• De nombreux cas de rachitisme inquiètent l’Écosse afp - Le figaro

    Le rachitisme, qui frappait les quartiers pauvres au Royaume-Uni au XIXe siècle, est en essor en Écosse, selon des données obtenues par le journal The Times .

    Au total, 442 cas de rachitisme, une maladie liée à un manque d’exposition au soleil et à une malnutrition, ont été observés en Écosse en 2022, contre 354 en 2018, selon les données des autorités locales de santé.

    L’espérance de vie la plus faible au Royaume-Uni
    « Des maladies généralement évitables comme celles-ci illustrent aussi que l’Écosse a l’espérance de vie la plus faible du Royaume-Uni » , a expliqué au Times Chris Williams, coprésident du Royal College of General Practitioners Scotland. La maladie, qui peut entraîner des déformations squelettiques lors de la croissance comme des jambes arquées ou des genoux cagneux, est liée à un manque d’exposition au soleil et donc de vitamines D, que l’on peut aussi trouver dans des aliments comme les poissons gras ou les œufs.

    En comparaison aux 442 cas en Écosse, 482 cas de rachitisme ont été enregistrés en Angleterre, pour une population pourtant dix fois plus importante. Le rachitisme a quasiment disparu au Royaume-Uni il y a plus d’un demi-siècle après des campagnes pour améliorer les régimes alimentaires et l’exposition au soleil.

    En Écosse, la plupart des cas ont été recensés autour de Glasgow, l’une des régions les plus pauvres de la province, avec un tiers des enfants vivant dans la pauvreté selon les dernières études. Selon des données de 2019, les hommes vivant dans les quartiers les plus pauvres de Glasgow vivent en moyenne 15 ans de moins que ceux qui vivent dans les quartiers les plus riches.

    Diversité ethnique
    Certains professionnels de santé suggèrent que l’augmentation de la diversité ethnique à Glasgow, avec certains types de peau réduisant la production de vitamines D, le développement d’activités plus sédentaires et une mauvaise alimentation peuvent expliquer la recrudescence de la maladie.

    D’autres maladies, comme la tuberculose ou la scarlatine, sont également en pleine augmentation en Écosse, rapporte le Times. Ces maladies sont des « maladies de pauvreté et sont fréquentes dans certaines parties du monde où les gens sont pauvres », explique un scientifique interrogé par le Times.

    #pauvreté #misère #Ecosse #Angleterre #capitalisme #Enfants #rachitisme #maladie #surnuméraires

    Source : https://www.lefigaro.fr/international/de-nombreux-cas-de-rachitisme-inquietent-l-ecosse-20230821

    • Les vols à l’arraché de montres de luxe suisses se multiplient à Londres Hélène Krähenbühl - RTS

      Le vol de montres suisses est en plein boom dans la plupart des grandes villes. Mais c’est à Londres que la situation est la plus grave. Dans la capitale britannique, une centaine de Rolex et une cinquantaine de Patek Philippe sont volées chaque mois, souvent en plein jour et avec une extrême violence.

      C’est lors d’une journée ensoleillée, peu avant la pandémie, que Paul Thorpe, propriétaire d’un magasin de bijoux et de montres dans la banlieue londonienne, a vu sa vie basculer.

      « Je venais de quitter le magasin et je marchais vers ma voiture. J’ai vu une moto passer sur ma gauche. Et soudainement, deux hommes qui portaient des masques m’ont attaqué par derrière. Ils m’ont tabassé et ont volé ma montre qui valait 55’000 francs », témoigne-t-il dimanche dans l’émission Mise au point. Le passionné de montres se retrouve inconscient et en sang sur le trottoir. La police ne retrouvera jamais les criminels.

      Toutes les dents de Paul Thorpe ont été cassées, fissurées ou broyées. Elles ont dû être remplacées. « Malheureusement, là où j’ai reçu l’impact initial, il n’y avait rien à faire. Du coup, j’ai perdu ces dents à jamais et je porte un dentier. Mon dentiste m’a facturé 22’000 francs », explique le Londonien, encore traumatisé par cette douloureuse expérience.

      Une patrouille spéciale dans les rues de Londres
      Ce type de scène d’une extrême violence est de plus en plus fréquent dans la capitale britannique
      . . . . . . .
      La suite : https://www.rts.ch/info/monde/14253657-les-vols-a-larrache-de-montres-de-luxe-suisses-se-multiplient-a-londres

      #luxe #montres #bourgeoisie #violence des #riches

  • The Secret Movement Bringing Back Europe’s Wildlife
    https://www.noemamag.com/the-secret-movement-bringing-back-europes-wildlife

    Rubbers is part of a secretive, underground network of wildlife enthusiasts who are returning species back into the landscape without asking permission first. It’s not just beavers: There are boar bombers, a “butterfly brigade” that breeds and releases rare species of butterfly and a clandestine group returning the pine marten — one of Britain’s rarest mammals — to British forests.

    On croise des #naturalistes amateurs souffrant de #species_loneliness et des milliardaires pratiquant l’#écocolonialisme en #Ecosse.
    #castors #biodiversité #réensauvagement_sauvage

  • Grande-Bretagne - Grande propriété capitaliste et héritage féodal https://mensuel.lutte-ouvriere.org/documents/archives/la-revue-lutte-de-classe/serie-actuelle-1993/grande-bretagne-grande-propriete (Lutte de classe n°49 - mars 2000)

    Charles III et sa famille d’aristocrates sont des parasites. Vestiges du moyen-âge, ils sont le symbole d’une aristocratie qui continue, au travers de monarchies dans divers pays d’Europe, à prétendre à diriger la société dont ils se gavent.

    Ce seront les révolutions ouvrières qui en débarrasseront un jour l’humanité, puisque la #bourgeoisie, dominante depuis plusieurs siècles, n’a jamais eu le courage de le faire.

    Sommaire de l’article :
    – Un secret bien gardé
    #Angleterre : la révolution inachevée
    #Ecosse : la révolution importée
    – La grande #propriété_foncière aujourd’hui
    – Propriété foncière et grand capital
    – Les seigneurs de Londres
    – Des capitalistes « féodaux » anglais...
    – ... aux « féodaux » capitalistes écossais
    – La nationalisation de la terre, une nécessité

    #aristocratie #féodalisme #arriération #barbarie #capitalisme #parasitisme #monarchie #charles_III

  • https://www.sofoot.com/des-fans-du-celtic-lancent-un-chant-anti-famille-royale-pendant-la-minute-d-

    Des supporters du Celtic ont chanté « Si vous détestez la famille royale, tapez dans vos mains » pendant la minute d’applaudissements dédiée à la mémoire de la Reine, avant le match de Premiership écossaise contre St Mirren à Paisley ce dimanche après-midi.

    #Elizabeth_II #Monarchie #Football #UK #Ecosse

  • Bienvenue en #Géozarbie

    #Enclaves, territoires prêtés, zones disputées, #micro-États, île fantasmée... il existe dans le monde quantité de petits bouts de terre aux frontières ou statuts bizarres ! Mêlant anecdotes loufoques et grands moments de l’Histoire, Bienvenue en Géozarbie nous fait découvrir 10 lieux où l’ubuesque se dispute à l’absurde !

    https://www.arte.tv/fr/videos/RC-022365/bienvenue-en-geozarbie

    #géographie #géographie_politique #frontières #absurdité #série #arte #vidéo #ressources_pédagogiques #Absurdistan

    –—

    Le Mont blanc n’est pas en France

    Saviez-vous que l’île de la Conférence est administrée à égalité de temps par deux pays, la France et l’Espagne ? Que la principauté d’Arbézie, à cheval sur la frontière franco-suisse, est… un hôtel-restaurant ? Ou que la France possède des territoires à Jérusalem ?
    Ce sont ces bizarreries géographiques que nous raconte #Olivier_Marchon dans ce livre étonnant qui rassemble des dizaines d’histoires de ce type, des plus tragiques au plus loufoques : de petits morceaux de terre, enclavés, disputés, au statut à part, parfois étrange, qui chacun à leur manière racontent la grande histoire…

    https://www.editionspoints.com/ouvrage/le-mont-blanc-n-est-pas-en-france-olivier-marchon/9782757895757
    #livre

    ping @reka

  • Cocktail à l’hydromel de Beltane (Wicker Man Mead)
    https://www.cuisine-libre.org/cocktail-wicker-man-mead-hydromel-beltane

    Verser le sirop de #Gingembre, le jus de pomme et l’hydromel dans un verre. Compléter avec autant d’eau gazeuse que vous le souhaitez. Garnir de tranches de concombre et de lime.

    Gingembre, #Alcool, #Cocktails, #Écosse, #Pomme_à jus / #Végétarien, #Sans œuf, #Sans lactose, #Sans gluten, #Sans viande #beltaine #beltane

  • Skirlie (pilaf d’avoine)
    https://www.cuisine-libre.org/skirlie-pilaf-d-avoine

    Accompagnement écossais traditionnel, à base de #Flocons_d'avoine et d’oignons rissolés. Faire fondre le beurre à feu moyen et ajouter l’oignon. Faire revenir jusqu’à ce qu’il soit cuit et légèrement doré. Ajouter progressivement l’avoine en remuant, autant que nécessaire pour absorber toute la graisse. Le plat doit rester assez ferme et plutôt sec. Remuer pendant environ 8 minutes, jusqu’à ce que les flocons d’avoine soient cuits mais conservent encore un peu de croquant. Saler et poivrer au… #Oignon, #Écosse, Flocons d’avoine, #Pilafs / #Végétarien, #Sans viande, #Sans œuf

  • Clapshot, purée de #Navet
    https://www.cuisine-libre.org/clapshot-puree-de-navet

    Purée écossaise de navets et de pommes de terre écrasés avec de la ciboulette. Épluchez et coupez les pommes de terre et le navet en morceaux de taille similaire. Faites-les bouillir dans une grande casserole d’eau salée jusqu’à ce qu’ils soient tous deux tendres. Égouttez et remettez aussitôt dans la casserole. Ajoutez le beurre, la #Ciboulette, salez et poivrez. Écrasez finement ou en laissant un peu de texture, selon votre préférence. Servez aussitôt, bien chaud, en garnissant de ciboulette… Navet, Ciboulette, #Écosse, #Stoemp, #PdT_à chair_farineuse / #Végétarien, #Sans viande, #Sans œuf, #Sans gluten, #Bouilli

  • Cop26 : les éboueurs font tache d’huile à Glasgow Thomas Lemahieu
    https://www.solidaire.org/articles/cop26-les-eboueurs-font-tache-d-huile-glasgow

    En grève pour leur salaire, ces « travailleurs essentiels » à l’environnement profitent du sommet sur le climat pour se faire entendre. Avec gouaille et détermination.

    Le dispositif est éprouvé. Toujours le même. Au poil. Léger. Un téléphone en mode vidéo activé, un piquet de grève à l’arrière-plan et, sur le devant de la scène, un homme, index pointé, coups de menton, bras en l’air. Et une gouaille qui perce les tympans et crève les cœurs. En une dizaine de jours, grâce à ses petites séquences de quelques dizaines de secondes, tournées en plan américain avec un léger effet de plongée, Chris Mitchell, leur porte-voix – et quelle voix, avec cet accent écossais à couper au couteau –, a réussi à mettre les éboueurs en lutte au cœur des mobilisations organisées durant la COP26 de Glasgow (Royaume-Uni). La jeune activiste écologiste suédoise Greta Thunberg, l’autre « rock star » du contre-sommet, a d’ailleurs fini par relayer elle-même le conflit sur les réseaux sociaux. « Tenez-vous avec nous, pas contre nous ! » réclame l’animateur du syndicat GMB dans chacun des messages et, de plus en plus, des citoyens dans la ville écossaise mais aussi dans le monde entier se lèvent avec eux pour relayer leurs demandes : pas de justice, ni sociale, ni climatique, pas de paix !

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=1&v=cHy6r6xYhzk

    En butte depuis des années à une stagnation salariale totale, les éboueurs de Glasgow avaient prévenu, dès la mi-octobre, les autorités locales qui, à travers l’agence publique employant les fonctionnaires territoriaux (Cosla), gèrent notamment la récolte et le traitement des déchets : sans avancée sur leur revendication d’une augmentation conséquente – bon nombre ont des fiches de paie autour de 17 000 livres sterling (20 000 euros) par an, un salaire très bas en Écosse –, ils relanceraient une grève au démarrage de la COP26. « Nous avons un message très clair pour le gouvernement écossais ! s’époumonait Chris Mitchell, le 20 octobre dernier. Payez à ces héros un salaire décent ! Parce qu’ils le méritent ! La camaraderie (en français dans le texte – NDLR) et la solidarité ne font que croître. Elle est toujours plus grande, plus grande et plus grande, et nous n’allons pas reculer. » Et ils ont tenu parole. Depuis dix jours, les ordures ne sont pas collectées à Glasgow et, malgré cela, la grève atteint des sommets de popularité.

    Sur l’air de l’hymne électro Freed from Desire
    Toute la semaine, sur les sept ou huit piquets de grève devant les différents centres de traitement des déchets, les éboueurs ont reçu la visite des participants au contre-sommet : des environnementalistes indiens, des défenseurs du nucléaire canadiens, des syndicalistes européens… Ensemble, ils ont repris à tue-tête le refrain de la grève, sur l’air détourné de l’hymne électro Freed from Desire : « Les travailleurs sont en feu, Cosla devrait être pétrifié ! » Le week-end dernier, des représentants du syndicat de locataires de Govanhill, un quartier au sud de Glasgow, sont venus témoigner également de leur solidarité. « Au-delà de la rémunération des travailleurs, en tant que résidents, nous devons voir des investissements massifs dans notre service de nettoyage, qui, pendant des années, a été en sous-effectif et sous-financé », rappelle l’une des animatrices de l’association.

    Pour l’exécutif écossais et le conseil municipal de Glasgow, contrôlés par les indépendantistes de gauche du Parti national écossais (SNP), la grève des éboueurs tombe au plus mal : elle écorne la carte postale de la COP26 – au lustre déjà bien étiolé –, mais aussi l’image d’un gouvernement occupé à lutter contre l’austérité imposée par les conservateurs de Boris Johnson. Pire : les élus SNP ont envisagé, ces derniers jours, de mettre en branle une stratégie à la Thatcher pour casser le mouvement : après avoir encouragé – sans succès – les personnels des parcs et jardins à « franchir le piquet de grève » pour ramasser les poubelles, ils ont cherché à recruter des personnels privés dans le même but. Dans un communiqué, vendredi dernier, le syndicat GMB a réclamé la démission immédiate de Susan Aitken, la maire SNP de Glasgow, au nom de « son abdication totale face à ses responsabilités ». Ajoutant : « Ils nous ont menacés par trois fois avec des lois antisyndicales et maintenant ils veulent utiliser des intérimaires pour briser le mouvement. Les tactiques des tories ne marcheront pas. »

    Jeremy Corbyn est venu soutenir les grévistes
    Les travaillistes écossais se sont, eux, rangés derrière les éboueurs en grève, appuyant leur revendication d’une hausse annuelle de 2 000 livres sterling (2 350 euros). Ce lundi, c’est Jeremy Corbyn, l’ancien dirigeant du Labour et figure de la gauche britannique, qui est venu les soutenir. Secrétaire générale des TUC, la confédération unique au Royaume-Uni, Frances O’Grady salue également le mouvement : « La justice climatique et la justice sociale vont de pair, mais, alors que Glasgow accueille ce sommet sur le climat, les travailleurs essentiels qui la nettoient ne reçoivent pas le traitement juste et la considération au travail qu’ils devraient recevoir. »

    Pour Chris Mitchell, la figure des éboueurs en lutte, dont certains camarades envisagent, mi-blagueurs, mi-sérieux, de transformer les harangues en sonnerie de réveil ou de téléphone, le pli est pris. « C’est une question d’environnement, notre métier, nous avons affaire à du recyclage et du gâchis alimentaire, insiste-t-il. Il est malheureux et même lamentable de devoir endurer des coupes budgétaires depuis ces dix dernières années, et ces quatre dernières années ont été proprement horribles. Si vous vous souciez de l’environnement, vous devez investir dans les services publics, mais, malheureusement, Glasgow n’a fait que des économies d’échelle permanentes, au détriment du bien commun et des travailleurs. » 

    #cop26 #ordures #déchets #Ecosse #Glasgow #grève #recyclage #services_publics #nettoyage #greta_thunberg #écologie

  • La Reine Élizabeth II ne veut pas qu’on touche à ses terres pour le climat : elle a fait jouer le « Queen’s consent »
    https://www.rtbf.be/info/monde/detail_la-reine-elizabeth-ii-ne-veut-pas-qu-on-touche-a-ses-terres-pour-le-clim

    Ce jeudi 29 juillet marque "Jour du Dépassement" mondial, une date symbole dans la lutte contre le réchauffement climatique. Un combat en faveur du climat, auquel ne semble pas vouloir prendre part la Reine Elizabeth 2 d’Angleterre, du moins pas si cela touche à ses intérêts personnels.

    En effet, le quotidien britannique The Guardian (plutôt antimonarchique), relayé par De Morgen en Belgique, nous apprend que la Reine d’Angleterre a fait usage de l’un de ses privilèges constitutionnels pour éviter que ses domaines écossais soient soumis à une nouvelle loi sur l’environnement.

    L’Écosse a en effet décidé de prendre la lutte contre le réchauffement climatique à bras-le-corps, avec notamment une nouvelle loi sur le chauffage. Cette loi a pour but de diminuer les émissions de gaz à effet de serre de l’Écosse en s’attaquant au système de chauffage de chaque foyer écossais. Au lieu de chauffer les maisons avec des chaudières polluantes, celles-ci seront chauffées à l’énergie verte reliée par des pipelines.

    Cette nouvelle loi sur le chauffage va jusqu’à obliger les Écossais à vendre un terrain, si cela s’avère nécessaire pour la construction d’un tel pipeline.

    Une loi qui ne s’appliquera pas à la Reine Élizabeth qui est pourtant l’une des plus grande propriétaire foncier d’Écosse.

    Consentement de la Reine
    Pour éviter que des pipelines ne passent au travers des terres de la famille royale, en février dernier, la Reine a fait valoir une ancienne disposition qui date du 18e siècle intitulée « Queen’s consent » ou « consentement de la reine ».

    Il s’agit d’une coutume datant de 1700, qui, par courtoisie, permet au monarque d’accéder rapidement aux projets de loi qui pourraient affecter sa position ou ses intérêts privés.

    Un procédé qui permet à la Reine d’adapter une loi en sa faveur, car sans sa bénédiction, une loi n’est pas soumise au parlement.

    Une démarche qui semble en contradiction avec l’engagement public de la famille royale dans la lutte contre la crise climatique. Récemment, le prince William a rejoint son père, Charles, dans une campagne visant à réduire les émissions et à protéger la planète.

    Problème démocratique ?
    Ce consentement est aujourd’hui remis en question mais le palais de Buckingham se défend. Selon lui, le consentement de la Reine est simplement « une formalité », tout comme la deuxième procédure d’assentiment de la Reine, qui est nécessaire pour faire passer un projet de loi.

    Toutefois, cet assentiment se fait en public, tandis que le consentement de la reine a lieu en coulisses.

    Au Royaume-Uni, les lobbyistes sont tenus par la loi d’être transparents, mais pas la Reine. Élizabeth utilise donc fréquemment cette option pour influencer la législation britannique.

    Le Guardian révèle comment la Reine et le Prince Charles ont utilisé à plusieurs reprises leur accès privilégié aux projets de loi pour faire pression sur les ministres afin de modifier la législation britannique au profit de leurs intérêts privés ou pour refléter leurs opinions entre la fin des années 1960 et les années 1980. https://www.courrierinternational.com/article/le-mot-du-jour-queens-consent-ou-quand-elisabeth-ii-se-mele-d

    #écologie #argent #démocratie #Angleterre #royauté #reine #écosse

  • Le rail privé britannique, ce mort-vivant… Michaël Verbauwhede

    Trains hors de prix, en retard, souvent annulés : même le gouvernement de Boris Johnson doit reconnaître que la privatisation du rail anglais est un échec. Mais plutôt que de le renationaliser comme le demandent deux tiers des Britanniques, il a décidé de relooker la privatisation du rail. Explications.

    En 1994, la Royaume-Uni privatisait l’ensemble de son chemin de fer. Transport de passagers, vente de tickets, entretien des voies… tout allait mieux rouler avec le privé : moins de retards, plus de services, des tickets moins chers.


    Deux tiers des Britanniques demandent la renationalisation du rail anglais. (Photo : We own it)

    Mais très vite, le rail anglais dépérit : de nombreux accidents ont eu lieu, dont le terrible accident de Hatfield (4 morts) dus à un mauvais entretien des voies. Le service se dégrade et les tarifs sont de plus en plus chers. Les Britanniques dépensent en moyenne 14 % de leur salaire mensuel pour faire la navette https://www.latribune.fr/economie/union-europeenne/au-royaume-uni-la-privatisation-des-chemins-de-fer-deraille-628489.html , contre 2 % en France par exemple. Un jeune YouTubeur fait ainsi le calcul qu’il lui revient moins cher de faire le trajet de Sheffield (nord de l’Angleterre) à Essex (est de Londres) en passant par Berlin en avion, plutôt que de prendre le train. https://www.independent.co.uk/travel/news-and-advice/teenager-flies-from-sheffield-to-essex-via-berlin-because-it-is-cheap

    Enfin, les conditions de travail se dégradent, comme en témoigne le splendide film de Ken Loach, The Navigators

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Gzdrqd4uQE


    The Navigators|2002| VOSTFR ~ WebRip

    Les opérateurs privés en ont par contre tiré des profits importants. Le syndicat anglais TUC a ainsi calculé que les actionnaires des compagnies privées avaient reçu un milliard de livres (environ 1,16 milliards d’euros) en dividendes entre 2013 et 2018.

    La privatisation du rail au Royaume-Uni en 1994 est donc un échec. Suite aux accidents à répétition, le gouvernement britannique avait déjà renationalisé la gestion de l’infrastructure en 2002, en créant Network Rail.

    Même la droite reconnait l’échec
    Mais les retards, les tarifs élevés et la mauvaise qualité du service n’ont pas arrêté pour autant. Les syndicats et voyageurs ont continué à dénoncer l’échec de la privatisation et à réclamer une renationalisation. Deux tiers de la population soutient cette reprise de contrôle public. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/rail-chaos-denationalisation-chris-grayling-labour-two-thirds-bmg-res Sous la direction de Corbyn, le Labour avait également fait campagne en ce sens.

    L’échec du système est visible par tous. Sous pression, de l’opinion publique et des syndicats, le gouvernement de Boris Johnson a été obligé de le reconnaître, dans un rapport qui vient de sortir. Il met donc fin au système tant décrié des franchises. Ce système donnait l’exclusivité à une compagnie privée de faire rouler des trains sur une région ou des lignes bien déterminées. Sur cette franchise, la compagnie fixait les tarifs qu’elle souhaitait.

    Même morte, la privatisation du rail britannique vit encore...
    Dorénavant, une structure ferroviaire nationale unique (Great British Railways) est rétablie, avec un seul système de billetterie. Mais le gouvernement n’en tire pas toutes les conclusions. Car les compagnies privées restent toujours impliquées pour la circulation des trains, par des délégations de services (le public fixe les horaires et tarifs et le privé exploite les trains).

    Le communiqué du gouvernement est assez clair à ce sujet : « ce n’est pas une renationalisation (…) mais une simplification. Si Great British Railways joue le rôle d’âme dirigeante pour coordonner l’ensemble du réseau, notre plan prévoit une plus grande participation du secteur privé ». Et de citer les façons dont le privé pourra s’impliquer dans le transport ferroviaire : faire circuler les trains, innover dans la vente de billets…

    Le gouvernement continue donc à financer les profits du privé avec de l’argent public et celui des voyageurs. Il reste dans une logique de marché. Le groupe d’action We own it, qui se bat pour la renationalisation de toute une série de services publics, estime que cette décision n’est qu’une « privatisation relookée ». Les syndicats soupçonnent qu’il y aura encore des coupes budgétaires et que les profits continueront à aller au privé. https://www.rfi.fr/fr/europe/20210520-royaume-uni-le-gouvernement-d%C3%A9voile-sa-r%C3%A9forme-du-rail

    L’Écosse montre qu’un autre modèle est possible
    Le débat sur la renationalisation du rail au Royaume-Uni fait rage depuis des années. Sous pression, l’Écosse et le Pays de Galle avaient été beaucoup plus loin. L’Écosse a ainsi décidé de renationaliser l’entièreté de son rail en mars 2021, car l’opérateur privé (Abellio filiale de la NS néérlandaise) n’atteignait pas ses objectifs. Fini le privé (contrairement au plan du gouvernement de Boris Johnson), c’est une entreprise publique qui fera désormais rouler les trains en Écosse. Cette entreprise conservera l’ensemble du personnel. Les syndicats et organisations de gauche attendent beaucoup de cette véritable renationalisation écossaise.

    La lutte pour la renationalisation du rail en Angleterre n’est donc pas terminée. Mais cette nouvelle tentative de la droite pour maintenir coûte que coûte la privatisation du rail britannique montre qu’elle est sur la défensive. Elle a du reconnaître que la privatisation des années ‘90 était un échec. Et les syndicats, voyageurs et mouvement de gauche ont déjà annoncé la couleur : ils continueront à se battre pour reconstruire un rail public.

    Source : https://www.solidaire.org/articles/le-rail-prive-britannique-ce-mort-vivant

    #royaume-uni #trains #banlieue #privatisation #Network_Rail #boris_johnson #Great_British_Railway #délégations_de_services #Écosse

  • Glasgow protesters rejoice as men freed after immigration van standoff

    Hundreds of people surrounded vehicle men were held in and chanted ‘these are our neighbours, let them go’

    Campaigners have hailed a victory for Glaswegian solidarity and told the Home Office “you messed with the wrong city” as two men detained by UK Immigration Enforcement were released back into their community after a day of protest.

    Police Scotland intervened to free the men after a tense day-long standoff between immigration officials and hundreds of local residents, who surrounded their van in a residential street on the southside of Glasgow to stop the detention of the men during Eid al-Fitr.

    Staff from Immigration Enforcement are believed to have swooped on a property in Pollokshields early on Thursday morning and detained people.

    By mid-morning, a crowd of about 200 protesters surrounded the vehicle, preventing it from driving away, and chanting “these are our neighbours, let them go”, with one protester lying under the van to prevent it driving off.

    “I’m just overwhelmed by Glasgow’s solidarity for refugees and asylum seekers,” said Roza Salih, shouting to be heard over the jubilant shouts of “refugees are welcome here”. She added: “This is a victory for the community.”

    Salih, who had been at the protest since the morning, is a Kurdish refugee and co-founded the #Glasgow_Girls_campaign in 2005 with fellow pupils to prevent the deportation of a school friend and fight against dawn raids.

    Earlier Salih questioned why the widely condemned practice of dawn raids appeared to be recurring 15 years later in Glasgow , the only dispersal city for asylum seekers in Scotland. She also highlighted the jarring impact of carrying out such an action during Eid al-Fitr, the Muslim festival marking the end of Ramadan, in one of the most multicultural areas of the city and within the constituency of the first minister, Nicola Sturgeon.

    As cheering protesters escorted the men to the local mosque, Pinar Aksu, of Maryhill Integration Network said: “They messed with the wrong city.

    “This is a revolution of people coming together in solidarity for those who others have turned away from,” she said. Aksu described how hundreds more supporters had arrived at the scene as the afternoon progressed. “This is just the start. When there is another dawn #raid in Glasgow, the same thing will happen.”

    Aksu added: “For this to happen on Eid, which is meant to be a time of peaceful celebration, is horrifying. It is no coincidence that it is taking place when a new immigration bill is being prepared.

    “We also need answers from Police Scotland about their involvement. We have already written to the home secretary asking urgently to clarify whether the decisions to carry out immigration enforcement raids, including dawn raids, represents a change in the policy by the UK government.”

    Shortly after 5pm, Police Scotland released an updated statement, saying that Supt Mark Sutherland had decided to release the detained men “in order to protect the safety, public health and wellbeing of those involved in the detention and subsequent protest”. The force asked those at the scene to disperse from the area as soon as possible.

    A spokesperson said earlier: “Police Scotland does not assist in the removal of asylum seekers. Officers are at the scene to police the protest and to ensure public safety.”

    The second dawn raid in Glasgow within a month appears to show a further escalation of the UK’s hostile environment policy. While the SNP government has argued strongly for Scotland to have control over its own immigration policy, not least because of the country’s unique depopulation pressures, it remains reserved to Westminster.

    Sources told the Guardian the immigration status of the individuals detained was unclear.

    The protests took place as new MSPs were sworn in to what has been described as Holyrood’s most diverse ever parliament, taking their oaths in British Sign Language, Arabic, Urdu, Punjabi, Doric, Scots, Gaelic, Welsh and Orcadian, and after an election in which refugees had voting rights for the first time in Scotland.

    Politicians expressed their solidarity with the residents on social media.

    Following the men’s release, #Nicola_Sturgeon tweeted: “I am proud to represent a constituency and lead a country that welcomes and shows support to asylum seekers and refugees.”

    She added that the police had been “in an invidious position – they do not assist in the removal of asylum seekers but do have a duty to protect public safety. They act independently of ministers, but I support this decision.”

    Condemning the Home Office action, #Sturgeon added: “To act in this way, in the heart of a Muslim community as they celebrated Eid, and in an area experiencing a Covid outbreak was a health and safety risk.

    “Both as MSP and as FM, I will be demanding assurances from the UK government that they will never again create, through their actions, such a dangerous situation.”

    Wafa Shaheen, of the Scottish Refugee Council, told the Guardian: “To force people from their homes on the first day of Eid, with neighbours and families trying to honour the religious celebration in peace, shows – at best – a serious lack of cultural sensitivity and awareness on the Home Office’s part.

    “Regardless of the immigration status of those targeted today, this heavy-handed approach from the Home Office is unnecessary and avoidable. It is frightening, intimidating and disproportionate. The hundreds of people on the streets this morning in solidarity with those affected shows people in Scotland are sick of these raids and have had enough.”

    A Home Office spokesperson said: “The UK government is tackling illegal immigration and the harm it causes, often to the most vulnerable people, by removing those with no right to be in the UK. The operation in Glasgow was conducted in relation to suspected immigration offences and the two Indian nationals complied with officers at all times.”

    https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/may/13/glasgow-residents-surround-and-block-immigration-van-from-leaving-stree

    #Glasgow #Ecosse #solidarité #réfugiés #asile #migrations #résistance #refugees_welcome

    ping @isskein @karine4

    • Police release men from immigration van blocking Glasgow street

      Two men who were being detained in an immigration van which was surrounded by protesters have been released.

      The move followed a standoff between police officers and protesters in Kenmure Street on Glasgow’s southside.

      Early on Thursday people surrounded the Home Office vehicle believed to contain two Indian immigrants who had been removed from a flat.

      Hundreds gathered in the area, with one man crawling under the van to prevent it from moving.

      The Home Office said the men had been detained over “suspected immigration offences”.

      Some of the protesters were heard shouting “let our neighbours go”.

      In a statement, Police Scotland said that Ch Supt Mark Sutherland had decided to have the men released.

      It said: "In order to protect the safety, public health and well-being of all people involved in the detention and subsequent protest in Kenmure Street, Pollokshields, today, Ch Supt Mark Sutherland has, following a suitable risk assessment, taken the operational decision to release the men detained by UK Immigration Enforcement back into their community meantime.

      “In order to facilitate this quickly and effectively, Police Scotland is asking members of the public to disperse from the street as soon as possible. Please take care when leaving the area and follow the directions of the officers on the street.”

      Earlier the force stressed that it did not assist in the removal of asylum seekers, and that officers were at the scene to police the protest and to ensure public safety.

      Scotland’s First Minister Nicola Sturgeon, who is also the MSP for the area, said she disagreed fundamentally with Home Office immigration policy.

      She said: “This action was unacceptable. To act in this way, in the heart of a Muslim community as they celebrated Eid, and in an area experiencing a Covid outbreak was a health and safety risk.”

      She said she would be “demanding assurances” from the UK government that they would not create such a dangerous situation again.

      She added: “No assurances were given - and frankly no empathy shown - when I managed to speak to a junior minister earlier.”

      Nicola Sturgeon and her justice secretary, Humza Yousaf are seeking follow up talks with the Home Secretary, Priti Patel.

      They believe Immigration Enforcement has acted provocatively by trying to remove migrants from an ethnically diverse community during Eid.

      The resulting protests brought people together, against Covid rules, in part of Glasgow which is experiencing a spike in cases linked to the Indian variant.

      Police Scotland intervened on public health and public order grounds to require the release of the two Indian nationals being held by Immigration Enforcement.

      Their operational decision is fully supported by Scottish ministers and while the Home Office is always grateful for police assistance, releasing the men on bail is hardly the outcome they wanted.

      They will not have enjoyed being seen to back down in the face of public and political protest.

      Humza Yousaf, the Scottish government’s justice secretary, said: “the action they [the Home Office] have today is at best completely reckless, and at worst intended to provoke, on a day the UK government would have known the Scottish government and MSPs would be distracted by parliamentary process.”

      He added that the situation “should never have occurred”, and that “the UK government’s hostile environment is not welcome here.”

      In a statement, the Home Office said: "The UK government is tackling illegal immigration and the harm it causes, often to the most vulnerable people by removing those with no right to be in the UK.

      "The operation in Glasgow was conducted in relation to suspected immigration offences and the two Indian nationals complied with officers at all times.

      “The UK government continues to tackle illegal migration in all its forms and our New Plan for Immigration will speed up the removal of those who have entered the UK illegally.”

      The Sikhs in Scotland group said in a statement that it was “deeply concerned”, and urged the Home Office to “abandon forced removals and to adopt an immigration policy based on human rights, compassion and dignity”.

      Mohammad Asif, of the Afghan Human Rights Foundation, said hundreds of people were protesting.

      The 54-year-old added: “We’re here against the hostile environment created by the Tories and the British state.”
      Presentational grey line

      Incidents like Kenmure Street - at the centre of Scotland’s most ethnically diverse neighbourhood - will do nothing to persuade those who already believe the UK’s policy on immigration is unfair and inhumane.

      Despite the protest, the Home Office says it was a legitimate operation targeting those it suspected of immigration offences.

      And yet there could be more problems on the horizon. The Home Office has just ended its consultation on its New Plan for Immigration - a policy that will speed up deportations for those who have entered the country ’illegally’.

      Those in such a position will not be able to claim asylum and will instead be granted ’temporary protection’, a status that would come under periodic review.

      More than 70 charities and faith groups in Scotland have condemned such proposals.

      The Home Office is toughening its stance on immigration, but says its policies will make the system fairer for those most in need, while discouraging criminal activity like people trafficking.

      The Scottish government, and the protestors in Glasgow today, fundamentally disagree.

      https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-glasgow-west-57100259

  • Making sense of silenced #archives: #Hume, Scotland and the ‘debate’ about the humanity of Black people

    Last September, the University of Edinburgh found itself at the centre of international scrutiny after temporarily renaming the #David_Hume Tower (now referred to by its street designation 40 George Square). The decision to rename the building, and hold a review on the way forward, prompted much commentary – a great deal of which encouraged a reckoning on what David Hume means to the University, its staff and students. These ideas include the full extent of Hume’s views on humanity, to establish whether he maintained any possible links (ideological or participatory) in the slave trade, and the role of Scotland in the African slave trade.

    Hume’s belief that Black people were a sub-human species of lower intellectual and biological rank to Europeans have rightfully taken stage in reflecting whether his values deserve commemoration on a campus. “I am apt to suspect the negroes and in general all other species of men (for there are four or five different kinds) to be naturally inferior to the whites. […] No ingenious manufactures amongst them, no arts, no sciences.” The full link to the footnote can be found here.

    Deliberations are split on whether statues and buildings are being unfairly ‘targeted’ or whether the totality of ideas held by individuals whose names are commemorated by these structures stand in opposition to a modern university’s values. Depending on who you ask, the debate over the tower fluctuates between moral and procedural. On the latter, it must be noted the University has in the past renamed buildings at the behest of calls for review across specific points in history. The Hastings ‘Kamuzu’ Banda building on Hill Place was quietly renamed in 1995, with no clarity on whether there was a formal review process at the time. On the moral end, it is about either the legacy or demythologization of David Hume.

    Some opposing the name change argue against applying present moral standards to judge what was not recognised in the past. Furthermore, they point to the archives to argue that prior to the 1760s there is scant evidence that Scots were not anything more than complicit to the slave trade given the vast wealth it brought.

    I argue against this and insist that the African experience and the engaged intellectual abolition movement deserves prominence in this contemporary debate about Hume.

    For to defend ‘passive complicity’ is to undermine both the Africans who rose in opposition against their oppression for hundreds of years and the explicit goals of white supremacy. For access to mass acquisition of resources on inhabited land requires violent dispossession of profitable lands and forced relocation of populations living on them. The ‘moral justification’ of denying the humanity of the enslaved African people has historically been defended through the strategic and deliberate creation of ‘myths’ – specifically Afrophobia – to validate these atrocities and to defend settler colonialism and exploitation. Any intellectual inquiry of the renaming of the tower must take the genuine concern into account: What was David Hume’s role in the strategic myth-making about African people in the Scottish imagination?

    If we are starting with the archives as evidence of Scottish complicity in the slave trade, why ignore African voices on this matter? Does the Scottish archive adequately represent the African experience within the slave trade? How do we interpret their silence in the archives?

    Decolonisation, the process Franz Fanon described as when “the ‘thing’ colonised becomes a human through the very process of liberation”, offers a radical praxis through which we can interrogate the role of the archive in affirming or disregarding the human experience. If we establish that the 18th century Scottish archive was not invested in preserving ‘both sides’ of the debate’, then the next route is to establish knowledge outside of a colonial framework where the ideology, resistance and liberation of Africans is centred. That knowledge is under the custodianship of African communities, who have relied on intricate and deeply entrenched oral traditions and practices which are still used to communicate culture, history, science and methods.

    To reinforce a point raised by Professor Tommy Curry, the fact that Africans were aware of their humanity to attempt mutiny in slave ships (Meermin & Amistad) and to overthrow colonial governance (the Haitian revolution) amidst the day-to-day attempts to evade slave traders is enough to refute the insistence that the debates must centre around what Scots understood about the slave trade in the 18th century.

    To make sense of these gaps in my own research, I have broadly excavated the archival records in Scotland if only to establish that a thorough documentation of the African-led resistance to Scottish participation in the slave trade and colonialism cannot be located in the archives.

    Dr David Livingstone (1813–1873), whose writing documenting the slave trade across the African Great Lakes galvanized the Scottish public to take control of the region to be named the Nyasaland Protectorate, would prove to be a redemptive figure in Scotland’s reconsideration of its role in the slave trade. However, in 1891, 153 years after Hume wrote his footnote, Sir Harry Hamilton Johnston (1858–1927), the first British colonial administrator of Nyasaland, would re-inforce similar myths about the ‘British Central African’: “to these [negroes] almost without arts and sciences and the refined pleasures of the senses, the only acute enjoyment offered them by nature is sexual intercourse”. Even at that time, the documented resistance is represented by Scottish missionaries who aimed to maintain Nyasaland under their sphere of control.

    Filling in the gaps that the archives cannot answer involves more complex and radical modalities of investigation.

    I rely on locally-recognised historians or documenters within communities, who preserve their histories, including the slave trade, through methodically structured oral traditions. The legacy of both the Arab and Portuguese slave trade and British colonialism in Nyasaland remains a raw memory, even though there are no precise indigenous terms to describe these phenomena.

    I have visited and listened to oral histories about the importance of ‘ancestor caves’ where families would conduct ceremonies and celebrations out of view to evade the slave catchers. These are the stories still being told about how children were hidden and raised indoors often only taken outside at night, keeping silent to escape the eyes and ears of the catchers. Embedded in these historical narratives are didactic tales, organised for ease of remembrance for the survival of future generations.
    Despite what was believed by Hume and his contemporaries, the arts and sciences have always been intrinsic in African cultural traditions. Decolonising is a framework contingent upon recognising knowledge productions within systems that often will never make their way into archival records. It centres the recognition and legitimization of the ways in which African people have collected and shared their histories.

    The knowledge we learn from these systems allows us to reckon with both the silence of archives and the fallacies of myth-making about African people.

    At very least, these debates should lead to investigations to understand the full extent of Hume’s participation in the dehumanization of enslaved Africans, and the role he played to support the justification for their enslavement.

    https://www.race.ed.ac.uk/making-sense-of-silenced-archives-hume-scotland-and-the-debate-about-the-
    #Édimbourg #toponymie #toponymie_poltique #Ecosse #UK #Edinburgh #David_Hume_Tower #esclavage #histoire #mémoire #Kamuzu_Banda #colonialisme #imaginaire #décolonisation #Nyasaland #Nyasaland_Protectorate #histoire_orale #archives #mythes #mythologie #déshumanisation

    ping @cede @karine4 @isskein

    • Hastings Banda

      The #University_of_Edinburgh renamed the Hastings ‘Kamuzu’ Banda building on #Hill_Place in the 1990s. Whilst fellow independence leader and Edinburgh alumni #Julius_Nyerere is still regarded as a saint across the world, #Banda died with an appalling record of human rights abuses and extortion – personally owning as much as 45% of #Malawi’s GDP. There are no plaques in Edinburgh commemorating #Kamuzu, and rightly so.

      Banda’s time in Edinburgh does, however, give us a lens through which to think about the University and colonial knowledge production in the 1940s and ‘50s; how numerous ‘fathers of the nation’ who led African independence movements were heavily involved in the linguistic, historical and anthropological codification of their own people during the late colonial period; why a cultural nationalist (who would later lead an anti-colonial independence movement) would write ‘tracts of empire’ whose intended audience were missionaries and colonial officials; and how such tracts reconciled imagined modernities and traditions.

      Fellow-Edinburgh student Julius Nyerere showed considerable interest in the ‘new science’ of anthropology during his time in Scotland, and #Jomo_Kenyatta – the first president of independent Kenya – penned a cutting-edge ethnography of the #Kikuyu whilst studying under #Malinowski at the LSE, published as Facing Mount Kenya in 1938. Banda himself sat down and co-edited Our African Way of Life, writing an introduction outlining Chewa and broader ‘Maravi’ traditions, with the Edinburgh-based missionary anthropologist T. Cullen Young in 1944.

      Before arriving in Edinburgh in 1938, Banda had already furthered his education in the US through his expertise on Chewa language and culture: Banda was offered a place at the University of Chicago in the 1930s on the strength of his knowledge of chiChewa, with Mark Hana Watkins’s 1937 A Grammar of Chichewa: A Bantu Language of British Central Africa acknowledging that “All the information was obtained from Kamuzu Banda, a native Chewa, while he was in attendance at the University of Chicago from 1930 to 1932”, and Banda also recorded ‘together with others’ four Chewa songs for Nancy Cunard’s Negro Anthology. In Britain in 1939 he was appointed as adviser to the Malawian chief, Mwase Kasungu, who spent six months at the London University of Oriental and African Languages to help in an analysis of chiNyanja; an experience that “must have reinforced” Banda’s “growing obsession with his Chewa identity” (Shepperson, 1998).

      Banda in Edinburgh

      In Edinburgh, Banda shifted from being a source of knowledge to a knowledge producer – a shift that demands we think harder about why African students were encouraged to Edinburgh in the first place and what they did here. Having already gained a medical degree from Chicago, Banda was primarily at Edinburgh to convert this into a British medical degree. This undoubtedly was Banda’s main focus, and the “techniques of men like Sir John Fraser electrified him, and he grew fascinated with his subject in a way which only a truly dedicated man can” (Short, 1974, p.38).

      Yet Banda also engaged with linguistic and ethnographic codification, notably with the missionary anthropologist, T Cullen Young. And whilst black Edinburgh doctors were seen as key to maintaining the health of colonial officials across British Africa in the 19th century, black anthropologists became key to a “more and fuller understanding of African thought and longings” (and controlling an increasingly agitative and articulate British Africa) in the 20th century (Banda & Young, 1946, p.27-28). Indeed, having acquired ‘expertise’ and status, it is also these select few black anthropologists – Banda, Kenyatta and Nyerere – who led the march for independence across East and Central Africa in the 1950s and 60s.

      Banda was born in c.1896-1989 in Kasungu, central Malawi. He attended a Scottish missionary school from the age 8, but having been expelled from an examination in 1915, by the same T Cullen Young he would later co-author with, Banda left Malawi and walked thousands of miles to South Africa. Banda came to live in Johannesburg at a time when his ‘Nyasa’ cousin, Clements Musa Kadalie was the ‘most talked about native in South Africa’ and the ‘uncrowned king of the black masses’, leading Southern Africa’s first black mass movement and major trade union, the Industrial and Commercial Workers’ Union (ICU).

      Banda was friends with Kadalie, and may have been involved with the Nyasaland Native National Congress which was formed around 1918-1919 with around 100 members in Johannesburg, though no record of this remains. Together, Banda and Kadalie were the two leading Malawian intellectuals of the first half of the twentieth century and, in exploring the type of ‘colonial knowledge’ produced by Africans in Edinburgh, it is productive to compare their contrasting accounts of ‘African history’.

      In 1927 Kadalie wrote an article for the British socialist journal Labour Monthly entitled ‘The Old and the New Africa’. Charting a pre-capitalist Africa, Kadalie set out that the

      “white men came to Africa of their own free will, and told my forefathers that they had brought with them civilisation and Christianity. They heralded good news for Africa. Africa must be born again, and her people must discard their savagery and become civilised people and Christians. Cities were built in which white and black men might live together as brothers. An earthly paradise awaited creation…They cut down great forests; cities were built, and while the Christian churches the gospel of universal brotherhood, the industrialisation of Africa began. Gold mining was started, and by the close of the nineteenth century European capitalism had made its footing firm in Africa….The churches still preached universal brotherhood, but capitalism has very little to do with the ethics of the Nazerene, and very soon came a new system of government in Africa with ‘Law and Order’ as its slogan.” (Kadalie, 1927).

      Banda’s own anthropological history, written 17 years later with Cullen Young, is a remarkably different tale. Banda and Young valorise the three authors within the edited volume as fossils of an ideal, isolated age, “the last Nyasalanders to have personal touch with their past; the last for whom the word ‘grandmother’ will mean some actually remembered person who could speak of a time when the land of the Lake knew no white man” (Banda & Young, 1946, p7). Already in 1938, Banda was beginning to develop an idea for a Central African nation.

      Writing from the Edinburgh Students Union to Ernest Matako, he reflected: “the British, the French and the Germans were once tribes just as we are now in Africa. Many tribes united or combined to make one, strong British, French or German nation. In other words, we have to begin to think in terms of Nyasaland, and even Central Africa as a whole, rather than of Kasungu. We have to look upon all the tribes in Central Africa, whether in Nyasaland or in Rhodesia, as our brothers. Until we learn to do this, we shall never be anything else but weak, tiny tribes, that can easily be subdued.” (Banda, 1938).
      Banda after Edinburgh

      But by 1944, with his hopes of returning to Nyasaland as a medical officer thwarted and the amalgamation of Nyasaland and the Rhodesias into a single administrative unit increasingly on the cards, Banda appears to have been grounding this regional identity in a linguistic-cultural history of the Chewa, writing in Our African Way of Life: “It is practically certain that aMaravi ought to be the shared name of all these peoples; this carrying with it recognition of the Chewa motherland group as representing the parent stock of the Nyanja speaking peoples.” (Banda & Young, 1946, p10). Noting the centrality of “Banda’s part in the renaming of Nyasaland as Malawi”, Shepperson asked in 1998, “Was this pan-Chewa sentiment all Banda’s or had he derived it largely from the influence of Cullen Young? My old friend and collaborator, the great Central African linguist Thomas Price, thought the latter. But looking to Banda’s Chewa consciousness as it developed in Chicago, I am by no means sure of this.” Arguably it is Shepperson’s view that is vindicated by two 1938 letters unearthed by Morrow and McCracken in the University of Cape Town archives in 2012.

      In 1938, Banda concluded another letter, this time to Chief Mwase Kasungu: “I want you tell me all that happens there [Malawi]. Can you send me a picture of yourself and your council? Also I want to know the men who are the judges in your court now, and how the system works.” (Banda, 1938). Having acquired and reworked colonial knowledge from Edinburgh, Our African Way of Life captures an attempt to convert British colonialism to Banda’s own end, writing against ‘disruptive’ changes that he was monitoring from Scotland: the anglicisation of Chewa, the abandoning of initiation, and the shift from matriarchal relations. Charting and padding out ideas about a pan-Chewa cultural unit – critical of British colonialism, but only for corrupting Chewa culture – Banda was concerned with how to properly run the Nyasaland state, an example that productively smudges the ‘rupture’ of independence and explains, in part, neo-colonial continuity in independent Malawi.

      For whilst the authors of the edited works wrote their original essays in chiNyanja, with the hope that it would be reproduced for Nyasaland schools, the audience that Cullen Young and Banda addressed was that of the English missionary or colonial official, poised to start their ‘African adventure’, noting:

      “A number of important points arise for English readers, particularly for any who may be preparing to work in African areas where the ancient mother-right still operates.” (Banda & Cullen, 1946, p.11).

      After a cursory summary readers are directed by a footnote “for a fuller treatment of mother-right, extended kinship and the enjoined marriage in a Nyasaland setting, see Chaps. 5-8 in Contemporary Ancestors, Lutterworth Press, 1942.” (Banda & Young, 1946, p.11). In contrast to the authors who penned their essays so “that our children should learn what is good among our ancient ways: those things which were understood long ago and belong to their own people” the introduction to Our African Way of Life is arguably published in English, under ‘war economy standards’ in 1946 (post-Colonial Development Act), for the expanding number of British ‘experts’ heading out into the empire; and an attempt to influence their ‘civilising mission’. (Banda & Young, 1946, p.7).

      By the 1950s, Banda was fully-assured of his status as a cultural-nationalist expert – writing to a Nyasaland Provincial Commissioner, “I am in a position to know and remember more of my own customs and institutions than the younger men that you meet now at home, who were born in the later twenties and even the thirties…I was already old enough to know most of these customs before I went to school…the University of Chicago, which cured me of my tendency to be ashamed of my past. The result is that, in many cases, really, I know more of our customs than most of our people, now at home. When it comes to language I think this is even more true. for the average youngster [In Malawi] now simply uses what the European uses, without realising that the European is using the word incorrectly. Instead of correcting the european, he uses the word wrongly, himself, in order to affect civilisation, modernity or even urbanity.” (Shepperdson, 1998).

      This however also obscures the considerable investigatory correspondence that he engaged in whilst in Scotland. Banda was highly critical of indirect rule in Our African Way of Life, but from emerging archival evidence, he was ill-informed of the changing colonial situation in 1938.

      Kadalie and Banda’s contrasting histories were written at different times, in different historical contexts by two people from different parts of Nyasaland. Whilst Banda grew up in an area on the periphery of Scottish missionaries’ sphere of influence, Kadalie came from an area of Malawi, Tongaland, heavily affected by Scottish missionaries and his parents were heavily involved with missionary work. The disparity between the histories that they invoke, however, is still remarkable – Banda invokes a precolonial rural Malawi devoid of white influence, Kadalie on the other hand writes of a pre-capitalist rural Malawi where Christians, white and black, laboured to create a kingdom of heaven on earth – and this, perhaps, reflects the ends they are writing for and against.

      Kadalie in the 1920s looked to integrate the emerging African working class within the international labour movement, noting “capitalism recognises no frontiers, no nationality, and no race”, with the long-term view to creating a socialist commonwealth across the whole of Southern Africa. Britain-based Banda, writing with Cullen Young in the 1940s, by comparison, mapped out a pan-Chewa culture with the immediate aim of reforming colonial ‘protectorate’ government – the goal of an independent Malawian nation state still yet to fully form.

      http://uncover-ed.org/hastings-banda
      #Kenyatta

  • Première partie : Une déclaration… pour la vie

    EZLN

    https://lavoiedujaguar.net/Premiere-partie-Une-declaration-Pour-la-vie

    Frères, sœurs et compañer@s,

    Durant ces derniers mois, nous avons pris contact entre nous de différentes manières. Nous sommes femmes, lesbiennes, gays, bisexuels, transgenres, travestis, transsexuels, intersexes, queers et autres encore, hommes, groupes, collectifs, associations, organisations, mouvements sociaux, peuples originaires, associations de quartier, communautés et un long et cetera qui nous donne une identité.

    Nos différences et les distances entre nous viennent des terres, des ciels, des montagnes, des vallées, des steppes, des déserts, des océans, des lacs, des rivières, des sources, des lagunes, des races, des cultures, des langues, des histoires, des âges, des géographies, des identités sexuelles ou pas, des racines, des frontières, des formes d’organisation, des classes sociales, des capacités financières, du prestige social, de la popularité, des followers, des likes, des monnaies, des niveaux de scolarité, des manières d’être, des préoccupations, des qualités, des défauts, des pour, des contre, des mais, des cependant, des rivalités, des inimitiés, des conceptions, des argumentations, des contre-argumentations, des débats, des différends, des dénonciations, des accusations, des mépris, des phobies, des philies, des éloges, des rejets, des abus, des applaudissements, des divinités, des démons, des dogmes, des hérésies, des goûts, des dégoûts, des manières d’être, et un long et cetera qui nous rend différents et bien des fois nous oppose. (...)

    #EZLN #zapatistes #Mexique #Grèce #Allemagne #France #Pays_basque #Autriche #Belgique #Bulgarie #Catalogne #Chypre #Ecosse #Slovaquie #Europe #Angleterre #Irlande #Norvège #Portugal #République_tchèque #Russie #Suisse #Togo #État_espagnol #Italie #Argentine #Brésil #Canada #Chili #Colombie #Equateur #Etats-Unis #Pérou

  • The Disturbing History of Tobacco

    Tobacco: slaves picked it, Europe smoked it, and the Tobacco Lords of Glasgow grew filthy rich on the profits. Their legacy can be found in the street names across the ‘Merchant City’, but not a single street bears the name of the slaves that made them their fortunes.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y_YDMbLXtx0

    #Glasgow #esclavage #toponymie #toponymie_politique #noms_de_rue #UK #Ecosse #histoire #tabac #Jamestown #Bunce_island #plantation #géographie_urbaine #Merchant_city #John_Glassford #vidéo

  • À se brûler les ailes

    En Écosse, à la rencontre de Gemma, adolescente querelleuse grandissant dans un monde fait de pigeons voyageurs et de violence. De l’adolescence à la maternité, une vie bouleversée lorsque des jeux en apparence innocents se muent en véritables crimes.

    http://www.film-documentaire.fr/4DACTION/w_fiche_film/57246_1
    #désindustrialisation #aciérie #Ecosse #Thatcher #Margareth_Thatcher #Motherwell #jeunesse #jeunes #quartiers_populaires #habitat #violence #drogue #alcool #maternité #parentalité
    #film #film_documentaire

  • The British town with a third ‘nationality’

    https://www.bbc.com/travel/story/20200927-the-british-town-with-a-third-nationality

    L’histoire d’une petite ville écartelé entre deux régions, deux cultures, t qui hésite à choisir.

    Berwick-upon-Tweed has long existed on the borders of change between England and Scotland – a predicament that’s led to the creation of an altogether different identity.

    By Mike MacEacheran

    28 September 2020

    Here’s a quick geography quiz. Picture a town with attractions including the salmon-stocked River Tweed and Scotsgate, part of a boundary of carefully preserved defensive walls. Nearby, there is a museum dedicated to the history of The King’s Own Scottish Borderers infantry regiment. A Royal Bank of Scotland and a Bank of Scotland stand almost adjacent to each other on a main street, while The Rob Roy B&B, to the south, overlooks mist rolling in from the sea. One final clue: the local team plays in the Lowland League, the fifth tier of Scottish football. Where are you?

    #identité #royaume-uni #écosse #angleterre #frontières #limite

  • Campagne écossaise
    http://www.weck.fr/2020/08/24/campagne-ecossaise

    Quand on regarde après coup certaines images rappelant certaines situations, on croit y lire un avenir, on y cherche parfois la confirmation du présent. On se dit que l’on aurait dû profiter davantage de ces instants, qu’on aurait dû être plus attentif à certains détails, ne pas dire cette phrase ou ce mot, détourner la […]

    #Monde #écosse

  • Le coronavirus ravive les tensions entre l’Angleterre et l’Ecosse
    https://www.lemonde.fr/m-le-mag/article/2020/07/13/le-coronavirus-ravive-les-tensions-entre-l-angleterre-et-l-ecosse_6046056_45

    Les scènes de liesse qui ont suivi la réouverture des pubs dimanche 5 juillet à Londres – souvent sans masque ni distanciation ­physique – n’ont pas du tout rassuré les Écossais, inquiets d’une résurgence des cas dans le pays. Fin juin, une pétition signée par plusieurs milliers de personnes appelait déjà Édimbourg à fermer la frontière par ­précaution. Si la première ministre, Nicola Sturgeon, membre du parti indépendantiste SNP (Scottish National Party), avait indiqué qu’il n’y avait « pas de plan » concernant une telle mesure, celle-ci estimait tout de même « devoir considérer toutes les options ­possibles ». Habitué des déclarations ­trumpiennes, Boris Johnson avait alors ­rétorqué qu’« il n’y avait pas de frontière entre l’Écosse et l’Angleterre ». La décision de rouvrir des lignes aériennes sans quarantaine avec plusieurs pays étrangers ne s’applique pour le moment qu’en Angleterre. La chef d’État écossaise avait regretté à ce sujet, lors d’une intervention le 3 juillet, un manque d’informations, de concertation et un processus de décision jugé « chaotique ». « Nous prendrons le temps de bien considérer cela, de manière rationnelle avant – je l’espère très bientôt – d’annoncer notre propre décision. » Nicola Sturgeon devrait tout de même déclarer dans les jours à venir la mise en place de corridors aériens pour l’Écosse et donc la fin de la quarantaine pour certains pays, notamment pour ceux ayant un taux de contamination relativement faible. En attendant, les voyageurs s’adaptent. Si les Français interrogés affirment respecter la quarantaine – sous peine d’une amende d’environ 500 euros –, dans les faits, les ­vérifications à l’aéroport et au domicile sont inexistantes. la ministre de la santé elle-même, Jeane Freeman a admis qu’aucun passager n’avait été contrôlé depuis le 8 juin. Si l’Écosse dépend de l’Angleterre pour les décisions relatives à la gestion des frontières, c’est bien à elle de s’occuper du domaine de la santé et donc d’un bon nombre de mesures relatives à l’épidémie

    #Covid-19#migrant#migration#ecosse#angleterre#frontière#sante#politiquedesante#gestionfrontiere

  • Glasgow has internalised it’s role in the slave trade. A thread.


    Despite the fact black people make up less than 1% of the overall Scottish population, Glasgow being a major city should rise and re-name these streets. It should not forever internalise such a disgusting time in history.
    Also, Jamaica and Tobago street are right next to these streets.
    Please forgive the spelling mistakes. I don’t double check what I’ve written when I’m so emotionally invested.

    https://twitter.com/lulijta/status/1266908244276121601

    #Glasgow #Ecosse #toponymie #toponymie_politique #noms_de_rue #colonialisme #colonisation #esclavage #histoire

    voir aussi:
    https://seenthis.net/messages/810253

    ping @neotoponymie @reka @karine4 @cede

    • Glasgow ’slaver’ streets renamed by anti-racist campaigners
      https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/ff15c21a4f319e8eb43361a89f1249f76eff7fac/0_3_3500_2100/master/3500.jpg?width=620&quality=85&auto=format&fit=max&s=13301034d846ef339e7165

      Anti-racism campaigners have renamed streets in the centre of Glasgow that have links to the slave trade.

      In several streets, signs with a black background and white font have appeared alongside the originals, as activists replace the names of tobacco lords and slave trade ownerswith those of black activists, slaves and people killed by police officers.

      Cochrane Street – named after Andrew Cochrane, an 18th-century tobacco lord – has been retitled Sheku Bayoh Street.

      Sheku Bayoh died in 2015 in police custody in Scotland aged 32 after he was restrained by officers responding to a call in Kirkcaldy.

      His sister – who is a nurse – said her family would have attended planned demonstrations in Scotland this weekend but the danger of spreading coronavirus is “still too great”.

      Buchanan Street, named after a slave owner, was renamed George Floyd Street, however the sign has now been removed.

      Rosa Parks Street has been suggested as an alternative for Wilson Street – after the American civil rights activist.

      Floyd, an African-American, died after a white police officer knelt on his knee in Minneapolis on 25 May. His death has sparked days of protest around the world.

      The Glasgow street name changes come after more than 11,500 people signed a petition to rename streets named after slave owners.

      The petition states: “I think it’s important to take these tobacco lords off the pedestal they seemingly stand on and instead recognise other Scottish activists who are deserving of such esteem.”

      https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/jun/06/glasgow-slaver-streets-renamed-by-anti-racist-campaigners?CMP=Share_iOS

    • Glasgow apologises for role in slave trade, saying its ‘tentacles’ are in every corner of city

      Report commissioned by city council says blood of enslaved people is ‘built into the very bones’ of the metropolis

      Glasgow authorities have apologised for the city’s role in the Atlantic slave trade, saying the “tentacles” of money from the practice reached every corner of Scotland’s biggest metropolis.

      The apology comes as Britain increasingly reckons with the legacy of its colonial past in the wake of global Black Lives Matter anti-racism protests.

      It follows the release of an academic study Glasgow city council commissioned about the city’s connections to the trade in human beings.

      “Follow the Atlantic slavery money trail and its tentacles reach into every corner of Glasgow,” council leader Susan Aitken told colleagues at a meeting on Thursday.

      “It’s clear what this report tells is that the blood of trafficked and enslaved African people, their children and their children’s children is built into the very bones of this city.”

      One of the report’s main findings was that 40 out of 79 lord provosts or mayors from Glasgow were connected to the Atlantic slave trade between 1636 and 1834.

      Some sat in office while owning enslaved people.

      At least 11 buildings in Glasgow are connected to individuals who were involved with the trade, while eight implicated individuals have monuments or other memorials to them in the city.

      A total of 62 Glasgow streets are named after slave owners who built their fortunes on tobacco plantations.

      These include Buchanan Street and Glassford Street, named after the “tobacco lords” Andrew Buchanan and John Glassford.

      James Watt, whose improvements to the steam engine drove the Industrial Revolution, was personally involved in trafficking a black child for sale to a family in north-east Scotland, the report said.

      “It can no longer be ignored and the amendment that I am moving today asks us to do three things: to acknowledge, apologise and to act,” Aitken said.

      Glasgow council’s chief executive, Annemarie O’Donnell, said the city acknowledged that black, Asian and minority ethnic citizens wished the council to “recognise the historic legacy of chattel slavery based on the exploitation of enslaved Africans”.

      The report, by the University of Glasgow academic Stephen Mullen, who has written extensively on the city’s links to slavery, was “a step towards healing the anger and frustration” felt by these citizens, she added.

      https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2022/apr/01/glasgow-apologises-for-role-in-slave-trade-saying-its-tentacles-are-in-
      #excuses

    • Glasgow Slavery #Audit

      We commissioned this report to determine the historic connections and modern legacies derived from the Atlantic slave trade.

      The core of this study is focused on individuals, who were residents of Glasgow and elsewhere, involved with Atlantic slavery between c.1603 and 1838. Some of these individuals shaped today’s city, whilst others are memorialised in civic space.

      https://www.glasgow.gov.uk/index.aspx?articleid=29117
      #rapport

  • Call for probe after man found dead in Covid-19 asylum seeker hotel

    Refugee activists have called for an independent inquiry into the decision to move asylum seekers from their flats in Glasgow into hotels, after a man died suddenly at a guest house.

    Adnan, a 30-year-old Syrian, who had been in the city for about six months and was claiming asylum, was found dead in his room at #McLay’s_Guest_House on Tuesday 5 May.

    He had been living in the hotel for about a month, after accommodation provider, #Mears_Group, moved him from the flat where he had been living alone as part of its Covid-19 response.

    It is understood he may have died after a drug overdose. A postmortem will be carried out to confirm the cause of death.

    Hundreds of asylum seekers across the city have been moved to hotels by #Mears since the start of the Covid-19 outbreak. Their asylum support of £35 per week has stopped and instead they are provided with three meals per day in communal dining rooms, where it is claimed social distancing is difficult.

    They have no money for essentials such as toiletries, phone top-ups or snacks. After The Ferret reported that shared coffee and tea facilities put people at risk of being infected by Covid-19, they were taken away in at least one dining room. No in-room alternatives have been offered.

    Those supporting asylum seekers in hotels have said the situation is having a toll on their emotional well-being and are concerned about the risks that the situation poses to their physical health during the pandemic.

    The Ferret spoke to a friend of Adnan, who is also staying at McLay’s Guest House. He said his friend had addiction issues, was taking street Valium, and had become increasingly distressed during his time at the hotel.

    It is claimed that he had experienced past #trauma including abuse in jail and his friend said he had been expressing suicidal thoughts in the weeks leading up to his death.

    The day before he died, his friend said he was having flashbacks and had asked to see a GP.

    Pinar Aksu, an activist who also works for Maryhill Integration Network, said: “There needs to be an independent inquiry into this death. If people don’t get the help they need then we risk more people dying.

    “We also need to stop moving people into hotels. It seems very clear to me that this is being done so that Mears and the Home Office can protect profit. If they care about people’s welfare then why are they moving people out of their flats in the midst of a pandemic to places where they have to eat meals in shared areas and share bathrooms?

    “This tragedy is evidence of the damage caused by the asylum system. Moving people to hotels like this is only causing more stress and isolation. It has to stop.”

    A spokesperson from the No Evictions Network said: “We are deeply saddened and utterly outraged by the lack of humanity, dignity, or consideration shown to asylum seekers by Mears, the Home Office, and the UK government. They have failed to comply with basic duties and to treat human life with respect.

    “Individuals, racist policies and systems are directly to blame for this man’s death. This situation was entirely avoidable. Despite this, pleas for change made by both individuals and organisations have been ignored and a young life has now been lost.”

    At oral evidence given to the Home Affairs Committee inquiry into Home Office work on Covid-19, Mears Group said it had taken the decision “on balance” to move people in flats into hotels with meals provided because it meant staff would not need to deliver cash to them. It was also claimed they would have better access to health services.

    Mears, along with Clearsprings Real Homes and Serco who have accommodation contracts elsewhere in the UK, said it was “concerning” that asylum seekers had had their support stopped.

    A spokesman for Mears Group said: “We are deeply sad to confirm the death of an asylum-seeker who had been in Mears supported accommodation. The cause of death has not been determined.”

    A Police Scotland spokesperson said the death is being treated as “unexplained” and that a report will be submitted to the Procurator Fiscal.

    The Ferret tried to contact McLay’s Guest House for comment but was not able to speak to management. The Home Office has also been contacted.

    https://theferret.scot/covid-19-syrian-man-dies-asylum-seeker-hotel
    #décès #mort #mourir_dans_un_hôtel #Glasgow #Ecosse #UK #asile #migrations #réfugiés #hôtel #covid-19 #coronavirus #hébergement #logement #santé_mentale #suicide (?) #traumatisme #privatisation

    ping @karine4 @isskein @thomas_lacroix

    • Fury after Syrian asylum seeker found dead in Scottish hotel

      CAMPAIGNERS have slammed the UK Government after a Syrian man was found dead in a Scottish hotel.

      Initially named by friends as Adnan Olpi, that can today be confirmed as Adnan Olbeh.

      The 30-year-old was amongst scores of asylum seekers placed in a private guest house by Home Office housing contractor Mears Group.

      Emergency services were called to the 81-bedroom McLays Hotel in Glasgow on Tuesday afternoon but were unable to save him.

      Police Scotland said his death is being treated as unexplained, and friends told The National that he had sought support for mental health struggles and had developed drug problems while in the UK asylum system.

      However, despite some reports on social media that he had taken his own life, it is not known whether or not his death was intentional.

      Friends living alongside Mr Olbeh at the city site were afraid to speak out on the record, for fear of harming their claims for sanctuary in the UK.

      However, speaking on condition of anonymity, one fellow Syrian told how he had accompanied Mr Olbeh to appointments in which he had asked for mental health support. The friend said: “He had suicidal thoughts and told the Home Office that. I went to the hospital with him, he was seeking help. He tried many times. They would ask, ‘can you wait a few days?’”

      However, it is claimed that the move into the hotel exacerbated Mr Olbeh’s distress due to the inability to carry out basic independent tasks, like cooking his own meals. The friend went on: “I’m in shock. It’s really tough for me because I was so close with him.

      “He was under more pressure. I wonder if there was any small thing I could have done to save him.

      “He had a dream, he wanted his life to become better. He wanted to work and send money back to his family. He wanted to improve himself and he was learning the language. He wanted to get married and start a family.”

      The No Evictions Network held an online vigil yesterday evening. A spokesperson said: “We are deeply saddened by the situation, and utterly outraged by the lack of humanity, dignity or consideration shown to asylum seekers by Mears, the Home Office, and the UK Government.

      “They have failed to comply with basic duties and to treat human life with respect. This situation was entirely avoidable. Despite this, pleas for change made by both individuals and organisations have been ignored. We have lost a young life.”

      It is understood that around 500 asylum seekers in total are now being housed in Glasgow hotels, including some brought in from elsewhere in the UK. Mears Group claims it had to move people out of the short-term let accommodation used for new applicants but has been unable to find new provision due to coronavirus restrictions on the property market.

      Advocacy groups have raised fears about welfare, safety and social distancing but Mears Group insists all movement is being undertaken in accordance with health authority guidance on social distancing.

      Last night, a Mears Group spokesperson said: “We are deeply sad to confirm the death of an asylum seeker who had been in Mears supported accommodation. Mears are working with the Home Office to contact the asylum seeker’s family before disclosing more information.”

      The Home Office said: "We are aware of an incident resulting in an individual sadly losing his life.

      “It would be inappropriate to comment before all of the facts have been established and his family have been notified.”

      https://www.thenational.scot/news/18439256.fury-syrian-asylum-seeker-found-dead-scottish-hotel

    • Syrian man dies in Glasgow amid fears over refugees’ mental health

      Concerns raised over hundreds of asylum seekers moved en masse into hotels for lockdown.

      A Syrian man has been found dead in a Glasgow guesthouse after outreach workers raised significant concerns about the spiralling mental distress of hundreds of asylum seekers who were moved en masse into hotels at the beginning of lockdown.

      The man, who was 30 and had been living in Glasgow for the past six months while he completed his asylum application, was found dead in his room at McLay’s Guest House in the city centre on 5 May. A postmortem will take place to establish the cause of death, but a friend said the man had been experiencing suicidal thoughts for several weeks.

      Last month the Guardian reported that more than 300 asylum seekers housed in the city – the UK’s largest dispersal area – had been given less than an hour’s notice to pack up their flats before being moved into city centre hotels, where they claimed physical distancing was “impossible”. In a move condemned by campaigners, they also had all financial support withdrawn.

      The private housing provider Mears, which is subcontracted by the Home Office, moved them from mainly self-contained apartments into hotels where residents and campaigners describe continuing difficulties with maintaining physical distancing.

      Mears said people were being “safely and appropriately” housed in accordance with health authority guidance, while a Home Office spokesperson said it was “totally incorrect” to suggest that there were problems with physical distancing.
      Guardian Today: the headlines, the analysis, the debate - sent direct to you
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      Since then, outreach workers have identified increasing fear, stress and anxiety among this vulnerable population, who have no information about future housing arrangements and no money to top up their phones to continue communication with lawyers, or buy extra food, hand sanitiser or period products for women.

      A friend of the dead man said that since the move into the guesthouse, he had spoken of worsening flashbacks to torture he had experienced on his journey through Libya to the UK.

      Ako Zada, the director of Community InfoSource, an asylum housing charity, has been visiting hotel residents regularly. He said: “I’ve been shocked to see people so mentally unwell. They are worried about cleaning of shared areas, and they don’t know when they will be moving again because they keep getting told different stories.”

      Hotel residents have complained about the quality of food provided, the fact that windows cannot be opened, as well as the psychological isolation. A number of hotel workers have also contacted the Guardian to raise concerns about large numbers of asylum seekers congregating in enclosed areas.

      Robina Qureshi of Positive Action in Housing said the “hotel asylum seekers” were being treated as “less than human”. “Many people, men and women are suffering from severe mental health conditions. The fact that Mears and the Home Office see fit to dump hundreds of people in hotels where there is no social distancing, people cannot keep their personal environment aired or hygienic, and have had their meagre card payment of £35 a week cut to £0 deserves further investigation.”

      Sabir Zazai, the chief executive of the Scottish Refugee Council, said: “This tragic death must be a chilling reminder of the chronic vulnerabilities of those going through the complexities of the asylum system.”

      A Mears spokesperson said: “We are deeply sad to confirm the death of an asylum – seeker who had been in Mears-supported accommodation. Mears are working with the Home Office to contact the asylum seeker’s family before disclosing more information.”

      A home office spokesperson said: “We are aware of an incident resulting in an individual sadly losing his life. It would be inappropriate to comment before all of the facts have been established and his family have been notified.”

      https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/may/11/syrian-man-dies-glasgow-fears-refugees-mental-health

    • Mears Group 2020 update: scandal-ridden landlord under fire from Glasgow to Gloucester

      At the start of 2019 we published a profile on Mears Group. The #Gloucester based housing repairs outsourcer had just won a £1.15 billion contract to run the refugee accommodation system in Scotland, Northern Ireland and much of the north of England.

      In the last year, refugee and housing campaigners have been keeping a close eye on Mears, with local resistance to its slum landlord practices emerging across the UK. This report just gives a quick update on some recent news on the company.

      Unless you live in one of the properties it manages, you may well not have heard of Mears. But it has quietly built up a small empire across the UK, primarily by taking over privatised housing services from local councils. Along the way it’s already clocked up a list of scandals from Glasgow down to Brighton, involving accusations of local government corruption and numerous alleged overcharging scams.

      The death of Adnan Olbeh

      Adnan Olbeh was found dead on 5 May 2020 in a Glasgow hotel where he had been placed by Mears Group under its management of the UK’s “asylum dispersal” scheme. He was 30 years old, from Syria. The cause of death is unclear, with any postmortem examination delayed by the corona crisis.

      What is known is that Adnan was one of hundreds of refugees recently evicted from their flats by Mears and other asylum landlords.

      The mass evictions were part of the Home Office’s coronavirus strategy. Often with just an hour’s notice, people were told to pack and leave their flats and moved into hotels. The logic behind this is not entirely clear, but it seems in line with other aspects of the government’s shambolic covid-19 response. “Social distancing” measures included people being transported four or five to a small van, stripped of cash support and facilities to cook for themselves, and instead being made to eat close together in hotel canteens — with food including the likes of undercooked chicken and mouldy bread.

      According to Smina Akhtar, interviewed by John Grayson for the Institute for Race Relations:

      “We have had lots of reports from people in the hotels about really awful food and poor conditions there. Adnan’s friend told me that his mental health really deteriorated in the hotel. A week before he died his friend asked the hotel to call an emergency ambulance because Adnan was in a terrible state. His friend went with him to the hospital but said that the staff there did nothing, they offered him no medication, and sent him back to his hotel.”

      According to Mears, in evidence to the House of Commons Home Affairs select committee, it was acting on a directive from the Home Office.

      Mears’ Home Office contracts so far

      Adnan Olbeh’s death is one visible tragedy linked to the misery of the UK asylum system. Thousands more people live with the everyday effects of a housing system which “disperses” people into run-down slum housing in the country’s most impoverished communities.

      For Mears, this means a ten year profit stream. For Mears’ new tenants – rat infestations, broken boilers, collapsed ceilings, piles of rubbish, and environmental hazards of all kinds seem the norm.

      John Grayson of South Yorkshire Asylum Action Group (Symaag) has been documenting the “chaotic” and “failed” Mears contract in Yorkshire. In the past he reported on similar conditions under the last contract holder, G4S.

      So have Mears even managed to underperform the shambles of G4S’ housing management? It’s maybe too early to make a full comparison. But it doesn’t look like things have got off to a good start.

      G4S and others had complained bitterly about making losses on the former round of asylum housing contracts. To drive profits up, Mears started their own tenure by trying to slash the amounts they pay to the smaller landlords they rent from. In South Yorkshire, Mears offered landlords new contracts paying up to 20% less than G4S had done. Many refused to sign up in what John Grayson calls a “virtual landlords strike” which left Mears struggling to place the asylum seekers it was contracted to house.

      In the North East, Mears had similar problems negotiating with G4S’ main sub-contractor Jomast – development company headed by Teesside multi-millionaire Stuart Monk. According to Grayson, this left over 1000 people stuck in hotels across West Yorkshire and Humberside in Wakefield’s “Urban House” temporary asylum accommodation over the winter. And, as he explained to us, the problem is by no means solved.

      “When Covid-19 arrived the whole asylum housing system was frozen in the Mears contract areas with around 400 people still in hotels and 270 in Urban House. Many people have now spent four months in Urban House, when they are only meant to stay there a few weeks. Urban House has appalling conditions which have been extensively documented in pictures and videos sent out from people resisting inside.”

      One thing Mears has achieved in Yorkshire is provoking a major local authority to come out against the contract. In January, as well as launching inspections of 240 Mears properties, Sheffield Council called on the Home Office to terminate the Mears contract and transfer asylum housing in the city directly to the council. This is only really a token gesture – the council has no say in national asylum policy. But it could be one move in a shift against the outsourced asylum housing system, if followed up elsewhere in the country.

      In Scotland, there is a strong solidarity network in support of refugee housing rights – including the Glasgow No Evictions campaign and groups such as the Unity Centre, Living Rent tenants union, and charity Positive Action in Housing. The main rallying point in 2019 was previous contractor Serco’s threatened “lock change evictions” of 300 of its tenants. Well aware of the opposition, Mears has so far tried to tread more carefully. It has promised not to carry out similar evictions, and set up a so-called “independent scrutiny board” to deflect criticism.

      In the North of Ireland, the PPR Project is one association monitoring and exposing conditions in Mears’ housing there.

      Milton Keynes mystery

      Before it turned asylum landlord, Mears’ big profit hope was getting more involved in the very lucrative business of housing development. One of its potential jackpots was a 50/50 joint venture with Milton Keynes council to redevelop seven major estates. The deal was valued at £1 billion, and branded as “YourMK”.

      But as of last year, the scheme was dead in the water. In July 2018, the council said it was putting the regeneration deal “on hold”. In October 2018, whistleblower allegations emerged that Mears had been overcharging Milton Keynes for repairs by up to £80,000 a month, with overall some £15 million “unaccounted for”. When we looked at Mears last February, the YourMK website had gone dead, with a page announcing that further information would be coming soon.

      The MK scandal still seems to be quietly brewing. In July 2019, the MK Citizen reported first of all that the regeneration scheme was definitively “scrapped”. But a couple of weeks later a second Citizen report corrected that YourMK was “not dead but dormant”, with the council and Mears “in discussions about whether it will remain the right partnership structure in future”.

      In May 2020, we haven’t seen any new announcements. The YourMK website is still down, and there is no official word on that supposedly missing 15 million. Where are the budding investigative journalists of Milton Keynes to get to the bottom of this?

      Booted out of Brighton

      Mears’ ten year housing maintenance contract with Brighton and Hove council finally came to an end on 31 May. Again, customer complaints came together with whistleblower revelations – and, yet again, the apparent disappearance of large sums of money.

      A council investigation found it had been overcharged by £500,000 by a plastering subcontractor hired by Mears. A second investigation was later opened into overcharging for electrical work.

      Mears will not be missed in #Brighton. And just before they left, in February 2020 their workers were balloting for strike action over pay and Mears’ plan to combine holiday and sick pay.

      Newham: Mears Cats

      In East London, Mears run 250 homes which are set for demolition as part of Newham Council’s “Regeneration Zone” in Canning Town and Custom House, E16.

      Like Milton Keynes, this is another overlong saga of a failing regeneration project leaving people stuck in poor housing. Back in 2011, Newham handed the properties to a private management company called Omega to let out on short term commercial tenancies. This was supposed to be a “temporary” arrangement before the bulldozers came in. Mears bought out the contract in 2014, and six years later are still in place. While the buildings are still owned by the council, Mears collect the rent and do the repairs – in theory.

      In reality, Custom House tenants speak of conditions that would be very familiar to anyone in Mears’ asylum accommodation in Sheffield or Glasgow. Months overdue repairs, water leaks, exposed asbestos, rat infestations and a “war” to get anything done – all whilst paying average rents twice as high as in directly run Newham council properties.

      Tenants have set up a vocal campaign group called Mears Cats, part of the Peoples Empowerment Alliance of Custom House, pushing to get their repairs done and for Newham Council to take direct responsibility. Boglarka Filler, one of the Mears Cats, told Corporate Watch:

      “Schemes such as the partnership between Mears and Newham Council have brought further misery to people already on the receiving end of austerity and insecure employment. Mears Cats are campaigning for better quality, cheaper housing for Mears tenants struggling to cope with disrepair and debts caused by high rents. We will take action to ensure that the Mears contract will not be renewed in Newham when it runs out in 2021, and that we get a fair deal next time.”

      Steady profits, feisty shareholders

      On a business front, Mears continues to turn a decent profit and pay out to its shareholders. Its last year (2018) annual results clocked operating profits up 4.7% (though revenue was 3% down), and shareholders pocketed a dividend up 3% on the year before.

      Mears has kept up its strategy of honing in on its “core” housing maintenance business. After buying up Mitie’s property division last year, it sold off its own home care wing.

      Most recently, Mears has said that it only expects a modest impact from the covid crisis. Housing is what is called “non-discretionary” spending – unlike foreign holidays or consumer fads, there is still demand for essential repairs in a downturn. The bulk of Mears’ income is locked in from long term contracts, largely with the public sector. As the company explained, 90% of its order book comes from public bodies and “the government has made a clear commitment that invoices will be settled quickly”.

      Through the lockdown, Mears has said it is only carrying out only emergency repairs. Although workers complain they are still being sent on unnecessary jobs without “social distancing” in place, or called in just to sit in company offices.

      Less positive for management, there are new rumbles from rebellious shareholders. Back in 2018 one of the two biggest shareholders, a German investment manager called Shareholder Value Management (SVM) successfully pushed out the company’s long-term chairman. At the latest AGM in June 2019, the other big investor also threw its weight around.

      PrimeStone Capital, a Mayfair based investor which owns over 13% of Mears’ shares, tried to get two new nominees on the board of directors against management’s wishes. The shareholder rebellion was narrowly defeated. In a statement, PrimeStone explained it was unhappy that “the company’s revenues and profit have remained flat despite its strong market position and growth prospects [while] average net debt has doubled”.

      It argued that:

      “Mears’ underperformance is predominantly due to a lack of strategic, commercial and financial experience on the board. The current board has a strong concentration of directors with a background in social housing, health & safety and charities.”

      Mears’ profit-hungry management guarantee shareholder payoffs by squeezing their repair costs to the bone. The outcome is the lived experience of their tenants across the UK. But, for some shareholders, they’re still not doing enough.

      Students and shirts

      Despite its well documented failings, Mears continues to win new contracts – for example, a new housing development project in North Lanarkshire, and a housing maintenance and repairs contract with Crawley council.

      Another sideline is its student housing offshoot Mears Student Life, so far with just two complexes in Dundee and Salford.

      Mears also likes a bit of football. In May 2019 the League One side Rotherham United confirmed it had extended its contract to emblazon the company’s classy red and black logo on its away kits for the 2019/20 season.

      Flowers left for Adnan Olbeh

      https://corporatewatch.org/mears-group-2020-update-scandal-ridden-landlord-under-fire-from-glas

    • From Sudan to the #Park_Inn: the tragic story of a migrant’s killing

      A mass stabbing in Glasgow in June revealed the plight of asylum seekers crammed into hotels during lockdown

      On the last Friday of June, at about midday, Badreddin Abadlla Adam left his room at the Park Inn hotel in Glasgow, walked down to reception, and stabbed six people. The 28-year-old, an asylum seeker from Sudan who had been placed in the hotel as part of the UK government’s emergency response to the coronavirus pandemic, stabbed and seriously injured three other residents, two staff members and a policeman who arrived on the scene. Adam was shot dead by armed officers shortly afterwards.

      The incident, which took place as Scotland was still under stringent lockdown, was initially reported by some media outlets as a potential terrorist attack, although police later dismissed this explanation. It was immediately seized on by rightwing activists, to claim that the country was threatened by an influx of “illegal” immigrants.

      Instead, the Park Inn incident has highlighted the increasingly precarious situation of people who seek a safe haven in the UK, even as the government proposes more severe measures to deter them. Adam is one of three asylum seekers who have died in Glasgow since the start of the pandemic, a series of events that has shocked the city, and left campaigners and politicians calling for a public inquiry.

      At the end of March, B, a 30-year-old Syrian who spoke to the Observer on condition of anonymity, was one of several hundred asylum seekers in Glasgow who unexpectedly received a knock on the door. He had been sent to Scotland’s largest city after arriving in the UK the previous autumn. Glasgow hosts about 10% of the 35,000 people who claim asylum in the UK each year, under a policy known as dispersal. Like other recent arrivals, B was living in his own small apartment; a two-room space in a hostel. He had his own bathroom, and he had privacy.

      At the door, however, was an employee of Mears Group, the Home Office contractor that manages asylum accommodation in Glasgow. “They said, ‘you need to get ready,’” B told the Observer, “‘you’re being moved to a hotel because of coronavirus.’” Across the city, hundreds of others were receiving the same call, as Mears abruptly moved about 350 asylum seekers – for the most part, recent arrivals who were living in temporary accommodation – into six hotels. Parliament heard in June that many received little or no notice, and that among them were pregnant women and survivors of trafficking and torture.

      In theory, this was a decision taken to ensure people’s safety during the pandemic. But, B said, when he arrived at his new accommodation, a bed and breakfast in the city centre, he found a “horrible situation”. More than 100 people had suddenly been thrust into communal living, sharing washing facilities and queueing for meals. Before, most had been receiving the standard asylum support payment of £37.50 a week, but because food was being provided, this was halted by the Home Office.

      “We didn’t have freedom,” B said. “We had no money, we couldn’t choose when to eat or what to eat, and nobody could tell us how long we would be there.” B was also concerned that social distancing was more difficult than in his previous home.

      Throughout April, the hotel population grew to more than 500 as asylum seekers continued to be sent to Glasgow. J, a young Iranian who arrived in the city that month, told the Observer – also on condition of anonymity – that while at first he found it a relief to be somewhere safe after a “painful” journey to the UK, the accommodation soon came to feel like a “stylish prison”. Both interviewees said that food sometimes arrived undercooked, and that this led to protests by residents.

      “We had so many people ask us, ‘when will this change?’” said Selina Hales, director of Refuweegee, one of several local charities that provided additional food parcels to hotel residents. “People were in a totally controlled environment and one of the main frustrations was the isolation.” A spokesperson for Mears told the Observer that meals were in line with NHS nutrition guidelines, and rated “good” in a survey of residents. They added that there were no recorded cases of Covid-19 in hotels during lockdown.

      According to the two asylum seekers, however, the fear and uncertainty prompted by this new situation began to take its toll on people’s mental health; B said that some of his friends were reminded of their experiences of being detained, either in the countries they had fled or on their journeys to the UK. “You could see people starting to unravel,” said Jack Macleod, 21, who worked for several months serving food to residents of the six hotels. Housing and welfare managers, employed by Mears, were available on site, but according to Macleod, many asylum seekers he spoke to felt abandoned.

      “People would come and talk to me,” said Macleod, “they would say ‘this place is making me really depressed’. The only thing I could say, because I’m not a counsellor, is ‘just try and hold on’.” Eventually, Macleod said, he left the job – a minimum-wage role he applied for via an agency when he lost his previous job at the start of the pandemic – because he felt he was being forced into the role of ad hoc social worker.

      Many asylum seekers suffer abuse before they reach the UK, and the Observer spoke to several people who work with refugees in Glasgow who described how the hotel conditions exacerbated some people’s existing psychological trauma. “We got used to hearing people express suicidal thoughts,” said Dylan Fotoohi, a Glasgow-based activist who helped organise food distribution during lockdown, and has since co-founded the campaign group Refugees for Justice. The spokesperson for Mears said all residents had access to mental health support through a dedicated NHS team. During lockdown, however, this team was stretched as members were seconded to hospital coronavirus wards.

      On 5 May, Adnan Olbeh, a 30-year-old Syrian, was found dead in his room at McLays guest house, one of the six hotels. According to friends, Olbeh had been detained and tortured in Libya, on his journey to Europe, and was complaining of flashbacks. In response, the Scottish Refugee Council – the country’s leading refugee charity – sent a letter to the UK home secretary asking for urgent action to “lessen the risk of further tragedies” in the hotels. There was no reply. The Observer has seen a copy of this letter, dated 14 May, but a spokesperson for the Home Office said they did not receive it.

      It was not until the stabbings in June – six weeks after Olbeh’s death – that some people began to be moved out of the hotels: the Park Inn was evacuated soon after the incident, and many of the residents were later rehoused in apartments. But why did the Home Office and its contractor find it necessary to put so many there in the first place? In public statements, Mears has said that it was partly for health and safety reasons: housing people together reduced the number of trips across Glasgow that staff had to make during lockdown, and made it easier for health workers to visit asylum seekers.

      Another possible reason is that it was running out of places to house people. Since 2012, asylum accommodation has been outsourced to a set of private contractors, but the system has been beset with problems: a report by the National Audit Office in July found that “providers had struggled to establish their supply chains, resulting in poor performance, delays and additional costs”.

      One particular pressure point is in the provision of what’s known as “initial accommodation” – the temporary housing that people who have no means to support themselves are placed in when they arrive in the UK. Mears, one of the UK’s largest private social housing providers, took over the contract that covers Glasgow in September last year, from the outsourcing giant Serco. Within weeks, it was facing a shortage of accommodation.

      In response, the company began renting serviced apartments – short-term lets, normally used by tourists and visitors to the city – on the open market. On 22 April, a spokesperson for Mears Group told the Scottish news website the Ferret that it had been using these short-term lets, and that it had been forced to move people into hotels because of “restrictions on the property market” brought by the pandemic.

      The spokesperson stressed that this decision was taken to ensure the “safety and wellbeing” of the asylum seekers, but was such a move really in people’s best interests? A condition of the Home Office housing contract is that providers must be “proactive” in identifying the needs of vulnerable people in their care – yet Mears’s account of whether it carried out adequate checks before moving people into hotels has been inconsistent.

      During the summer, parliament’s home affairs committee held hearings on the UK government’s response to the pandemic. In written evidence supplied to the committee on 10 June, Mears Group stated that it “risk assessed which service users it was appropriate to move, taking into account health advice”. At a press conference on 25 June, however, the company’s chief operating officer John Taylor described the move as a “blanket decision”. Once people were in hotels, he said, “it became obvious that there were vulnerabilities and that the hotel setting isn’t appropriate for some people”. The company then backtracked a few hours later, saying it held “discussions” with asylum seekers prior to deciding whether to move them. The Home Office also says that Mears held a meeting with each person before deciding whether or not to move them.

      In its report, published on 28 July, the home affairs committee advised that asylum seekers “should not have been moved to new accommodation during the pandemic without justified and urgent reasons for doing so, or without a vulnerability assessment demonstrating that the move could be made safely”. A spokesperson for the Home Office told the Observer that the department was conducting an evaluation of asylum accommodation and support services in Glasgow during the pandemic. On 24 August, however, Glasgow’s seven MPs walked out of a meeting with the Home Office, in protest at what they said was a refusal to commit to publish the evaluation, or share its results with them. In an open letter, the MPs stressed their dismay and anger at the “mistreatment” of people who were “unceremoniously shunted, at very short notice, from safe, secure serviced accommodation into hotel rooms, for an indefinite period, with no money and no control”.

      Within hours of the stabbings at the Park Inn, the incident attracted the attention of rightwing activists. “Horrible tragedy in a Glasgow hotel housing illegal immigrants,” tweeted the Brexit party leader Nigel Farage. “All over the UK, hotels are filling up with young men who are coming across the Channel every day. It is a massive risk to our wellbeing.”

      Farage’s comments were immediately condemned by a range of politicians, including Scotland’s justice minister. But throughout the pandemic, Farage has used his platform to encourage a sense of crisis around asylum, describing the recent rise in boat journeys across the Channel as an “invasion” and publishing short films on social media in which he claims to “investigate” the use of hotels across the country to house migrants. Members of the fascist group Britain First have also tried to exploit the issue, forcing their way into several hotels in England, confronting and intimidating residents on camera.

      All this, combined with the government’s own tough talk on migration, gives the impression that the UK is experiencing an unprecedented influx of asylum seekers. Yet although there was a slight increase in asylum claims last year, they fell sharply in the first six months of 2020. While more than 2,000 people crossed the Channel in boats during this period – a phenomenon that has dominated the headlines – arrivals by other routes dropped from 8,455 to 4,850, according to the head of UK Visas and Immigration.

      Rather, the increased use of hotels is due to a combination of the pandemic and a housing system that was already struggling to cope. While many hotels were hired by local authorities and government housing contractors during lockdown – both for asylum seekers who had nowhere else to live, and rough sleepers, some of whom may also come from migrant backgrounds – their use as temporary asylum accommodation was already on the rise. According to a recent briefing by the House of Commons library, shortly before lockdown, about 1,200 asylum seekers were being housed in “contingency accommodation” such as hotels or short-term lets, because of shortages.

      At the same time, delays in processing asylum claims – which mean people spend more time in state-provided housing, putting further pressure on space – have soared: about 40,000 people currently wait more than six months for a decision on their claim, an increase of 75% compared with a year ago. In an attempt to deal with the backlog, the Home Office is now considering outsourcing the asylum interview process to private contractors. Today, about 9,500 asylum-seekers are being housed in 91 hotels across the UK. The government has also modified several disused military barracks to accommodate new arrivals, in conditions exposed in the Observer last week as “squalid”. A Home Office spokesperson said that the use of former military sites “will ease our reliance on hotels and save the taxpayer money”.

      Sabir Zazai, chief executive of the Scottish Refugee Council, is worried that the use of mass accommodation will become the norm. “We are deeply concerned about this shift in asylum housing policy,” he said. “People have come here for protection, and need to be supported to rebuild their lives, not pushed to the margins.”

      Alison Phipps, a professor at the University of Glasgow and an expert in refugee integration, shares Zazai’s concerns. “People are arriving from situations where they’ve lived in fear,” she said, “and the question should be, how do you put people as quickly as possible in a situation where they can live in safety and be able to integrate? You can’t do that when you put people in managed facilities that are separate from the population. It’s not far from a prison regime.”

      In Glasgow, several hundred people are still being housed in three city hotels, which Mears has said will continue until at least the beginning of next year. Some residents have now been there for more than five months. “Hotels are never a long-term solution,” the company acknowledged, explaining that it is still having difficulty finding alternative accommodation in the city. The hardship asylum seekers face was emphasised once again in August, when Mercy Baguma, 34, from Uganda, was found dead at home next to her severely malnourished child. The circumstances of her death are still unclear – Baguma was reportedly seeking asylum, although she was not being housed in one of the hotels – but on 20 September, Glasgow’s MPs called for a public inquiry into all three deaths.

      “We take the wellbeing of everyone in the asylum system extremely seriously,” said the Home Office spokesperson. “These deaths are deeply tragic and our thoughts are with the families of these individuals.”

      Currently, Scotland’s police complaints body is conducting an investigation into the use of firearms at the Park Inn. But this will not examine what caused Badreddin Abadlla Adam to attack people, or whether his actions could have been prevented. At the Park Inn, he was quiet and withdrawn until the night before the stabbings, when he threatened his neighbour for playing music too loudly. “He never came to anybody’s attention,” one witness told the Daily Record, explaining that Adam had become so frustrated at his situation that he’d asked to be allowed to return to Sudan. Residents of the Park Inn, several of whom were left traumatised by the attack, were offered counselling by Mears after being moved; a group of them handed a thank-you card to police officers a few days later.

      An inquiry, said Phipps, would be “about justice”. “The people of Glasgow, just like the people who were seriously injured in the attacks, and the hotel staff whose lives have changed radically over the last few months, deserve to know why it was that people were hothoused in this way, and why people are still living in accommodation that they have repeatedly said is bad for them.”

      https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/oct/18/from-sudan-to-the-park-inn-the-tragic-story-of-a-migrants-killing