Glasgow Campaigning



Statement on draconian Facebook "riot" sentences Dundee YFJ

There is anger and disbelief in Dundee at the jailing of two teenagers who were involved in joke Facebook pages “organising riots”. Four youth, the youngest being fourteen, were arrested by Tayside police in August as riots swept across cities in England.
A cursory glance at these pages would have informed anyone without a preconceived agenda that they had no serious intention of organising a riot. Joking about the riots at a time when people were being burnt out of their homes was insensitive but these outrageous sentences have to be understood in the context that in Dundee and the rest of Scotland, no riots took place.
These young people are victims of a politically motivated miscarriage of justice, they are being punished for events they did not cause that occurred hundreds of miles away.
The four were kept in police custody for the maximum duration and were initially refused bail. Two have been banned from any form of internet use. Shawn Diven, 16 and Jordan McGinley, 18 who did not set up a group but were added by others as administrators were jailed on December 12 after pleading guilty, expressing regret at what they had done and having been incarcerated on remand for months awaiting trial.    
It is clear from the sheriff’s remarks on sentencing, that Shawn and Jordan, like others jailed for being caught up in the rioting and the recent cases of the student protestors, are being politically punished in an attempt to obscure the real causes of the riots, scape goating young people as “mindless criminals” and absolving the real instigators of social unrest, the politicians and the wealthy elite they represent at the top of society raining down cuts and austerity.  
Sheriff Elizabeth Munro called the riot that didn’t take place “the most serious breach of the peace, I have ever come across”. The justification for the severe sentences was based on the fact that the facebook groups were set up at a time of “widespread disturbance and civil unrest”.
The evidence suggests otherwise, as the Guardian’s research in the “Reading the riots” shows that social networking sites were not widely used by people who actually rioted.
The Sheriff’s out of context sentencing implied that the previous involvement of one of the youth in vandalising a bus meant they were intent on organising a full scale riot until the police intervened. Jokes  on the Facebook wall about using guns to attack the police made by young people on the page were held up as evidence of actual intention.
A local trade unionist made the point in a Facebook discussion after the sentencing that the authorities are out of touch   “Jeremy Clarkson can joke about shooting public sector workers in front of their families and nothing happens, these lads make a silly jokes on facebook and they get three years in prison” A school student activist expressed the sentiments of young people and the wider community “It’s not okay to ruin their lives to make an example”.
Politicians in Scotland, both SNP government ministers and Labour in opposition boasted that they were responsible for creating a different society during the riots in England. This week the Scottish Sun carried an article claiming the main cause of a lack of unrest in Scotland was that the police were more polite, the students and young people attacked on protests recently at Glasgow universities would beg to differ! The reality is that similar social conditions that caused the riots in England exist in cities like Dundee and across Scotland and young people face just as bleak prospects for a future.
Young people still have the EMA, but hundreds of places have been cut and courses have been slashed at both local colleges. The SNP government is embarking on a program of merging colleges and universities across regions that will shut the door on thousands of youth hoping to go into education. A recent survey by  Citizens Advice Scotland found that Dundee’s young people are in the majority trapped in poverty and in many cases unemployment, there are 1,000 NEETS who are under nineteen in Dundee.
The Youth Fight For Jobs and Education Campaign demands Shawn and Jordan are immediately released and internet sanctions on young people are immediately lifted. The widespread anger in the community at these sentences shows that the criminilasation of young people in the city will not be accepted.
Recently Dundee’s streets have been filled with young people organising and protesting, not rioting which Youth Fight For Jobs are opposed to, with the school students strike in April against the city campus and the visible presence of young people on the 10,000 strong demonstration on November 30. Young people are enraged by the conditions they face  but they also want to organise and fight back. Youth Fight For Jobs and Education fights against education cuts, unemployment and for democratic rights.

Thousands strike on N30

Youth Fight for Jobs present on picket lines and demonstrations in Glasgow, Edinburgh, Musselburgh, Dundee, Inverness, Paisley, Aberdeen

Jarrow - impressions of a Scottish Marcher

In 1936, as the Great Depression ushered in a period of mass unemployment, poverty and rising costs of living, two hundred unemployed men marched from Jarrow in the north-east of England to London to demand decent work, pay and living conditions from the government. Seventy-five years later, the crisis of the capitalist system is throwing up similar challenges for the working class and this time, young people are directly facing much of the brunt of these attacks.

The Con-dem government has already announced that the number of young people out of work has now surpassed the one million mark. This is a multi-faceted attack, with many more unable to afford to go university or college, stung by a lack of decent, affordable housing and youth services slashed across the board. In response, the Youth Fight For Jobs (YFJ) campaign - of which the Socialist Party of Scotland is an initiator - decided to re-enact the historic Jarrow Crusade as a rallying cry for young people against this government and the capitalist crisis. We demand that there is no return to the 1930s.

Three YFJS members, from Glasgow, Dundee and Brora respectively, participated in the march. It was imperative for Youth Fight For Jobs Scotland (YFJS) to send members to represent young workers and unemployed youth. Scotland’s young people are facing a desperate future, particularly in its former industrial heartlands; Glasgow East and Glasgow North-East have the highest rate of male unemployment in Scotland, while the number of claimants in the Inverclyde region alone has risen by 26.5% in the past year, the second highest in the whole of the UK.

At public events held during the march, YFJS members pointed out that attacks on public sector workers’ jobs, wages and pensions - passed on by local authorities and the SNP Holyrood administration - will have a catastrophic effect on young people. As wages in real-terms decrease, older workers are forced to work longer for less of a pension and public sector jobs continue to be shed, young people face a future in the doldrums.

However, the participants in the ‘Jarrow March For Jobs’ (YMFJ) were under no illusions about this government. We do not believe that the political representatives of the capitalist class, the Con-Dem administration, have any intention of ever meeting the five core demands of the YFJ campaign, and in fact, would much rather denigrate our efforts. During the first week of the march, Tory MP Robert Goodwill branded the marchers as lazy, claiming that, “it must have been a big shock having to get up in the morning rather than watch Jeremy Kyle”. In 2008/09 Goodwill claimed £145,387 of taxpayers’ money in expenses, and in 2000 he went as far as to say that, “as a capitalist, [and] also as a British Conservative, I see it as a challenge to buy cheap [plane] tickets and make some profit on the system”!

On the penultimate day of the march, a delegation of six marchers met up with the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, Ian Duncan Smith (IDS), to quiz him on Tory ‘reforms’ over issues such as pensions, housing and the hated work programme. IDS was unable to answer our questions with any substance. Firstly, he claimed that workers he had spoken to accept the need to work longer and for pension reform. Then, when challenged on the work programme, he appeared to have very little knowledge of what it actually involves, a plan dreamt up and implemented by him! This was a clear notice if ever one was needed that the Tories have no real solution to the problems the youth of today face.

Instead, we believe that only a mass campaign of struggle is capable of bringing about the changes needed. The March for Jobs concentrated on mobilising young people, anti-cuts groups and the trade union movement in each and every area we passed through, highlighting the issues and developing stronger and deeper links. However, we do not believe that our long-term needs can ever be met by the arbitrary nature of the capitalist system, and ultimately we will require the installation of a democratic socialist government based on the need of the many rather than profits of the few.

            On the opening demonstration in Jarrow, five hundred people turned out to support the marchers and wish them well on their journey. Some of the locals were even moved to tears by the occasion. Furthermore, in a great show of solidarity from the labour movement that was to continue over the whole of the march, the Railway, Maritime and Transport Workers’ Union (RMT) donated their brass brand to the proceedings.

            We garnered excellent support in many working class towns and cities on our way. Leeds and Hull both provided demonstrations of hundreds of people, and we were greeted very warmly in the latter by the demonstrating BAE workers when we spoke of linking up the struggle of young people and workers in struggle. Furthermore, we found that when we put forward our programme in areas where the far-right operate, the basic class-demands were strong enough to cut across racism and bigotry. In those areas such as Luton, where deindustrialisation has left devastation in its wake and allowediu the English Defence League to build a base, the demands of decent housing, jobs and a living wage proved appealing to many working class people.

            The culmination of the march was a march through London and rally in Trafalgar Square, which attracted three thousand people and saw many of those who had shown us support and solidarity on the march, be it food, shelter or other assistance, join us on the streets to tell the government that we refuse to be a lost generation. We were lucky enough to have speakers such as Bob Crow from the RMT and Chris Baugh from the PCS join us on the platform.

            Following the march, Youth Fight For Jobs Scotland members took the spirit of the Jarrow march on to the picket lines on the November 30^th in support of the three million public sector workers out on strike, where we were received warmly. Youth Fight For Jobs will continue to actively support the trade union movement and other young people in struggle for fair pensions, employment, a living wage and a decent job.

Jamie Cocozza Glasgow Youth Fight for Jobs

Jarrow March article in Guardian - Comment is free Website

The 2011 March for Jobs from Jarrow, recreating the heroic traditions of the two hundred who marched in 1936, has now reached London. Physically, the last few weeks have been a test, but also an unforgettable and inspiring experience. I have felt humbled to be part of recreating a great working-class tradition that means so much too so many.

We've been humbled by the people of Jarrow who with tears in their eyes waved us off on 1 October, humbled by the countless folk who beeped horns, shouted encouragement, who threw hard-earned cash in our collection buckets and fed, housed and encouraged us on the way.
We've felt inspired by the solidarity of the trade union movement, the local branches and national organisations without whose support the march would never have been possible, workers we met fighting for their jobs and against attacks on their hard-won conditions, communities battling cuts.
Why walk hundreds of miles? Why not live the stereotype and laze about on benefits? Because for myself and all the other marchers there is a responsibility to organise a fightback, to offer a programme of demands that chime with the aspirations of our generation. We hope to make a contribution to building a mass movement, linking the campaigning and industrial strength of organised workers in trade unions with the energy and rage of dispossessed young people opposed to all austerity cuts.

Growing up in a single parent family and in poverty, education was an escape for me. The ladder is now being pulled away from under my feet, with the withdrawal of the education maintenance allowance (EMA) and unaffordable university fees. Millions of working-class youth are being thrown on the scrap heap. We have marched for the reinstatement of that EMA and for free high quality education for all. We have said young people need support, not criminalisation, we demand the reopening of closed youth services and their expansion.

Since leaving education and finishing university, I have been in and out of work but my living conditions have remained the same. I have never had the space of my own house (or even flat), but have always lived in small rooms in shared accommodation. The Jarrow march speaks for the millions on social housing waiting lists, the tens of millions at the mercy of the high rent slum landlords. We demand that the skills of unemployed construction workers are utilised in a massive building programme of environmentally sound, cheap social housing.
After being unemployed for over a year, I have been forced on to the coalition government's work programme, an unaccountable, private-sector organisation that now profits from my job seeking. I face the prospect of being used as slave labour, working full-time hours for my right to benefits making profits for the bosses. I have marched against all workfare schemes and for a publicly-funded, socially useful job creation scheme, including apprenticeships and training paid at least the minimum wage or the agreed trade union rate, with a guaranteed job at the end.
The Jarrow march is part of an international youth revolt provoked by the crisis of capitalism. Millions of young people across the globe – from Spain to Egypt to Chile – are fighting for secure jobs in the midst of economic destruction, for education not exclusion, as access to learning becomes a commodity. For control over our own lives, not to be slaves to the bosses, or have our standard of living dictated by the anarchy of the markets.

We share the slogan of the Occupy London and Wall Street movements. We are the 99%. We have marched on the city of London, a temple to the financial markets and a casino for the 1%. Our brothers and sisters, the Spanish indignados, have marched from their squares to Brussels, the home of the financial institutions who inflict a war of austerity on workers and the poor across Europe. We urge all young people and workers to join us for the last mile of the Jarrow March in London on Saturday from Embankment at noon to Trafalgar Square.

Matt Dobson Youth Fight for Jobs Dundee