Looking back at 2007

January,

The year got off to an environmentally-minded start when protests over the destruction of Iceland’s pristine wilderness by a major damming project spilled over onto the streets of London, with campaigners blockading company offices, doing banner drops of the Tate Modern and St Paul’s cathedral and leafleting around the city.

Later in the month, a discussion piece with a member of HSG raised fears that proposals to give Tenant Management Organisations (TMOs) the power to hand out ASBOs in their community represented an attempt by the government to funnel the growing number of independent community organsations into state-led enforcement roles. TMOs had thus far had little success incorporating campaigning residential groups into a controllable structure.

February,

The World Social Forum came in for some heavy criticism as organisers charged heavily for entry, provided food at extortionate prices, and took funding from the Italian state and corporate sponsors.
Kenyan delegates were asked to pay the equivalent of the minimum monthly wage to enter, while western delegates were asked to pay $110, and asked to take their trip via Kenya Airways, which was at the time in dispute with its workforce over alleged racism and union-busting, because a tie-in deal had been agreed for cheap flights.

Also in February, in a damning report on inequality in British healthcare, it was found that Britain has the worst level of care for children of all the world’s 21 richest countries, despite being the fifth most wealthy.
The blame for this was laid squarely at the feet of inequality and the rapidly rising divide between rich and poor. Infant mortality in lower-income households is double that of higher income ones. Poor nutrition, unfit housing, poor access to maternity services and expensive/inadequate public transport were all cited in the report by the Fabian Society.

March,

In March Freedom looked at the International Intelligence Summit in Florida, a meeting of some of the most influential private intelligence groups and state representatives. Large sectors of what used to be state-run intelligence gathering are now being outsourced to private companies, helping to hide illegal practices from scrutiny. We also took a look at a raft of major anarchist events slated for the summer, including the Projectile film festival, Schnews Media Malarkey and Earth First!, in a special preview issue, interviewing the organisers of all three.

April,

Freedom drew attention to huge double standards being employed in the coverage of Mugabi’s Regime in Zimbabwe as mainstream attention reached fever pitch over a series of brutal evictions of land from white ownership. Despite similar violence in nearby Angola, little coverage materialised, and in Mugabe’s own regime, it was not until white property owners began to complain that serious notice was taken of the country’s plight, and no criticism was levelled at New Labour’s refusal to live up to their promise to fund a non-violent and gradual redistribution of land.

For the Mayday issue, Freedom took a look at the celebration around the globe, as well as at home. Anarchists again formed a reasonable bloc on the London march, while the largest to be seen was in Venezuela, where over a million turned out in Caracas. In China, the annual farce of a massive military show to commemorate the occasion was as impressive as always, while Paris had one of the more multicultural marches following the success of IO7, a major anarcho-syndicalist conference held in the city.

May,

In the early May issue, Freedom looked into the rise of surveillance culture in Asda following the exposure of a spy-ring at parent company Wal-Mart. The revelations by union and official sources were shocking. A source at the GMB noted that bugging has been a very real fear ever since the union became involved with organising campaigns at the supermarket’s warehouses, while technology now implemented gives Asda the ability to track every movement of its warehouse workforce, from how fast they drive to what snacks they eat. What’s more, senior figures at Asda have said this surveillance will prove useful in ‘rooting out the red’.

May also saw the scandal around BAE and its alleged bribing of Saudi chiefs spectacularly blow up and force Tony Blair to halt an investigation into misuse of funds ‘in the national interest’. The company was allegedly caught out not just in Saudi Arabia, but also in South Africa, South America and Eastern Europe. The Campaign Against The Arms Trade, when it tried to bring a law suit against the move, was itself infiltrated by a BAE-paid agent.

June,

The arrest and trial of Jose Padilla on charges of conspiracy to murder, kidnap and conspiracy to aid terrorists in the US caused a major stir as even the judge noted that the government was ‘light on facts’ in choosing to lock him up without trial for over three years. Since then, the government has managed to get a verdict which effectively means they can charge someone for agreeing to do something in the future – predictive imprisonment. Meanwhile, a man who has admitted blowing up a Cuban airliner, killing 73 people, walked free after less than a year, after being prosecuted not for terrorism and multiple murder, but for immigration violation.

July,

Freedom reported on three major general unions, Amicus, the T&G and GMB, joining nuclear worker’s union Prospect in throwing their weight behind nuclear power as the next major investment to be made in UK infrastructure. Signing a deal with nuclear giant ACEL, they agreed to back the company in return for a guarantee British workers would get the jobs. The stitchup incensed green groups, who said they’d ‘nailed their colours to the wrong mast’.

The major industrial dispute of the year, between postal workers and Royal Mail, kicked off in style with solid walkouts and demands for fair treatment by bosses Alan Leighton and Adam Crozier. The issue would go on to dominate headlines for months.

August,

By early August the dispute had caused rumblings of discontent across the public sector. Everyone was getting 2.5%, while real inflation was running at closer to 5%. Everyone was getting a pay cut, while at the top of the tree, board members, senior management and city slickers were getting record breaking and inflation-busting bonuses. Balloting for industrial action was talked about at major unions including the PCS, Unison and the Royal College of Nursing. The possibility of co-ordinated action was bandied about, but in the end never materialised.

September,

As September arrived, Unison dropped out of the running after a weak campaign and neutral stance on the government’s offer to the NHS by the union hierarchy. Despite the collapse of the campaign in health, the postal workers were causing Royal Mail more trouble than ever, and local government workers were expressing intense dissatisfaction not just over wage, but over a major new round of job cuts going through the service.

October,

The Olympic machine finally ploughed over the traces of community gardens and allotments which Londoners had been fighting to save with the closure of the Manor gardens by the Olympic Delivery Authority in October. The allotment holders joined footballers, homeowners and wildlife on the list of groups unhomed by the march to 2012.

At the other end of the country, an investigation by Unison exposed huge misuse of public funding in the driver for PFI schemes, demonstrating that private contracting was costing up to £2.1bn than state-run counterparts, while the state continued to take the risks associated with such projects. The expose chimed well with the extraordinary spectacle of Metronet, one of the largest rail PFI schemes, declaring itself bankrupt after years of problems, only to see the government rush in with rescue funding, having already repeatedly subsidised and bailed out the group.

November,

Two building bills took the splash in November, as the government continued to struggle to come to grips with the mess that it had made of housing and planning reform. Planning reforms being brought in are intended to weaken local input into major building works, stripping away local input and environmental lobbying. Alongside this, a new Housing Bill tacitly accepted that transferring council housing to Housing Associations has not led to the hoped-for increase of homes for a growing population, so the new plan is to give public money to private developers direct.

December,

Freedom interviewed an activist in the London Coalition Against Poverty as the group pushed forward with its campaign to force councils to live up to their responsibilities. The campaign focuses on a combination of legal support and direct action to back up its caseload.

And finally, in a festive treat, the government announced full details of its plans for the ‘Thames Gateway’ region, an area stretching from coastal Essex much of the way up the river. An investigation into the figures by Freedom suggested that despite large headline figures for investment, the main focus of the plan is to move the working class out of the city, bypassing complaints from people already living in the areas to be regenerated, and the implementation of a full working model of public/private partnership across the region.