Not Waving, RA Vol 4, Issue 6, April/May '00

FREE KULDIP!

FOLLOWING THE J18 demonstration in central London in 1999, a member of the Workers Power youth group, Revolution, was jailed for 21 months following his conviction for violent disorder during clashes with police. In launching a solidarity campaign “demanding his release, the release of all others imprisoned and the dropping of all charges against all those and still awaiting trial”, Revolution have issued a document explaining why, all of the events surrounding it were, well, ‘just not fair’. To begin with, when in the morning the group sought, as part of the wider demonstration to picket ‘global bloodsuckers British Petroleum’, police were waiting for them with an INCREDIBLE four van loads of police officers!

Later about two o’clock after a “couple of hours partying in a carnival atmosphere, some protesters started to vent their anger against the LiFFE building - doing superficial damage to it, and a few activists burst through security guards into the building before being ROUGHLY evicted”. Not bad enough, the evidence of guilt against their own member “turned out to consist of over 100 photographs, and SELECTIVE footage showing him strike a fully equipped riot policeman, with a THIN banner pole. Even more incredibly the video footage “did NOT” show the police brutality that caused the violence in the first place. Moreover “A plea of self defence was also excluded for the same reason. AMAZINGLY, self-defence is only accepted by a court if the action of defence occurs within seconds of being attacked”.

‘Kuldip Bajwa Political Prisoner’ can be reached at: DN 7230, HMP Brixton, Jebb Avenue, SW2 5XF.

In the meantime “Build the movement against global capitalism -forward to May Day and Prague 2000”! Bless.

 
THE END FOR LM?

SOMETIME IN the last century, December 1998 to be precise, rival column Word in your Ear drew attention to the libel case being brought by ITN broadcaster against the magazine LM, formerly Living Marxism, owned by the former Revolutionary Communist Party now too defunct. As stated, the conflict arose when LM claimed footage of apparently starving Bosnians in a Serbian concentration camp was ‘faked’. According to LM’s version, ‘the starving were not inside the wire trying to get out- but outside the wire possibly trying to get in!’ Or to it put another way ‘it had been the reporters not the starving inmates who had been enclosed by barbed wire’! Unsurprisingly, the jury took a mere four hours to return unanimous verdicts. Furthermore ITN claimed it had previously offered to waive its right to damages in return for a simple apology but LM would have none of it. As editor Mick Hume said in a statement after the verdict the magazine “apologised for nothing”. Its failure to ‘apologise for something’ on the other hand cost the magazine in the region of a gob-smacking £675,000 in costs and damages.

Unsurprisingly both Mr Hume and the magazine are now bankrupt. But as was pointed out at the time ‘disaster like success does not happen overnight, or by accident, but has to be diligently worked at until it becomes a habit’. Ideology apart what borders on the genuinely bizarre is why they persisted in a lie they must have known would be exposed the instant the ITN footage was introduced as evidence. Given media speculation in relation to the overall funding of LM, what would now be genuinely spooky is if, in one guise or another, the increasingly mysterious LM project actually re-appears.

Reproduced from RA Vol 4, Issue 6, April/May '00