Arrested for flying a flag

On 18 November I appeared alongside a Kurdish comrade, Beritan, at Westminster Magistrates Court charged under the Terrorism Act 2000 because we had held a flag. The flag in question is the flag of the Kurdish people’s struggle and resistance against racism and discrimination of the Turkish state. We reject the attempts by the British government to criminalise the Kurdish people’s struggle, just as Turkey does by jailing thousands of ordinary Kurdish people simply for campaigning for their rights.

We were so happy to have around 50 people who came to show solidarity with us and we will continue to put the British government in the dock, exposing their complicity and weapons sales. Please join us on 22 February when our main trial will take place and we will again turn the spotlight on the British government’s complicity with the Turkish regime’s policies of racism and annihilation of the Kurds.

MARK CAMPBELL
London

Remembering Karen Taylor

I learned of my sister’s passing on 21 November while I was on the streets of Derry. Karen had been there herself, at the early stages of the Bloody Sunday Enquiry. From her youth she had stood with us, as a member of the Revolutionary Communist Group, in solidarity with Ireland’s struggle and the battle against racist apartheid in South Africa. We later marched with her, under the banner she had made in a night, as Dundee Against Welfare Sanctions. Karen was with us on the local Black Lives Matter demonstrations of summer 2020. She was where she had to be when it mattered. Salute to our sister comrade! Karen Taylor. Presente!

Aig Fois. At Peace.

Michael MacGregor
Dundee

Jailed for protesting against racism

On 27 September two Black Lives Matter protesters were found guilty of violent disorder by jury trial at Newcastle Crown Court. One has been sentenced to two years and five months while another awaits sentencing in January. The two join a third activist sentenced earlier in the year. As the Anti-Racist Protest Defence Campaign highlights: ‘The activists are NOT GUILTY. Anyone who attended the Monument protests on 13 June 2020 knows that the far right “statue defenders” […] were armed with bags of alcohol and smoke flares, they threw Nazi salutes and hurled racist abuse at BLM activists. Northumbria Police allowed these thugs to assemble at Monument. We were showered with glass bottles for over eight minutes whilst “taking the knee”. The previous week thousands of BLM protesters marched peacefully around the city centre without incident. Young black and Asian men have been singled out and charged for the violence caused by organised racists. This is racist, political policing.’

We reject any attempt to equate the fascist violence of 13 June 2020 with BLM protests. Defend the right to stand against racism!
To donate to the support fund or write to the imprisoned activists contact [email protected]

Sam Mcgill
Newcastle

Unfit housing kills

Two-year old Awaab Ishak died in 2020 from exposure to black mould in his family’s one-bedroom flat in Rochdale, coroner Joanne Kearsley found at the inquest. His parents, Faisal Abdullah and Aisha Amin, reported the damp and mould in autumn 2017. They were told to paint over it and open the windows. More than 175 years since Engels wrote about working class living conditions in England, capitalism’s propensity for creating slum housing unfit for human habitation is very much alive in Labour-dominated Greater Manchester.

The landlord, Rochdale Boroughwide Housing (RBH), has more than 12,000 properties across Rochdale borough. Chief Executive Gareth Swarbrick and Director of Customer and Community Nadhia Khan and three other executives pay themselves six-figure salaries whilst the wages of their frontline staff have fallen in value by 21.7% since 2019. They are balloting with Unite for strike action.

On the Freehold Estate where Awaab lived there were over 600 complaints in one month, July 2019, about damp and mould. Problems are not dealt with directly and promptly but only through claimants’ solicitors. Many of the tenants are refugees and asylum seekers. Racism has played a major part. One tenant observed that an accent or a foreign-sounding name was sufficient for a complaint to be ignored.

As with Grenfell Tower, punishments are unlikely. About 450,000 homes in England have problems with ventilation, damp and mould and these can only worsen as heating becomes unaffordable.

PETE LYNCH
Manchester

Energy meters punish poverty

Un/under-employment and poverty pay mean that people can’t be sure they’ll have the money to pay their next bill and can’t be tied down by a contract. They’re left with little choice but going on a prepayment (or ‘pay-as-you-go’) meter. These meters are often at a higher tariff than credit meters. A Londoner supplied by Eon would pay about £200 more a year on a prepayment meter. Suppliers may also put customers on a prepayment meter if they fall into debt with the supplier. They include a protracted version of the debt in the tariff, making it even higher and harder to heat your home moment to moment.

Prepayment customers are also more quickly hit with price rises and have even faced a higher price cap than credit meter customers. Back in February 2022, the price cap for customers credit meters, with longer-term contracts, rose £693 to £1,971. But the cap for prepayment customers – people who are already struggling – rose £708 to £2,017.

It is, of course, the great wisdom of capitalism’s free markets that brings this about. Suppliers prefer a purchasing pattern they can count on: long-term contracts. Since it’s not useful for consumers to buy fuel they don’t know they’ll use, suppliers offer a cheaper tariff to those on credit meters (vs prepayment meters) in order to incentivise this type of consumption. They can even offer fixed rate deals if the wholesale energy prices were lower when the supplier bought them.

The inverse of this is to punish poverty. Suppliers charge more for types of consumption that are more useful to the millions gripped by poverty. And once your prepayment meter runs to zero and your emergency credit is used up, you’re left in the cold and dark, punished for not being able to contribute to the billions of pounds in windfall profits that wholesale energy suppliers have seen this year.

Joe smith
Birmingham

Justice for Chris Kaba

The murder of Chris Kaba at the hands of the Brixton Police in October 2022 once again demonstrated the callousness and brutality of the British state. Black working class communities are under constant threat and surveillance by the state.

The Independent Office for Police Conduct’s statement on Chris’ murder says the full investigation into it will take six to nine months. Investigations like these are drawn out to de-fang working class anger and divert attention to the possibility of some form of redress from the state. It is used to demobilise action on the streets and force any movement on the ground to a standstill.

It is time to set the foundations for a movement that is not fooled by the promise of investigations, inquests and inquiries, and which aims directly at the oppressive structures of the racist state.

Lev Orfeu
West London

FIGHT RACISM! FIGHT IMPERIALISM! 291 December 2022/January 2023