Kenmure Street not Downing Street
Four years ago, on May 13, 2021, Kenmure Street in Glasgow became global news. Hundreds of people united in peaceful protest and successfully freed two men from the UK Home Office van in which they had been detained.
“…a nation that walks forward together” you could say.
In the face of a surround-sound of vicious xenophobia, we need to upscale the efforts to show solidarity, and welcome people seeking refuge in Scotland. This is not to fail to recognise the scale of hatred towards establishment politicians or the historic failures of neoliberalism, but to point out the misdirection and lies of the far-right.
As in most areas of policy we are told, and re-told, that there is no alternative. This is gaslighting. As John Harris writes:
“And here we are. Life continues to go round in circles, and with each grim rotation of the wheel, Farage and his friends get more and more popular.They do so despite the clear gap between the issues they habitually bang on about and what might actually improve millions of lives. Over the weekend, Reform leaders sounded off about teaching kids the wonders of the British empire, the evils of councils’ diversity policies and how they were going to fight green investment. In the places where they will now be in charge, meanwhile, the same stark problems fester on, even amid affluence: hollowed-out local services, terrible public transport, a chronic lack of social housing and a shortage of work more fulfilling than driving delivery vans or making up the parcels that are piled into them. To point that out is not to overlook the politics of culture and identity, but still: if mainstream politicians finally began to act on those issues, maybe they would begin to be less loathed and mistrusted.”
We know that the money sloshing around Reform is wealthy donors fleeing the Tory party and spearheading the psychopathic efforts to quell any semblance of ecological policy, we know that the scenes we see of mass violent deportations and kidnapping in the USA will be replicated here if Reform gets into power, and we know that the language conjured up by Keir Starmer was a deliberate effort to instil fear and dog-whistle to the anger and rage of broken communities. But we also know there is an alternative: Kenmure Street not Downing Street.
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Glasgow City has asked the Home Office not to send any more migrants as it can’t cope.
There is a real human and financial cost to luxury beliefs. Beliefs usually held by the privileged and which will come home to roost.
Altringham is one such example. A very vocal well heeled local progressive virtue signaled on welcoming migrants. Then when a large number of young men were installed in a hotel close to her home, and situated between her children’s school and their home, she now drives them the short distance to and from the school….. Why?
Yes, indeed.
Why? No idea. Why not drop the innuendo and tell us straight ? T
@SteveH, what a curiously-timed gambit, given last night’s Panorama on Special Forces: I Saw War Crimes:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m001ykkf/panorama-special-forces-i-saw-war-crimes
Of course, the most psychotic murderers in the British armed forces might graduate to join your alter ego Captain Manwhoring’s band of mercenaries to sado-regimes. One imagines the reaction of parents to a bunch of such foreign mercenaries being billeted in a hotel on their child’s route to school might be based on more solid concerns than your example (and some parents use any excuse to drive their kids to school, despite motor vehicles on school routes posing a far greater material risk to their classmates’ lives, something that insurers valiantly draw our attention to).
I’m unclear as what constitutes a ‘luxury’ belief. Perhaps a witless faith in the goodness of ‘our troops’? I mean, the programme stated pretty bluntly that our forces murdering of Afghan civilians particularly unarmed children was a major destabilising factor for the NATO-backed Kabul government and a propaganda gold mine for the Taliban. Unless NATO were really backing the Taliban, which seems highly plausible given the circumstances.
It’s hard to see how if British armed forces, working under oversight systems and international humanitarian law are effectively running death squads directed from the top brass and our Ministry of Death, then mercenaries are going to be any better. And it’s not as if this is a conflict-zone-only problem, see that hotel-related incident in Kenya for one example among myriads of rape-murders by British troops in the region even since their Independence. But hey, projection and all that.
Stevie – if you’re going to scour the media to highlight any instances of local discontent try at least to spell the location correctly!
I said about Kenmure St in a comment to the National that morning, which they wouldn’t publish. All comments blocked. One of our proudest days. Iona Fife has a great video online.
Nobody who breaks the law should be arrested!!!!! That is the pinnacle of our moral justness! In reality, that’s pretty fucked-up.
The UK Home office is fucked up, high time it was closed down.
I dunno. Maybe I’m a victim of “luxury beliefs”?
When the UK’s buffet table is empty of food, do I suspect the 2,300-stone business man of eating all the pies? Or the 10-stone “migrant”?
Tough one.
@Wul, not to mention the 23,000 stones of the British Crown Jewels, whose extraction I imagine coincided with fat colonial migrants and very thin locals in places like Bengal and Beijing.
https://www.hrp.org.uk/tower-of-london/history-and-stories/the-crown-jewels/
I was disappointed and puzzled to find out that HE Egerton’s answer to the question ‘Is the British Empire the Result of Wholesale Robbery?’ was no, but at least the historian asked the question (in 1914).
Were the British the worst illegal migrants in history?
• Published: 16 Jan 2023
• Short URL: https://www.oxfam.org.uk/mc/ar8thi/
Extreme poverty increases as billionaires’ fortunes balloon by $2.7bn-a-day (£2bn)
The richest 1% of Britons hold more wealth than 70 per cent of Britons
The richest 1% have pocketed $26 trillion (£21 trillion) in new wealth since 2020, nearly twice as much as the other 99 per cent of the world’s population, an Oxfam report reveals today.
Survival of the Richest highlights how extreme wealth and extreme poverty have increased simultaneously for the first time in 25 years. It shows that the 1% are getting an ever-greater share of the world’s resources, despite already capturing around half of all new wealth during the past decade. In the two years up to December 2021, the 1% grabbed almost two-thirds (63 per cent) of the $42 trillion (£34 trillion) of new wealth created.
The report is published as elites gather in the Swiss ski resort of Davos for the opening day of the World Economic Forum. Inequality is expected to be high on the agenda following the World Bank’s announcement last year that global progress in reducing extreme poverty has come to a halt amid what it expects to be the largest increase in global inequality since World War II.
Oxfam’s report shows that the super-rich have also seen extraordinary gains in the last two years – for every $1 of new global wealth earned by a person in the bottom 90 per cent, each billionaire gained roughly $1.7 million (£1.4 million). The combined fortune of billionaires has increased by a staggering $2.7 billion (£2 billion) a day. This comes on top of a decade of historic gains – both the number and wealth of billionaires having doubled over the last ten years.
At the same time, at least 1.7 billion workers now live in countries where inflation is outpacing wages, and over 820 million people – roughly one in ten people on Earth – are going hungry. Oxfam is calling for a systemic and wide-ranging increase in taxation of the super-rich to claw back crisis gains driven by public money and profiteering.
Danny Sriskandarajah, Oxfam GB chief executive said “The current economic reality is an affront to basic human values. Extreme poverty is increasing for the first time in 25 years and close to a billion people are going hungry but for billionaires, every day is a bonanza.
“Multiple crises have pushed millions to the brink while our leaders fail to grasp the nettle – governments must stop acting for the vested interests of the few.
“How can we accept a system where the poorest people in many countries pay much higher tax rates than the super-rich? A flour seller Oxfam works with in Uganda pays 40 per cent tax each month, while some billionaires’ true tax rates have been as low as three per cent. Governments must introduce higher taxes on the super-rich now.”
Yesterday the United States welcomed 59 refugees, these new arrivals however were white refugees and when asked “why the white Afrikaners were granted refugee status over other communities” Trump replied “It is a genocide that is taking place that you people don’t want to write about”.
https://www.politico.com/news/2025/05/12/trump-afrikaners-refugees-immigration-00342029
On the same day, the US Department of Homeland Security Chief announced that many of the 11,000 Afghans given US asylum after the US troops left would now have to return to Afghanistan.
“We’ve reviewed the conditions in Afghanistan with our interagency partners, and they do not meet the requirements for a TPS (temporary protected status) designation,” Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem said in a statement.
“Afghanistan has had an improved security situation, and its stabilizing economy no longer prevent them from returning to their home country,” she said.
Noem said the TPS designation for Afghanistan would expire on May 20 and the termination would take effect on July 12.”
There has been some objection raised in support of the Afghans facing deportation but it is unlikely to amount to much given the people in charge.
According to the nonprofit AfghanEvac, some 11,000 Afghans are currently covered by TPS in the United States.
“The decision to terminate TPS for Afghanistan is not rooted in reality — it’s rooted in politics,” said Shawn VanDiver, president of AfghanEvac.
“Afghanistan remains under the control of the Taliban,” VanDiver said in a statement.
“There is no functioning asylum system. There are still assassinations, arbitrary arrests, and ongoing human rights abuses, especially against women and ethnic minorities.
“What the administration has done today is betray people who risked their lives for America, built lives here, and believed in our promises.”
https://www.rferl.org/a/afghanistan-refugees-temporary-protective-status-tps-noem-dhs/33411820.html
This is what happens when you take your eye of the political ball, you hand power to those that know how to use it but maybe not for your benefit or that of the wider world. Your vote matters be sure and use it wisely.
” ‘a nation that walks forward together’ you could say”
Except it is not a nation, it is ‘hundreds’ – in your estimation. At the last general election, 2.4 million Scots voted.
In that election, Reform got 168,000 votes; the Scottish Greens got 93,000 and Scottish Socialists got 1,000.
Applauding people who break the law is dangerous territory. When others break the law – for whatever reason – you have no moral authority
to complain. Just Stop Oil was keen on law-breaking till a few of them got a jail sentence.
Across Europe, the populist right is winning power through elections. This includes countries like Germany, and Sweden who thought
themselves immune from such an occurrence. Mostly, the left’s electoral response has been feeble.
Farage won a seat in Parliament at his eighth attempt. By way of contrast, the Scottish left has just about given up on elections.
FA – you do realise 100 hundred years ago Suffragettes were breaking the law and being castigated for it.
Eighty years ago resistance fighters were breaking the law on Germany and occupied countries.
Fifty years ago Nelson Mandela was breaking the law in apartheid SA.
Now we laud these ‘criminals’ and put statues up to them.
Context is everything and absolute statements like yours are innately stupid.
Indeed. It is not an either / or situation. Sometimes breaking the law is justified as history clearly show us. Not to mention the fact most of us have probably done it at some point.
As you say, context is everything. My comments were clearly about today when, in the UK, we have representative democracy.
The fact that you bring ‘apartheid’ South Africa and Nazi Occupied Europe into the argument shows clearly that you do not have a response to the core point I made. Have you never heard of Godwin’s Law ?
FA – you made a blanket statement about breaking the law never being justified with no caveats. I have merely used historical examples, where many people would have said the same as you and today we laud the lawbreakers.
If you want to restrict it to UK there are many examples to show folly of your statement. The Suffragettes, who I mentioned above were based in UK, in case you are not aware, and are an obvious example. I believe there were also many people outraged by Suffragettes campaign stating that their law breaking was wrong regardless of justification just as you have done
I don’t normally support law breaking but recognise there are times when the moral case is so strong that brave people stand up against injustice often at great personal cost.
I am glad you agree context is everything because context is nuanced and the very opposite of your law breaking is never justified assertion.
It is interesting that the example you cite from the UK is over a century old. That speaks of a healthy political culture where – despite its many faults – law breaking is unnecessary. It is disheartening that some commentators view those willing to break the law at Kenmure Street favourably.
What would you have done – what do you do – when faced with your nations complicity with genocide or the ongoing destruction of the ecosystem? Do you write a strongly worded letter to your MP?
I suspect the answer is nothing at all yet here you are castigating people for breaking the law.
FA – A more recent example is mass disobedience campaign against Poll Tax. Initiated in Scotland, protests in Scotland ignored by Westminster, followed by a mass non payment campaign, protests arrests and imprisonments.
Then followed by the PM standing down and successor abandoning Poll Tax.
PS – I don’t want to keep to have giving you examples every time you reply ‘aye but’ !
It’s now realistic to envisage a scenario where Reform gets a majority in Westminster but remain marginal in Scotland, forms a UK government and, without consulting the Scottish people, sets about abolishing the Scottish parliament, or restricting the Scottish Government’s powers to the extent of making its operation impossible. All of which would be perfectly legal under the UK’s system. In those circumstances, staying within the law or choosing to break it becomes a question of tactics (i.e. what is most effective in reversing such an outrage to democracy), rather than principle.
The UK has criminalised peaceful protest and brought in some of the most repressive police and surveillance laws in Europe. People have been breaking the law to stand up for rights and freedoms for a very long time. Many of the rights that you enjoy have been won by people doing precisely this.
‘The UK has criminalized peaceful protest’
In November 2023, over 300,00 people took part in a demonstration in London against Israel’s Gaza policy.
Every weekend I see similar – if smaller – protests in Princes Street.
Have these been criminalized ?
If you really haven’t been following this I’ll do the work and send you to the relevant legislation.
There have been complaints about restrictions on freedom of assembly since the Defence of the Realm Act in 1914. Despite that, demonstrating remains a big part of our political culture. For the Left, it is, all to often, an alternative to electoral politics.
You should inform yourself:
https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2022/32/contents/enacted
&
https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2023/15/enacted