringing advocates complained, as poll ratings plummeted in the 2000s – it’s a tragic way of bringing out everyone’s latent socialist, but making that case is exactly what this aggressively pro-market, dangerously unthinking Tory government is doing. With his cuts and public sector sell-offs, Cameron unites us all. On 26 March, and in the summer beyond, we will see what we can do with that unity.

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UK Uncut How to do a Bail-In

This article titled “Protesters target Barclays over tax avoidance” was written by Tracy McVeigh and Andrew Clark, for guardian.co.uk on Saturday 19th February 2011 15.53 UTC Protestors have targeted more than 35 branches of Barclays bank with pickets, poetry readings and even children’s colouring competitions, in another of a series of days of direct action organised by the UK Uncut group. They were highlighting Barclays’ admission that it paid just £113m in UK corporation tax in 2009 – a year when it rang up a record £11.6bn of profits. Several branches were closed down to the public as protesters staged peaceful sit-ins, impromptu reading groups and creches in dozens of cities and towns across Britain including Edinburgh, Birmingham, Liverpool and Lewes. At Tottenham Court Road, one of eight branches of Barclays in London to be targeted, some 40 to 50 people heard comedienne Josie Lawrence pledge her support before a mixed group of people, both old and young, pushed their way into the branch and proceeded to hold a two hour sit-in. Supporters of UK Uncut said the plan was not to shut the banks down but to “open them up”, occupy them and transform them into “something people need but will be cut”. Ruth Griffiths, 36, a UK Uncut supporter, said: “Today we are transforming the banks into schools, leisure centres and libraries and forests because it’s society that’s too big to fail, not a broken banking system.” The group staged “debate” points outside several of the branches and invited passers-by to discuss the cuts and the banks. Most of the gathered volunteers said people were angry at the refusal of Barclays’ chief executive, Bob Diamond, to apologise for the banks’ role in the economic crisis and saying the time for remorse was now over. Barclays has been accused of occupying a “parallel universe” following disclosure that it paid £113m of corporation tax on its £11.6bn of annual profits – a rate amounting to 1%. The bank revealed the figure in response to questions posed at a parliamentary select committee by Labour MP Chuka Umunna, who described its low level as “quite staggering”. It was a view shared by UK uncut supporters at the branch protests. One said: “We are here today because we are tired of companies ripping off the public and using economies of scale and clever accounting laws to get away with not paying taxes. “We are tired of us paying into the public sector and seeing our public sector decimated while corporations are effectively getting away with theft. It’s legal but immoral.” Emma Draper, 25, who was outside Piccadilly Circus Barclays, said: “The government is allowing banks such as Barclays to get away with not paying huge percentages of their taxes while at the same time slashing public services. “The cuts are not necessary, they are a political choice because the government chooses to continue to prop up banks such as Barclays instead of funding public services.” Barclays said it had operations in more than 50 countries and that it had used legitimate tactics to “carry over” losses made at the height of the financial crisis and to offset these deficits against its 2010 tax burden. Its total bill to the UK taxman was £2m – but most of this comprised payroll tax on employees’ wages. “The corporate tax affairs of an organisation with the global footprint of Barclays are complex, and not reducible to simplistic comparisons,” said a Barclays spokesman. But Umunna, who sits on the Treasury select committee, said the figure was totally inadequate: “We need to ensure the banks make a fairer contribution to reducing the deficit that they helped to create.” Campaigners have contrasted Barclays, which paid out £2.5bn in salaries and bonuses last year, to the austerity squeezing the broader population. Max Lawson, a spokesman for the Robin Hood Tax Campaign, said: “This is proof that banks live in a parallel universe to the rest of us – paying billions in bonuses and unhampered by the inconvenience of paying tax.”

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