Complete over reaction to Ukuncut’s street party protest outside Nick Cleggs home

Yesterday members of UKuncut a loose organisation targeted Nick Clegg and his home to hold a peaceful street party outside his home. This was not in anyway endangering anyone at all Nick Clegg wasn’t even in and his kids went. Ever since we have seen a complete backlash from the liberals and other such folk who claim to be on the left.

In my view no one was hurt and that wasn’t ever the intention. We may have disagreements with Ukuncut and their methods involved in protest but they are at least getting out there and trying to raise the issues which are affecting ordinary people in an imaginative way. Ok its not your average protest and isn’t march from A to B which we have been used to but fair play for having the guts to try something different and new. It got the news headlines for perhaps the wrong reasons but you can blame them for that. I think the over reaction to the fact that Nick cleggs kids could have been at home and would have felt threatened is nonsense and completely miss’s the point of the protest.

It is clear the journalists and those jumping up and down at this would be the ones who would be opposed to any sort of real fairness in society with ordinary people having a say and protest in their minds is only ok when it doesn’t inconvenience anyone. Well that’s been tried time after time and has not worked. This protest may not have worked but fair play to those at UKuncut they got off their armchairs and did something which few seem to be as we speak. Groups like UKuncut have sprung up precisely because the labour party and the labour movement too have not offered an alternative yet and people are being forced to go it alone.

You can hardly tell me that the trebling of tuition fees, selling of our NHS, some of the deepest harshest brutal cuts we have ever seen on the disabled among much much more is eve remotely comparable to an apparent threatening protest outside Nick Cleggs house. It’s frankly laughable.

Does protest work ?

This is the question I get asked a lot.

Oh so you’re off on another pointless protest I’m asked regularly.
Yes I say another one of those that we seem to be doing more and more of these days. Not that protest has ever gone away but the concept seems to becoming a bit more mainstream again dare I say.

Since the students demonstrations of 2010 and the march for the alternative on March 26 and the subsequent strikes that followed now with the workfare protests protests seem to be cool again for want of a better word.

No longer just for the far left but many different sorts of people seem to be getting seen on protests.

So do they work ?
Protest works! With the right action on the right issue at the right place and time, a small band of people can win the day – or at least strongly influence the national debate. That's the message after the recent workfare protests.
Trotsky called it the little lever and he was right a small group of people who have the right ideas at a certain time can catch that wave and gain a larger influence than they may otherwise be able to. As socialists due to a mass movement at the moment developing and the ever evident absence of a mass workers party putting forward the arguments of true opposition to capitalism we are having to use tactics as catching the right mood at the right time to propel ourselves forward in the struggle and get a hearing.

Of course as Marxists these conditions don’t just come about like that on a whim they are brought about due to a specific set of circumstances and events of consciousness. But as I say having the right ideas and programme at that time can really push you forward. Take for example Youth fight for jobs during the recent workfare protests we had a representative asked on to news night to speak on the actions. That would not have happened if they didn’t think we had a point even if they didn’t fully agree they clearly saw us as a credible opposition rather than the labour party and asked us to put someone forward which we gladly did.

Also take UK uncut which I do have reservations about but even still you can’t deny they have got tax justice back firmly on the agenda and now it may or may not be linked but tax does now a big issue once again with the recent budget and George Osborne have to take tax evasion a bit more seriously. Now I don’t seriously think he is suddenly going to go all anti capitalist tax the rich till the pips squeak on us but certainly the level of consciousness has shifted towards a feeling that the rich do not pay their fair share and even among reformists of capitalism are having to admit maybe the financial sector has gone too far and they do need a good spanking or we could have a mass uprising on our hands. Which clearly the ruling class do not want. SO we may see an attempt to go after tax evaders as an attempt to quell descent and curb the financial mercantile sector of capitalism as Karl Marx called them. A move back to more industrial sovereign wealth based capitalism may be their preferred way out of this crisis with a move back to state capitalism to keep their system alive in a critical stage. All this is theoretical and may not happen but just some possibilities as capitalism will look to see off an uprising and mass anger anyway it possibly can. As the old phrase went its reform or revolution if we don’t give them reform they will over throw us and it may get to that point where big reforms may be granted in the face off a crumbling system.

But be under no illusion protest does work and on a small or large scaled certainly has the power to change things but it has to be linked to a clear programme, a programme of Marxism with a end goal of changing society to benefit the millions not the millionaires. For a better fairer socialist society.

the growing movement of the excellent UKuncut

I've been following the progress of a movement known on the internet on twitter and facebook called UKuncut.
They are at this website here : http://www.ukuncut.org.uk/

I was listening to a bbc radio 4 podcast on the growing movement and the excellent work they are doing so far tonight, you can listen back to it here for a limited amount of time only.

http://j.mp/i3ZYhW

Please do listen to this it offers a good arguement from both sides and includes interviews from the founders of Ukuncut and representitives of the tax payers alliance which i will come on to a bit later on.

If you havent heard of them before UKuncut are a new protest movement group set up on the internet using twitter and facebook to communicate to spread the word and highlight the fact that while public sector money is being cut hugely that on the other side to represent that we are not in fact contary to what some tories may say we are not all in this together.

Ukuncut's aim is to bring to the wider publics attention that big business's multinationals in alot of cases areavoiding and dodging huge tax bills. Whilst this is not strictly against the law it is moraley wrong in my opinion.

With Vodafone having been found to have avoided paying a estimated 6 billion pounds to the british HMRC this provoked anger with people and UKuncut took to the streets to make this point heard that there is something very wrong going on out there.

In the podcast it highlights some of the protesters inside Top shop in Oxford street in London before christmas protests of which i followed very closely on twitter live at the time. But to hear actual sound clips from the protests gives me real hope and belief that there are people out there fighting for a fairer future for all.

People such as Phillip Green who i have blogged about in the past were targetted by UKuncut. ALthough Phillip has not committed any tax evasion as far as we know his wife is a non british citizen and it is rumoured he ships a lot of his company Arcadia's profits off to Monaco where she apparently lives to avoid having to pay tax on it while in Britain.

I feel this is a outrage and for innocent hard working people in the public sector having to loose their jobs due to cuts and job loss's when no cuts wouldh ave to be made if cases's like Vodafone and Top shops owners paid their tax properly we would be ok.

What angers Ukuncut protesters even more is the absolute lack of effort being made from our present government which is conservative lead with the vast majority of the current cabinet being millinaires themselves. They feel a lot lot more could be done to plug the loop holes that these rich multinationals are exploiting for their own benifit. To me it smacks of a very unbalanced unequal system when you have hard working honest poor people paying their bit of tax which will be a lot of their weekly earnings to the government when the people who really can afford to pay tax and a hell of a lot more in my opinion do not consistently.

The tax payers alliance which i eluded to earlier in my post rear their ugly head again. They all seem to be a load of daily mail reading look after yourself type person really and feel that we will have to put up with this as it has always been this way in this country. They also feel that taxing big business's too much in the end will drive them away to other countries. To me i'd say good ridence really maybe in their place we would bring in fairer and more honest companies who want to play by the rules. We as a country need to be setting an example i feel as with a lot of things our actions are often reflected and replecated around the world. So i whole hartidly support Ukuncut and their efforts to protest and make their message heard. Also good on radio 4 for highlighting their efforts i think its about time this sort of message is heard loud and clearly and those who are not playing by the rules are named and shamed.