Article
Bankers can wait. Targeting protesters is much more Cameron's cup of tea
The Vickers banking reforms are set for 2019. But when it comes to undermining protest ministers don't fanny about
Illustration by Daniel Pudles
Illustration by Daniel Pudles
When governments seek to protect the rich from the poor, they act swiftly and decisively. When they undertake to protect the poor from the rich, they fanny about for years until the moment has passed.
On Tuesday afternoon the House of Lords will consider a bill containing a cruel and unnecessary clause, whose purpose is to protect landlords who keep their houses empty. Under current law, if squatters move into your home (or a home that you are soon to occupy) and fail to leave the moment you ask, the police can immediately remove them.
The only houses with weaker protections are those that remain empty. There are 700,000 such homes in England alone, almost half of which have been empty for a long time. They have long been a refuge for street sleepers and other homeless people. Landlords already possess civil powers to remove them, and the police can step in if squatters ignore the court orders.
Last year the government launched a consultation on criminalising all squatting in residential buildings; 96% of the respondents argued that no change in the law was necessary. But on 1 November, just five days after the consultation ended, the government jemmied an amendment into the legal aid bill, already halfway towards approval. This meant that the House of Commons had no chance to scrutinise it properly, and objectors had no chance to explain the issues to their MPs.
The result of this blatant insult to democracy is that people who have housed themselves at no cost to anyone are likely to be summarily evicted. Houses will fall back into disuse, and the government's housing bill will rise: by between £35m and £90m, according to the campaign group Squash. Worse still, the new law will help unscrupulous landlords to evict tenants where there is no written contract, by declaring them squatters and calling the police.
Compare this rush to prosecute the poor with the government's leisurely approach to banking reform. It will wait until 2019 to implement the mild measures proposed by John Vickers. As Robert Jenkins, who sits on the Bank of England's financial policy committee, points out, the date is distant enough "to allow lobbyists to chip away until the proposal becomes both unrecognisable and ineffective".
David Cameron's proposals for addressing executive pay have the same function: they are designed to be as ineffective as possible while creating an impression of action. On Monday he announced that he wants to scrap the top rate of income tax, making the people who caused the economic crisis even richer and the poor poorer. Those who contest the destructive practices of the feral rich, by contrast, are harried by draconian laws and paranoid policing.
Last month City of London police sent a letter to the banks titled "Terrorism/extremism update for the City of London business community". It warned of the following "substantial" terrorist threats: Farc in Colombia, al-Qaida in Pakistan, and Occupy London. It advised the banks to "remain vigilant" as "suspected activists" from the Occupy movement were engaging in "hostile reconnaissance" – the sort of language that might have been used to report German spies in the second world war. When asked to explain the letter, the police told the Guardian that it had been circulated to "key trusted partners". The banks are the trusted partners of our impartial law enforcers; those who seek to hold them to account are terrorists.
The police keep ratcheting up their tactics to ensure that protest against the status quo is futile. On 30 November they introduced a new one: the pensions march in central London was sealed off with three-metre steel walls, meaning that no one except for those marching could see what was happening or read the banners. The protesters were, in other words, prevented from explaining their purpose to the public.
While the government has introduced no meaningful sanctions to discourage a repetition of the crash, it has also failed to repeal the oppressive laws preventing us from challenging those who caused it. When he became deputy prime minister, Nick Clegg promised that the government would "remove limits on the rights to peaceful protest". But there is no such measure in the protection of freedoms bill, which was supposed to have been the vehicle for this reform, and which also comes before the Lords on Tuesday.
The restrictions on assembly and peaceful protest in the 1986 Public Order Act, 1992 Trade Union Act, 1994 Criminal Justice Act, 1997 Protection from Harassment Act, 2003 Anti-Social Behaviour Act and 2005 Serious Organised Crime and Police Act remain unrepealed. Together they permit the police to stop any protest they wish and arrest the participants. Far from reforming the law, the prime minister has hinted that he will tighten it further. Speaking to the Commons liaison committee in November, he claimed that "the right of people to protest is fundamental" but that "you shouldn't be able to erect tents all over the place". His approach to the issue is the same as Tony Blair's: you can protest, as long as it's ineffective.
The effort of both police and government is to predetermine political outcomes. They are using the law to make democracy safe for business and the super-rich: ensuring, in other words, that it isn't really democracy.
• A fully referenced version of this article can be found on George Monbiot's website
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User Comments
SpinningHugo
9 January 2012 8:45PM
I agree with much of this, in particular about criminalising squatting which seems to me to be outrageous. But it badly misrepresents the role of the police.
The job of the police is to apply the law as it is. There may well be things wrong with the Anti-Social Behaviour Act, but that is a matter for the legislature not the police.
The rule of law requires them to act according to the law as it is, not in the way I would prefer, you or George Monbiot. The claim that the police themselves favour the super-rich and the undermining of democracy is, unsurprisingly, unfootnoted on Monbiot's website.
And thank God for that.
Don't undermine the important and sensible things you have to say with silly hyperbole.
GeorgeMonbiot
9 January 2012 8:50PM
I wish that were true, but as I've documented elsewhere - here, for example - the police often appear to be working for corporations against the public interest, and drag up whatever law is required to discharge that function. Or do it anyway. We saw it too at Kingsnorth and Ratcliffe, and I was made especially aware of it when I was hospitalised by the security guards working for a major road-building firm, and the police refused to take a statement from me or issue a crime number - until Amnesty International intervened. Impartial policing my left foot.
GeorgeMonbiot
9 January 2012 8:52PM
In fact it was my right foot: they impaled it on a fencing spike, smashing the middle bone.
Swedinburgh
9 January 2012 8:52PM
Toryism 101: if you can pay for the legislation you want, you'll get it. Maybe the poor should stop wasting their money on food and public transport and start filling the coffers of major political parties...
(By the way, now that the "goodwill to all men" holiday season is over, City of Edinburgh Council wants Occupy to clear St Andrew Square.)
Storris
9 January 2012 8:54PM
@Anti-Mysogyny Would you prefer if he had said "don't vagina about"?
George,
Your anger that the taxpayer will have to foot the bill for a landlord's greed is noted and noteworthy. That you are happy for the landlord to foot the bill for the feckless is also noted and just as noteworthy, but obviously for different reasons
I used the term feckless instead of your term 'poor' because 'poor' would suggest that they were on the wrong end of the economic struggle. Feckless suggests that one has no intention of applying oneself to that struggle within the system, which being the case, it is only fair to suggest that they are not and cannot claim to have been abused by it.
Compassion is a valiant trait, but being generous with the fruits of another's labour is at best a misunderstanding of men, at worst a misunderstanding of one's self.
Vraaak
9 January 2012 8:56PM
Seriously George, grow up and get a life.
I quite like George today, the main point is when it comes to crushing the ordinary person who'd got the hump, they waste no time, but if that person is making more money than many sensible people can imagine without an astrophysics degree, he's got his time to get his affairs in order and buy a new yacht before he gets to make slightly less money than the current amount which if all piled up in one place would probably cause earthquakes.
fingerbobs
9 January 2012 8:57PM
With the greatest of respect, bankers don't defecate in carrier bags.
pimentomori
9 January 2012 8:58PM
In fairness, we're not in much danger of another crash any time soon. The time you need the regulation in place is when things start getting overheated and everything starts getting hideously overleveraged. There's little danger of that any time soon, right?
The bigger issue for me is whether the Vickers reforms will be implemented at all.
Fainche
9 January 2012 8:58PM
Just shows the priority Cameron places on banking reform, but why are you surprised George? One whiff of insurrection and Dave's all over the media like a rash proposing a review of social networking sites, the Met are discussing the use of water canon, rubber bullets - even live ammunition. With the Olympics and the Jubilee a few months ago I'm expecting him to announce martial law.
GeorgeMonbiot
9 January 2012 8:58PM
You might not have noticed, but we have a structural housing crisis. In other words, there just aren't enough homes for the people who need them. So however feckful people are - or whatever the opposite of feckless is (and for the benefit of AntMysogyny I am not in this case making a reference to the sexual act) - there won't be enough homes for everyone, and some will end up homeless in one way or another.
Vraaak
9 January 2012 8:58PM
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sickchip
9 January 2012 9:00PM
Good article! It would be more useful published in the tabloids though.
SpinningHugo
9 January 2012 9:00PM
How 'often' is often George? You cite one instance, from three years ago, of a police unit making a mistake. Bad, yes. Enough to support the claim that "the police" are in the business of defending the super rich and undermining democracy (as you do here)?
Obviously not.
Again, I would urge you to refrain from ridiculous hyperbole. The criminalising of squatting is very serious, and should be your focus. You undermine yourself (again) by larding on top of this the silly claim that the police are systematically guilty of undermining democracy and favouring the super rich.
That just does not reflect the views of the police officers I have met.
GeorgeMonbiot
9 January 2012 9:00PM
You can be outraged without being surprised. And I think it's good to expect and demand something better from politics, however many times experience triumphs over hope.
OpiumEater
9 January 2012 9:03PM
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scsfoxrabbit
9 January 2012 8:43PM
This is the UK and an article about the UK (although I know Americans attribute a strange and unusual meaning to the word).