LINE OF DUTY won many plaudits, but critics felt that, as the series wore on, its tales of police corruption began to strain credulity. Drama requires the willing suspension of disbelief, and intelligent audiences need rounded, conflicted characters, not vast conspiracies and moustache-twirling villains. We’re not naïve – we know police forces are hotbeds of corruption – but it all seemed too cartoonish and outlandish to be believed. A certain “reality effect” was missing — or so many concluded.

However, the real-life case of Daniel Morgan, the private detective murdered 34 years ago in a South London car park, could be Line of Duty’s case for the defence. The independent inquiry into his death features enough elaborate plot twists and cartoonish villainy to keep Ted Hastings busy for another six series. It’s a tale of tabloid “dark arts”, burglaries, bugging, bribing bent coppers and cover-ups that goes right to the top, to the most senior police officer in the land, Cressida Dick, who now faces calls for resignation. This one story somehow manages to encompass all the seediest elements of Thatcherism and its aftermath.

I first encountered the case years ago, through the podcast Untold. It’s so convoluted that retelling it here would be impossible, so I recommend listening to the whole series.

What I can say is that the upshots should be enormous. Theoretically. Indeed, the independent panel believes that the findings here are of a similar magnitude to the Stephen Lawrence inquiry. “The Metropolitan police’s culture of obfuscation and a lack of candour is unhealthy in any public service,” the report says. “Concealing or denying failings, for the sake of the organisation’s public image, is dishonesty on the part of the organisation for reputational benefit. In the panel’s view, this constitutes a form of institutional corruption.”

It only adds to the intrigue that powerful forces are rallying round and refusing to accept the implications. For instance, one of the key findings is that senior officers led by Cressida Dick delayed giving access to “Holmes”, a database of relevant documents. “The panel has never received any reasonable explanation for the refusal over seven years by [then] assistant commissioner Dick and her successors to provide access to the Holmes accounts to the Daniel Morgan independent panel,” they said.

However, Dick retains full political backing, not just from predictable Priti Patel (who has “full confidence” in the commissioner) but also, in gentler terms, from the London mayor, Labour’s Sadiq Khan. The political class has formed a united front around the slogan, “No problem here, please disperse”.

The Morgan family’s verdict is just as damning as the report: “At almost every step, we found ourselves lied to, fobbed off, bullied, degraded and let down time and time again.” Given the conclusive findings, can the British state afford to betray victims of police corruption once again? Sadly, early political responses, and historical experience, suggests it believes it can.

The post Source Direct: Bugging, Burglary and Bribing Bent Coppers appeared first on Source.

WHEN the world grinds you down, you take what victories you can get.

Such a victory was achieved last week, when a West Lothian resident and her disabled son who were under threat of losing their home, despite accommodations which would meet her son’s needs not being available for a further three weeks, received a last-minute reprieve.

Their eviction was delayed thanks to a campaign by the Living Rent tenants’ union supported by SNP MP Hannah Bardell and Scottish Green co-leader Lorna Slater, the latter of whom commented: “The fact their landlord was ready to kick this family out of their home during Covid restrictions and before suitable alternative accommodation was ready shows why we need more legal protections for tenants… Housing is a human right, and if landlords cannot respect that it needs to be embedded in legal processes.”

This triumph was not only proof that Living Rent get shit done – tell your friends about it – but served to underline what more they could potentially offer, if they were given the chance. This was the argument of the Scottish Greens earlier this week, when they called for the tenants union to have a stronger voice in shaping the future of private renting in Scotland.

Given that tenants shamefully have no representation on the Scottish Government’s Private Rented Sector Resilience Group – an oversight which is difficult to perceive as being unintentional – Patrick Harvie told MSPs: “Renting in Scotland is expensive and insecure, something that has been exposed by the pandemic. The interests of landlords have been put first while Scotland still lags behind many continental European countries in tenants’ rights.

“It is unacceptable that there is no voice of tenants on The Private Rented Sector Resilience Group at a time when tenants’ unions like Living Rent have been playing a critical role in protecting tenants from abuse of power by irresponsible landlords.

“As the Scottish Government drafts a Rented Sector Strategy, it should take inspiration from countries like Sweden where tenants’ unions are commonplace, influential and very much part of the sector.”

This proposal could only be opposed either by those in the pocket of the private rented sector or unwilling to stand up to it. Scotland’s landlords will be counting on complicity or cowardice of this kind in the days to come, as they gear up to oppose any extension to the eviction ban ahead of a Scottish Parliament debate on the matter next week.

The letting agency body Propertymark today urged its members to write their MSPs, warning that there is insufficient data to support a policy decision of this kind. “Our members want to work with tenants,” complained Propertymark’s Daryl Mcintosh, “and it is not constructive to assume the default position will be for agents and landlords to want to evict.” Diddums.

Putting aside for the moment the question of how well it usually works out for tenants to rely upon the kindness and understanding of landlords, this argument does raise an obvious question: if they have no default desire to evict, why oppose an eviction ban?

While you try to figure that out – it probably won’t take long – it is worth noting that the Coronavirus (Extension and Expiry) (Scotland) Bill, announced by Covid Recovery Secretary John Swinney earlier this month, does extend certain parts of last year’s emergency Coronavirus acts, but so far only pertains to increased notice period for evictions in the private and social rented sectors.

Last week, in response to Scottish Labour deputy leader Jackie Baillie’s query over whether an eviction ban would be included in the new bill, Swinney gave the “commitment” – such as it is – that the Scottish Government “will engage constructively on this particular question.”

Those who have kept track of the growing calls for an extension of the eviction ban will notice that this was remarkably similar to Swinney’s earlier comments on the matter, when he said that an eviction ban extension was “under close consideration.” One might reasonably wonder how much more closely the question may been considered – with an electron microscope, possibly – before a decision is made. Still, it’s nice that ministers have the chance to take their time and settle upon a solution in a leisurely fashion. Tenants facing eviction have no such luxury.

Scotland is not the only place where Covid-induced eviction bans are, to the delight of predatory landlords and despair of everybody else, coming to a premature end. In the United States, where a federal eviction moratorium will expire at the end of the month, over four million people say they fear being evicted or foreclosed on, while recent studies suggest the nation’s twin crises of housing availability and affordability will worsen dramatically following the pandemic. Just as in Scotland, landlords and housing industry bodies have urged the Biden administration against growing a conscience and doing anything silly, like reinstituting a ban that would keep untold thousands from homelessness.

In a bleak sort of way, it now seems almost funny that not so long ago, some of us were talking about how the pandemic might prompt us to seek not just a return to normality, but something better than before. Obviously, such optimism did not reckon with those who have a vested interest in making sure than nothing gets better, global plague be damned.

There has been a great deal of talk – sometimes sincere, sometimes not – about how the pandemic has unified us, even in our enforced isolation. There is some truth in that – certain things we will all look back on with mutual recognition, even if we’d prefer not to. Yet to share in a collective experience does not obviate the very different agendas at play – the yawning gulf that has persisted and even widened between state and citizen, boss and worker, landlord and tenant.

For those whose position in society is defined by the power they hold over others, a return to normality means the ability to exercise that power once again; the fact they have been temporarily restricted from doing so has been the source of much self-pity from the landlord class, and we should not underestimate just how eager they are to get back to business as usual.

Landlords are wont to point out that they are not charities, and this is perfectly correct. This only makes it more baffling that the right to housing must involve those driven by profit – it’s like demanding that a right to food must employ Gregg’s the baker as an interlocutor. I like a sausage roll as much as the next person, but eventually different priorities will clash, and only one will emerge triumphant – almost inevitably, unless they are opposed, those in a position of economic power.

Amongst those who occupy this privileged position, there exists a perception that the eviction ban was an indulgence, that furlough was a leisurely sabbatical, and that state support of any kind that extended beyond the pre-pandemic norm was generosity for which we should be grateful, but should in no way mistake for precedent. Now, such forces seek to prove it.

While we have all suffered through the pandemic, but that suffering was not borne equally. Any government that didn’t see this coming, or decided to do nothing about it, should answer for that sooner or later. In the meantime, as the necessity of extending the eviction ban grows ever more obvious, we must remember: Your landlord is not your friend. They are not your genial host. They sustain themselves by leeching from you all they can get, regardless of the harm they inflict from doing so, in exchange for which they occasionally send someone round to fix the boiler. Analysis of their societal impact does not require a housing expert, but a parasitologist.

When I first wrote about tenants’ need for governmental protection throughout the pandemic, I observed that Scottish landlords have a long track record of empty threats – whenever some new reform or regulation dismays them, they invariably warn that they will be forced to sell their properties and quit the business, sacrificing a portfolio which they hoped would generate easy money indefinitely, and instead settling for the kind of lump sum most of us will never see without the aid of a sawn-off shotgun and a getaway car.

For once, it appears Scotland’s private landlords were not bluffing; now that the game is no longer fun, at least some of them are selling up and moving on. It must be nice to have the option. In considering a renewed ban on evictions – preferably, as quick as they can – the Scottish Government should do whatever they can for those who do not.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to start looking for some affordable rented accommodation in Edinburgh. After that, I’ll try to find something easier… like Atlantis.

Picture courtesy of Liji Jinaraj

The post Sean Bell: Extending the eviction ban is the bare minimum of what is required appeared first on Source.

AS SOME may already have seen reported elsewhere, Source will soon cease publication.

While the staff of Source view this development with deep regret, we remain enormously proud of the work we have done and the unique contribution Source has made to the Scottish media landscape.

In the meantime, we wish to express our thanks to all those who have followed our work over these past years, and urge them to continue supporting independent, high-quality journalism however and wherever they can.

The post A statement from Source appeared first on Source.

As a fitting end to Source, we wanted to introduce an independent community magazine that is presenting news at the hyper-local level – Greater Govanhill magazine.

We spoke to Editor-in-Chief Rhiannon J Davies about her decision to keep the magazine hyper-local; how community engagement can lead to civic engagement; and why diversity is important in the media.

Greater Govanhill is a free magazine, which is available in most Govanhill cafes and hairdressers, online, or by post if you become a supporting member. Media like this will not continue to exist without financial support.

https://www.greatergovanhill.com/

The post Greater Govanhill: Embrace and Support Diverse Voices in the Media appeared first on Source.

DESPITE EXITING EURO 2020 with a grand total of one point, the men’s national football team has lifted Scotland’s spirits. Even unreconstructed football-phobes have developed a peculiar parasocial bond with a cast of underdogs ranging from John McGinn and Kieran Tierney to Grant Hanley and Stephen O’Donnell. It was heartening to enjoy a brief moment of solidarity, built, if nothing else, on common revulsion at sneering English pundits.

However, for all the surge in patriotism, was there a sense of a nation imminently heading for independence? Like it or not, football is an outlet for political passions, as we saw last night with German fans and players protesting anti-LGBT laws in Hungary, or Marco Arnautovic’s ban for anti-Albanian slurs, or, indeed, the debate on Scotland taking the knee. Sport is the one area where Scotland is defiantly autonomous on the global stage. But even with a match against England at Wembley, constitutional politics barely featured as a point of interest or controversy.

Some might judge it best that divisive questions of nationality are kept out of sport. But that moral judgement seems trite: the best of political change always invites the ugliness of a backlash; in real history, darkness and light are inextricable. And when change is coming and interests feels threatened, sport cannot avoid politicisation.

So, the puzzle remains. Another resounding mandate for independence has failed to electrify the country. It has left a sense of diffidence and resignation. Formally speaking, conflicts continue: this week, Michael Gove’s comments on a prospective referendum kept the news cycle chuntering away. But there is a sense of dispassionately going through the motions, for all that football briefly roused the national spirit.

Perhaps it’s worth taking a step back and reviewing the positives. In the past decade, independence has expanded far beyond its old base. It’s no longer a fringe cause. For younger people especially, independence has been normalised. Yes supporters are out of the closet; indeed, nationalism has considerable social cache. That fact alone testifies to progress. When the Yes campaign started, it was a ragtag of misfits; nowadays, the SNP is the establishment. Corporate interests may have cannibalised the Yes movement, but that is a backhanded tribute to its success in transforming the consensus.

Conversely, unionism is in ideological tatters. Conservative hegemony effectively means English hegemony: there is no prospect of Boris Johnson’s national project enjoying consent in Scotland. Witness the reaction to the ejection of Home Office patrols from Kenmure Street. Only a minority of hardened right-wingers were willing to defend the sovereignty of British institutions.

Labour’s disastrous embrace of the People’s Vote has shattered any remaining credibility in England. A succession of by-election defeats testifies to the problems. Keir Starmer was supposed to be the Electable One, and while his shortcomings as a leader are now apparent, the evidence suggests that Labour’s problems are about structure not agency. Replacing him with the Electable One Mark Two, an Andy Burnham, will make little difference; nor, I fear, will another lurch to the right or to the left.

In England, Labour cannot perform its part of the unionist bargain; thus, any talk of “progressive federalism” is for the birds.

Lastly, support for independence remains high. It has fallen away since late last year when the SNP was speaking of a “settled majority”. However, roughly half the population remains supportive.

There are unanswered questions about the resilience of that support. It grew from a unique period of British history, as the ruling parties underwent arguably the biggest ever peacetime crisis of the state. And the arguments are untested. Much of Nicola Sturgeon’s imagined prospectus for independence involves mutually inconsistent promises that would not stand the cold, scrutinising glare of a referendum. Would middle class liberal support collapse if it proved impossible to re-join the EU?

So, there are grounds for optimism, but also grounds for wondering whether any of this is real. This investment in fantasy may seem peculiarly Scottish (did anyone doubt we’d beat Croatia?), but it’s also how all ruling ideas work. Indeed, the philosopher Slavoj Zizek says that all ideologies have the formula: “I know very well that X does not hold, but I do X anyway”. I know very well that there is no difference between hand soap at Lidl and hand soap at Waitrose, but I pay the extra 30p anyway, for an illusion I pretend not to believe in.

Scotland’s establishment very precisely follows this ideological formula. We know very well that the referendum is unlikely to happen, but we must act as if it will. Some may interpret this cynically: Peter Murrell needs a pension, so along comes another indyref fundraiser. And it’s said that, for the problems of vulgar Marxism, the formula of “follow the money” accurately explains 90 percent of history.

Equally, there is a non-cynical, even moralistic side to Scotland’s reigning ideology. Many fear that, by admitting that the referendum is unlikely to happen, we hand victory to Boris Johnson. And there’s no disguising the truth here. With Labourism dead, the cause of Scottish independence appears as the last viable challenge to post-Brexit Conservative rule. It would be much easier to break the ideological spell if the motives were purely cynical.

But at some stage fantasy must reckon with reality. Another SNP fundraiser is coming, premised, again, on the imminence of a referendum. The uptake may serve as a measure of the gap between fantasy and reality.

Finally, let’s not forget the potential reality in fantasy. Even if the SNP leadership is trading on myths, that doesn’t preclude a referendum happening within this term. I certainly hope it will, and sometimes, I reassure myself, history runs away like a greasy pig: just look at David Cameron’s brinksmanship with the Brexit referendum. Supporters of independence are thus left with a dilemma: do we call out our ruling hypocrisies, or do we call the SNP’s bluff, gambling that it might pay off by accident? I wish I had an easy answer.

The post Source Direct: Independence – Fantasy and Reality appeared first on Source.

URUZGAN looks set to become the first Afghan province to fall fully under the control of the Taliban, its regional centre the first major town to fall to the movement.

The US spent $2.26 trillion in the occupation of Afghanistan; the war cost the UK up to £37 billion by the time it withdrew its last combat troops in 2014 (though British involvement continues to this day). More importantly, 2,442 U.S troops have been killed and 20,666 have been wounded in action, with 454 British troops killed. Around 174,000 Afghans have been killed, though true figures – including death from poverty and disease – are difficult to calculate.

With all this blood and treasure having been spent, what has been accomplished? One thing above all – the Taliban, exiled from power 20 years ago, is back and stronger than ever. Even as farcical ‘peace talks’ continue, the insurgents are strengthening their position on the ground.

At least 26 Afghan National Army posts and bases, as well as troops numbering in at least the hundreds, have already been surrendered. Tellingly, in many cases the call for surrender was delivered not by the Taliban themselves, but from powerful local figures eager to avert further fighting. These defeats without a fight not only supply Taliban forces with propaganda victories, but also weapons, vehicles and equipment as they close in on Afghanistan’s largest cities.

Former government buildings once housing governors, police and military intelligence are now in the hands of the Taliban. The movement’s Sharia courts are sweeping the country, replacing the corrupt state legal operation. It’s thought that the Taliban maintain military positions around 12 important urban settlements, which if attacked simultaneously would overburden Afghan special forces (essentially, the only troops reasonably equipped and trained to fight).

Not only are remaining western troops and contractors leaving the country, so are wealthy Afghans and government supporters. Though 11 September is the official leaving date – chosen, of course, for ceremonial reasons in the US – all forces are expected to have left the country by mid July.

But this doesn’t mean that Afghanistan is simply destined to an outright Taliban victory. A range of scenarios remain possible, including protracted civil war (though more likely with the Taliban as, or the real power behind, the new government). There are elements of the Afghan army who will may not be able to defect or cut deals with the Taliban because of national, religious or tribal differences. Indeed, as in the past, the present Afghan state has been structured to incorporate national minorities and resist Pashtun dominance (the Taliban are traditionally a Pashtun movement). But this structure also means that fighting or even a coup on the government side is a real danger.

No matter what happens to Afghan society, the immense strain it will be placed under in the coming months may well lead to a vortex of intrigue, power-brokering and, in all likelihood, violence.

One beneficiary will be Russia, which has been working to secure its position in a post-Nato Afghanistan by courting various sides at once. In a piece for Foreign Policy urging a rethink of withdrawal, it is conceded: “Russia will assume an advantageous position, having nurtured both the Taliban and the Afghan civilian government while taking a back seat to the insecurity that will grip the country. Russia’s physical footprint will help Moscow ensure its strategic interests.”

But this only follows a familiar pattern in the recent history of western interventionism, where regional brokers move into the power vacuums created by war and regime change. In Iraq, Iran and its Shi’a allies are now king of the hill. In Syria, Russia and Turkey vie for influence. In Libya, a carnival of different state and paramilitary actors are in the mix, with France struggling to compete.

Afghanistan will be yet more evidence that American and allied power is great enough to overthrow just about any state in the world, but not powerful enough to secure a new status quo against competitors.

Another power re-entering the new Great Game will be Pakistan, a state whose fate is tied to Afghanistan like no other. The ISI, the powerful Pakistani secret service, is the main backer of the Taliban, and will hope to have significant influence over the new Afghan order. They also have much to lose, sharing a vast and often lawless land border with the country. Chaos in Afghanistan always finds its way into Pakistan.

Pakistan’s chief rival India is also seeking influence in the new Afghanistan. The US based Carnegie Institute has advised the Indian government to come to terms with realities on the ground: “Leaving the reconciliation process primarily to an unstable administration in Kabul will do little for India’s long-term interests in Afghanistan.”

Their paper on Indian interests in the country goes on:“…agreeing to talk to certain sections of the Taliban…[is something] India can no longer afford to disregard”. What’s more, talks with powers like Russia, Iran and even China will be necessary. This is how unreliable the US is now deemed, even by its traditional regional allies.

But the US will also maintain a presence in the country – through its military intelligence and diplomatic resources, drones and a private mercenaries who have become so important to US military power in recent years. It is likely that drone strikes and western-backed assassination squads will continue to try and protect government positions, though till now these tactics have largely served to further destabilise the country and grow support for the Taliban.

By any measure, the (official) US strategic aim of denying a strategic base to Al Qaeda (active, along with various Jihadi-Islamist factions, in the country) has failed miserably. The country will become precisely the kind of place where enemies of the US will be able to operate with impunity, and Taliban pledges to break ties to groups are meaningless.

And what of Nato’s supposed mission of integrating women and girls into education and society? There are indeed more women in education and the professions, and some limited improvements in women’s healthcare. But despite promises to the contrary from the Taliban, many of these gains are likely to be lost. Afghanistan’s sham democracy, its corruption-plagued economic development, and liberal social reforms all suffer from the same fundamental problem – they are policies of a foreign military occupation. They are, therefore, purchased in a currency which is about to become worthless.

The Afghan War, which inaugurated a wave of western attacks in Asia and North Africa 20 years ago, will prove in its last act the futility and destruction of ‘humanitarian intervention’.

The post Analysis: Taliban rule and further conflict are the fruits of ‘western interventionism’ appeared first on Source.

WHEN my time at Source (née CommonSpace) ends with the publication of this article, I will have been the outlet’s longest continuous member of staff, having started work here in July 2015.

I can’t tell the story of the publication, such are the numbers of people who have come and gone (many of them, to the projects’ credit, to work in mainstream and new alternative publications) and the scale of contributions they have made. Instead, I want to ask the meaning of the period elapsed. Can we draw any conclusions from the time between the SNP’s historic 2015 General Election win and the summer of 2021?

Consider the series of historic events between then and now, and which this journal has covered: the rise of Jeremy Corbyn in the Labour party, the watershed year of 2016 which saw Brexit and the election of Donald Trump in the United States, the body blow to the British establishment in the 2017 election, and the long drawn-out struggle over Brexit implementation resulting in the final, decisive defeat of both efforts to overturn the 2016 vote and the Labour party.

For a brief moment, liberal court scribes and intellectuals allowed themselves to believe a new equilibrium could be established, spearheaded by the election of Joe Biden in the US. The ongoing pandemic of 2020-21 punched its way through what was left of economic and political orthodoxy.

The 2014 Scottish independence referendum was a precursor to all these developments, and of a piece with them. Around the world, people would spend the 2010s – and particularly the latter half – throwing off institutions and old political identifications for which they had little use. Scottish Labour fell victim to these impulses, but it was far from unique or even unusual in this treatment. Around Europe, the old social democratic parties which were once such a feature of western democracy have shrivelled, and in most important cases (France, Italy, Germany) now face extinction.

The political right has experienced mutations, infighting and flare-ups of authoritarian and illiberal fashion. Once fringe far-right parties are now part of the firmament of European politics, from government in Hungary, Poland and Italy, to insurgency and opposition in France, Germany and many places besides.

Economic ideas that have dominated for a generation have been cast aside in practice, even if their ghostly influence persists. Massive money-printing and state intervention are the order of the day. Powerful institutions – from the EU to media empires, universities and culture industries – have been shaken by technological disruption, cultural and subpolitical schism and the shifting allegiances of capricious elites.

Everything is moving – except, it sometimes feels, in Scotland.

As argued, Scotland is not a true outlier from these wider trends. Here as elsewhere, rejection of (some) elites has displaced social democracy. Here also, a form of nationalism has come to reframe political life. The rush and excitement of events rapidly coagulated into a new status quo with new elites in Scotland, but this too is of the time. Anti-politics can rage at power, but not defeat it.

The calm after the storm is symbolised by the protracted independence deadlock, which has dominated these last six years. To briefly recap, we are no closer independence than we were on September 19 2014, the Scottish Government (and parliament) having requested talks on a second independence referendum twice, and been turned down flat. The case for independence remains fatally flawed by mutually contradictory positions on sovereign powers, and hog-tied by economic orthodoxies from which even the Tories in London have taken leave.

The major mistake of some independence supporters has been to hunt for explanations to the impasse in the cynicism or self-indulgence of SNP politicians. There may of course be plenty of that, but the inertia of power requires no conspiracy or special malice. Fianna Fáil has been promising a 32 county republic for a hundred years, and done little to achieve it. Labour has been promising an ill-defined ‘socialism’ for just as long, and we are no closer that destination. It is typical for centre-left politicians to use ‘the cause’ to mobilise sentiment behind the unglamorous reproduction of routine political influence. It’s not a lie – just a truth deferred indefinitely.

The only way to challenge this settlement is with an alternative politics to those represented by the official leadership of the independence movement. The approach of ‘SNP – but on heat’ has been exhausted.

At least critics of a populist bent are critics of some kind. The characteristic presence in our civic sphere is the extended caravan of SNP fellow travellers. Pro-independence or pro-Union, artist, academic, and activist, lawyer, journalist and wonk, the intelligentsia are, as a social class, largely won to the present model of devolution and its leaders. It seems no scandal, no public service travesty, no dodgy business deal or anti-democratic manoeuvre is so flagrant that it will stop our would-be cognoscenti from slapping their flippers together and barking with joy.

The governing party of fourteen years (nineteen if they finish the present term) provides this layer its every practical need; relative stability for big business, and a patronage model in the public and private sectors which is readily accessible (to them). Almost as importantly, it provides the Scottish middle classes with what they have always prized – a sense of moral superiority. Once achieved through the true Reformation of the Kirk, it is now exemplified by a thin liberal humanitarianism. We are not, it must be maintained, like “Britain’s Trump” and the English “basket of deplorables”.

The structural backdrop to this obsequiousness is important. Scotland’s civic sphere is brutally atrophied after decades of decline, while political parties are shells. The SNP, once hailed as Europe’s largest mass-membership party, is really a paper membership and a website with little democratic life. The other parties are much smaller – husks some of them – having once achieved real social depth. The socialist left, most dependent on democratic engagement and popular impulse, has all but disappeared in organised form. Besides the parties, a vast array of former mass organisations reflect the decline of associational life which has rotted democracy throughout the world.

All this made Source/CommonSpace unusual. A publication with a small staff and premises, which kept up a permanent vigil over six and a half strange and turbulent years, all of it paid for by donators and subscribers, who I thank for buying my independence. To keep up such an effort, without recourse to either the market or the state, is today highly unusual and requires significant personal sacrifice and dedication, as all my erstwhile colleagues know. We would never have been offered any part of the millions of pounds lavished by the Scottish Government on the country’s commercial newspapers, but taking the money would have defeated the purpose of the publication.

So here we are – politics stalled in the locust-ravaged desert. Should we feel defeated? Only if we have forgotten that history has its own ways. The season will turn.

In the meantime, you can keep reading me at Conter, which needs the support of all those who think this country needs and deserves an independent, critical and socialist media.

For one last time, thank you.

The post David Jamieson: Scotland, the locust years? appeared first on Source.

“Get ready for the future

It is murder.”

– Leonard Cohen

SOURCE was launched on 16 March, 2020, the same day that everybody in the UK was advised against ‘non-essential’ travel and contact with others, and two days after the first death from Covid-19 was recorded in Scotland. The pandemic began before we did; it has now outlasted us.

We relaunched in part because it had been decided we would shift from the reportage which characterised our earlier incarnation as CommonSpace to a greater focus upon commentary, analysis and polemic (also, because our old website had finally imploded like the Ecto-Containment Unit midway through Ghostbusters).

I still believe this was the right move. Explaining what is happening is difficult if you cannot also take a stab at explaining why those things are happening. We were not short of subject matter.

If you look back to the early months of last year, you will likely remember the fear, the uncertainty, the increasingly forlorn hopes that were daily whittled away by the realities which lay beyond our mutual isolation. You may also remember just how quickly almost everyone seemed to arrive at a similar, unavoidable realisation: things could not go back to the way they were before.

It was not just the crisis we were living through that fed this understanding, but the growing and ever-more urgent awareness of what almost certainly lay on the other side – the even greater and, I fear, more deadly challenges and conflagrations that await us in the years to come, as economic depression, mass unemployment and environmental catastrophe exact their toll. “You may live,” Nikola Tesla warned, “to see man-made horrors beyond your comprehension.”

The pretence that informed the early, manic days of Covid – that crises inevitably end, that it will all be over by one Christmas or another – is one we can no longer afford. We should get used to that now.

This was seemingly understood even by those for whom the idea of people receiving money without first being exploited for their labour, retaining housing without threat of eviction, or being given medical treatment without opening their wallets, was sheer anathema. This was not due to a sudden, magical change of heart – capitalism, Yevgeni Preobrazhensky noted, is “only interested in the protection of public health in so far as this was necessary for its own safety.”

Nevertheless, those in power appeared to accept what was required, albeit grudgingly, like truculent children being forced to eat their vegetables; we were going to ‘build back better’, they said. Bridges have been sold more honestly.

It didn’t last, of course. Given the choice between building a better world and maintaining an unfair, unequal, inhumane one with an ever-shortening shelf-life, it is no surprise which option certain people and interest groups chose. A year and a half on, you can ask those landlords agitating for the return of their right to make people homeless, or the UK ministers currently mulling over approval for a new Shetland oil field extension capable of producing 150 million barrels (just in time for COP26).

As has become horribly clear across much of the world as we look ahead to Covid ‘recovery’, there is no guarantee that what was lost during the pandemic will be rebuilt, or that what survives will be reformed for the better. Things can always get worse. After what we have endured, that’s not so much pessimism as a promise.

In Scotland, we have some understanding of this, though we are far from unique in that. Survivors of the generation which saw industry systematically destroyed for the sake of a viciously shitty monetary theory are still with us, with little more than memories to show for it. By contrast, students who enjoy free tuition but still strangely find higher education to be ruinously expensive know the old system of grants the same way Plato knew of Atlantis. Our trade union movement remains proud and defiant, but is far from the syndicalist behemoth some of our forebears imagined in the early days of the last century. Meanwhile, those who dismiss our struggling, once-proud fields and institutions as comfortable, cossetted cloisters fail to understand how much those worlds have shrunk, or the precariousness of those who persist within them.

In too many ways, we are a nation where the sun is always setting, with no certainty it will ever come up again.

As our national politics was demonstrating long before the arrival of Covid-19, the most bereft among us are those who retreat into the delusion that things may just stay the same, or even that we might return to a now-vanished status quo if we wish hard enough.

Some never got over the 2014 independence referendum for example, and yearn to undo the revelation it provoked – that the British state and the constitutional arrangement underpinning it may not be eternal. Others simply resent that many now speak of things they do not recognise and have no wish to understand. This is the traditional fate of those who once flattered themselves as progressive, only to discover they have become baffled, bitter old reactionaries.

Yet despite their pathetic decline, we are still at the mercy of those for whom ‘moderate’ is more than a political identity, but an article of faith; who believe that no problem can be addressed except by tortuous increments and regard every disaster as an anomaly to be overcome, rather than a preview of coming attractions. The irony is, the longer such a worldview holds sway, the more radical and extreme our dwindling range of solutions become.

Either we make a better world, or we watch this one burn.

To the surprise of no one, the advent of Covid did not suddenly imbue international politics’ theatre of the absurd with dignity and seriousness of purpose. When the chronicle of our plague is written, it will have to rank Donald Trump high in its dramatis personae. ‘Nuff said, really.

The UK was (and is) little better. Though it’s best to avoid making assumptions about those hidden motivations lurking in our leaders’ psyches, but I suspect our Churchillian fanboy of a prime minister always hungered for a mythic national crisis through which he could cement his place in history. If so, I doubt this is what he had in mind.

Boris Johnson ambled and blundered through the pandemic, secure in the knowledge that, unlike the vast majority of the British citizenry, his job was under no serious threat. In this, he was buoyed by a cabinet that, like Trump’s rotating coterie of grifters and white nationalists, was just as venal and out of their depth as he was, but crucially less durable. Johnson will be remembered because his personal affect sticks in the mind, like a particularly annoying sitcom character; his underlings have no such staying power, condemned to futures as Trivial Pursuit questions which all players prefer to skip.

What should instead be remembered is that, as of last month, Johnson has presided over the fifth largest number of recorded Coronavirus deaths in the world. He has done so while pandering to every tabloid headline crying out for a distinctly American form of ‘freedom’ – that is, the freedom to die. Meanwhile, the Tories reaffirmed the philosophy already made clear throughout the process of Brexit: the people of Britain exist to sustain the economy of Britain – not vice versa. Think on this, and bear in mind the words of Tom Nairn: “Escape from the final stages of a shipwreck is its own justification.”

As the pandemic wore on, much of the Right – whether Tory or Trumpian – exhibited a weird inversion of their usual mode of thinking. Where they usually presented the manufactured realities of capitalism as entirely natural, its architects blameless and its invisible hands irresistible, the virus and all it brought with it must, they insisted, be the responsibility of some nefarious human agency – preferably one which could justify a ramped-up Cold War with China, but in a pinch, scientists, ‘liberal elites’ and sundry other freedom-hating eggheads. All these traditional conservative boogeymen, right-wingers decided, could be defeated along with Covid by sneering scepticism and pig-headed blindness in the face of extremely obvious danger.

Countless dead are the result. Naturally, no scapegoats were served up to account for them. Yet as David Harvey presciently wrote in March of last year: “Viruses mutate all the time to be sure. But the circumstances in which a mutation becomes life-threatening depend on human actions.”

It’s easy to look good in comparison to such a record, and the SNP have predictably taken advantage of this. There are plenty who believe that Nicola Sturgeon got a distinctly easy ride throughout the pandemic; they may be right, but the solution to that – as we have seen proven time and time again – was not to give equally soft treatment to the countless opportunists, cranks and embittered vendetta-merchants whom many inexplicably decided had a shot at displacing her, despite their abject failure to add anything of worth to our national politics.

The present Scottish Government is far from the best of all possible worlds – indeed, somewhere in John Swinney’s attic, there’s a cursed portrait of him repeatedly resigning – but I don’t believe anything better can be achieved by the application of Brasso to some extremely old turds. Such tawdry personality projects, and the distractions they provide, have allowed the Scottish Government to evade scrutiny for its many genuine failures, but have not moved us one inch closer to the independence we so desperately need.

Following May’s Holyrood election, I wrote that Scotland is a politically engaged nation – a fact which, I suspect, quietly irritates those whose lives and agendas would be made simpler if we stayed docile and apathetic. However, the unfortunate flipside of this engagement was that the pandemic did not pause the efforts of those who seek to block or reverse progress, or to attack and undermine the rights of our most vulnerable and marginalised.

Despite their clownishness, many of us underestimated the speed and ferocity with which the most powerful and reactionary forces in our society would mount a fightback against anything that threatened their vicious little view of the world. Even after socialism reasserted itself as an ideological current on a mass scale, those high-profile Western candidacies around which it rallied were largely beaten down, while its enemies are still comfortably in power. A year ago, much of the world seemed to be grappling with racism as an often-lethal systemic reality; now, we apparently must waste our time untangling paranoid word salad about the insidiousness of ‘Critical Race Theory’. And though it has been proven repeatedly that the majority have scant objection to recognising the rights, liberation and humanity of the LGBT community, our discourse remains in the grip of those who either pretend that transphobia and homophobia don’t really exist, or maintain they aren’t worth talking about.

We can do better than this, and we have no right not to try. We have no shortage of those who have not given up. As the superlative Sarah Jones wrote earlier this year: “Most of us don’t have the means to abandon optimism, after all. The feeling is not a luxury but a necessity. What can we do except believe a different world could exist?”

At Source, we did our best to tackle all of this, despite the enormity of the task. How exactly do you cover the world when your own encompasses little more than four walls and periodic expeditions into a punishingly familiar neighbourhood?

I gave it a shot – partly because there was no other option, but also because I knew it was possible… because of the many years I spent watching my father sit in his favourite chair, and write.

In his life, Ian Bell had not been an unadventurous sort. This was a man who drank wine in French vineyards, rode across Death Valley on a horse named Diablo (who reportedly did most of the work), and spent the decades trying to recreate the perfect roast beef sandwich he ordered in a 1970s New York deli. He spoke with Salman Rushdie during the fatwa, dined with Dustin Hoffman, and received an unexpected blessing from Little Richard. He plotted with Sandinistas while campaigning for a Contra-free Nicaragua, joined the White House press corps during the Clinton impeachment hearings, and stood in Omagh while glass still littered the street. It was a full life.

I heard all these stories and more, but what I saw, for the most part, was a man who wrote; a man who, from a remote home in the Scottish Borders, through books and newspapers and television and phone calls and all the other means of remote research available to our trade, let the world come to him. As those who remember his writing will attest, that distance did not limit or dull his insight or perspective. It can be done. Under trying circumstances, I tried my best.

Since Source launched in the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic, I have covered the recognition (or lack thereof) of the Armenian Genocide, the enduring secrecy of post-Franco Spain, the ignominious end of the Trump administration, and the violence at the Capitol which followed. (I also interviewed a beaver. I’m quite proud of that one.)

Yet analysis and commentary can only do so much: while most of the British media was offering its own unsought opinions on the Black Lives Matter protests which erupted through the US last year, I am glad that Source was able to provide space for some of the activists who embodied that movement, letting them speak for themselves, in the hopes of bridging the distance that existed between there and here, them and us.

In a rather pompous editorial written upon Source’s launch, I wrote that, “at it’s best, journalism is more than the articulation of truth; it is a point of connection for those who would otherwise be alone.” I cannot speak for our readers, but it certainly served me that way.

To my peers in the rest of the Scottish media, I can’t say much. Given the circumstances, I am hardly in a position to lecture anyone else in my profession, except to give my usual advice: if you haven’t already, join the National Union of Journalists, the one group of people in the country always on our side, and sometimes in a position to do something about it when times get tough. Beyond that, I wish you all the best – watch your backs, and do your vital work whenever and however you can. It is a privilege.

To the rest of you, please continue to support good, independent journalism. Hopefully, if I have made anything clear, it’s that we shall need it in the days to come. Otherwise, be kind to each other. Eat the rich, don’t trust cops, attack and dethrone god, etc.

Ciao.

The post Sean Bell: The long goodbye appeared first on Source.

IF you watched any of the first 48 hours of Andrew Neil’s new GB News platform, you weren’t watching much.

A dark and dingy studio, with patronising monologues about flags and Britishness delivered by nervous-looking former Conservative MPs and tabloid pundits, frequently interrupted by glitches and gaffs. By ‘frequently’, we are talking roughly every two minutes or so.

Neil himself introduced a segment called “Woke Watch”. Another recurring feature was called “Union Jackass” and seemed to have something to do with people being disrespectful to the flag. Around half an hour of discussion failed to solve the question of whether “Britishness is political” – an argument at once byzantine and bovine. Whether one likes its views or not, The Spectator is a serious publication. GB News, on the other hand, is being pitched as infotainment, though there was strictly no fun to be had.

How did Andrew Neil arrive in his strange little cave, trying to replicate the pugilistic rightism of Sky News Australia (whose former chief, Angelos Frangopoulos, now heads-up GB News)?

Neil began his career at his home town Paisley Express before working for the Conservative Party as a researcher, and from there to another staple of British Torydom the Economist. He then really came into his own as a creature of the media mogul Rupert Murdoch, after he was speeded to the editor’s position in 1983.

Neil was very much in the praetorian guard of the Muroch generation, and under his stewardship of the paper in the 80s it would become, in his own words, “the champion of a market-led revolution” against the “collectivist mindset” of the 1960s. It backed right-wing causes and Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, and whipped up a moral panic about Britain’s amoral ‘underclass’.

He infamously celebrated the tycoon’s victory over print unions in the Wapping dispute in 1986; the crushing of industrial democracy put an end to “all that was wrong with British industry: pusillanimous management, pig-headed unions, crazy restrictive practices, endless strikes and industrial disruption, and archaic technology.”

Yet Neil has a patchy record of success in promoting the sales of his various publications. A US-based Fox News show, promising to court “controversy” as he said he did at the Sunday Times (and quite possibly therefore, an antecedent of GB News), fell apart before it even aired. He took over as publisher of The Scotsman in 1996 and by 2005 had reduced circulation to 70,000. According to the NUJ and staff, he had also savaged the historic title’s stature, quality and workplace culture with lay-offs and department mergers. In 2021, The Scotsman was sold for just £10 million.

Neil has therefore been at the top of the game of British media during its period of sharp decline. He ‘rationalised’ significant parts the industry by hacking away at resources and capacity, helping to make the desert we live in today.

Though a stalwart of right-wing politics, his turn to GB News was also the product of his falling out with the BBC, a publicly funded platform which has provided him with lucrative and high status work for a quarter of a century – a tenure very few in the industry (and many other industries) could hope for today.

However, the claim, so frequently made, that figures like Neil, his co-hosts and certainly the big money backers of the new venture are themselves ‘metropolitan elites’ – even more ensconced than the academics, columnists and Labour MPs they deride – is to take the phrase at face value.

Modern elite layers can be said to be split into two broad camps: those employed by state institutions, NGOs, universities and cultural industries and whose social function is the perpetuation of official morality. This section, usually highly educated, high-status and well remunerated, provides some of the functions that clerics would once have, leading the leftwing economist Thomas Picketty to call it the ‘Brahmin Left’ after his analysis of recent elections showed it now tends to favour centre-left parties.

The second camp – just as metropolitan in its composition – is more representative of the actual owners and managers of big business in the private sector. This element has accrued enormous wealth and political influence in recent decades, but it does not see itself as performing a wider moral leadership. This is because its ideology promotes a loosely libertarian message, the tropes of which are well known by now: greed is good, personal satisfaction is a legitimate end, competition is the best way to organise and so on. At its most extreme, this message has even become nihilistic, with figures from Berlusconi to Trump benefiting from the idea that they give the public license to ignore the moral proclamations of the ‘elites’.

The trick to popular anti-elitism which targets the first camp – as GB News seeks to do – is that businessmen make few moral claims on society, and thus can neither be ‘found out’ for their hypocrisy, nor depicted as petty authoritarians who want to place a bridle on public expression. The fact that, like Neil, they are often exceptionally controlling and authoritarian in their own industrial practices, and exert a not inconsiderable ideological influence over wider society, falls outside of the frame of the culture war.

What’s the future of GB News’ stoking of these embers? Success may look like the Australian version of Sky News – a ranty and opinionated right-wing soapbox which has become a staple of a structurally right-wing political ecosystem. Failure may look like the dissipation of ‘anti-wokeness’ with mass fatigue. The culture war has remarkable powers of self-reproduction, but if they are disrupted and public attention moves on, what will GB News offer, beyond what the BBC and other broadcasters provide but at higher quality?

Taking in the longue durée of Neil’s career in British media, it’s hard not to view his latest project as simply the next step in his march of destruction through institutions which once promoted stability for Britain’s ruling strata. He is at once an author and product of the unwinding of the ‘common values’ and civic sphere whose passing he now mourns… for a considerable fee.

Picture courtesy of Financial Times

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