In the prison industrial complex
Most of those even vaguely familiar with the size, scope and character of the US mass imprisonment scheme know that the US leads the world in incarceration, both in sheer numbers and per capita.
They know too that the US, with 6 per cent of the world's population, holds nearly a quarter - 24 per cent - of all the prisoners on earth.
As stunning and perhaps shocking as these figures are, they fail to adequately paint the full picture of what this project means in the lifescapes and hopes of millions of people in US ghettos where black and brown people dwell.
Indeed, truth be told, most black folks aren't even aware of this thing, because it is rarely discussed in public and rarely addressed in the corporate press.
With the recent publication of the work of a young black scholar, law professor Michelle Alexander, that may be changing.
Alexander's new book is ground-breaking in several respects - first in that she addresses the plague of mass incarceration and second in how she analyses the social and political ramifications of such a project.
In The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration In The Age of Colour-blindness (The New Press), Alexander places the present mass incarceration binge in its historical context, comparing it to the infamous post-civil war period, after the brief span known as reconstruction.
This era saw the rise of racist terrorism against blacks by such groups as the Ku Klux Klan, who were often composed of former Confederate troops, the denial of black voting rights and the institutionalisation of the black codes - laws which targeted blacks for behaviour such as insolence which were not criminal if committed by whites.
The creation of the convict lease system allowed the economic and political elites to exploit "free" black labour again - in essence to establish slavery in everything but name, with the blessing of the national government.
Alexander recounts that historical period to provide insight into the present, while over one million black men and women are imprisoned and millions more live cribbed, encumbered half-lives because they have a criminal conviction on their records.
What such a record means is that a person, even when "free," may not vote, can't live in public housing, can't receive a government grant for college studies and is barred from a growing range of the professions. In other words, as in the past, "free" doesn't mean free.
And as federal government grants to states in fields like education, transport and housing is driven by population, and most US prisons are situated in distant, rural and predominantly white districts, those areas acquire the benefits of their large black prison populations counted in the US census as "residents" of these regions, and urban districts lose such federal resources respectively.
Thus ghettos are not just depopulated but they are concomitantly deprived of resources to help make communities whole and healthy.
As discussed above, criminal convictions in most US states work to disqualify millions of people from voting for life.
What does such a disqualification mean in reality? In the pivotal US presidential election of 2000, George W Bush reportedly won Florida by fewer than 500 votes.
Without a win in Florida, Bush would've lost the presidential election. At least some 50,000 former felons in Florida were disqualified from voting and, as many of them were African-American, it's certainly a safe assumption that the vast majority of them, if able to vote, would have voted for the Democratic candidate.
If so, US history would've been dramatically transformed, and perhaps world history as well. Prof Alexander, writing of the impact of the mass incarceration project on black communities, notes: "The collapse of inner-city economies coincided with a conservative backlash against the civil rights movement, resulting in the perfect storm.
"Almost overnight, black men found themselves unnecessary to the American economy and demonised by the mainstream media.
"No longer needed to pick cotton in the fields or labour in factories, lower-class black men were hauled off to prison in droves. They were vilified in the media and condemned for their condition as part of a well-orchestrated political campaign to build a new white, Republican majority in the south.
"Decades later, curious onlookers in the grips of denial would wonder aloud: 'Where have all the Black men gone'?
"The prison industrial complex was the capitalisation of the incarceration nation. It marked the continuation of the grim era known as Jim Crow."
This article was written by Mumia Abu-Jamal exclusively for the German socialist youth paper Junge Welt and is reproduced here by its kind permission and that of the originating reporter Jurgen Heiser.
About Mumia Abu-Jamal
He was convicted and sentenced to death for the murder of a Philadelphia police officer in 1981. His trial was a farce and he was clearly framed because of his political activities. He has been described as "perhaps the best-known death row prisoner in the world" and his sentence is one of the most debated today.
Before his arrest he was a member of the Black Panther Party (BPP), an activist, part-time cab driver, journalist and broadcaster and became president of the Philadelphia Association of Black Journalists.
Since his conviction, his case has received international attention and he has become a controversial cultural icon. During his imprisonment he has published several books and other commentaries, notably Live From Death Row.
In his own writings, Abu-Jamal describes his adolescent experience of being "kicked ... into the Black Panther Party" after suffering a beating from "white racists" and a policeman for his efforts to disrupt a 1968 presidential campaign rally for segregationist George Wallace.
Abu-Jamal lived in New York City and in Oakland, living and working with his BPP comrades. He was subject to FBI Contelpro surveillance during the '70s.
After leaving the Panthers he returned to his old high school, but he was suspended for distributing literature calling for "black revolutionary student power."
He also led protests to change the school name to Malcolm X High.
In 1999 Arnold Beverly claimed that he and an unnamed assailant, not Abu-Jamal, had shot Daniel Faulkner as part of a contract killing because Faulkner had been interfering with graft and pay-offs to corrupt police.
While in prison Abu-Jamal was engaged by National Public Radio to deliver a series of monthly three-minute commentaries on crime and punishment. The broadcast plans were cancelled following condemnations from the police force and right-wing senators. The commentaries later appeared in print in May 1995 as part of Live From Death Row.
With occasional interruptions due to prison disciplinary actions, Abu-Jamal has for many years been a regular commentator on an online broadcast, sponsored by Prison Radio, as well as a regular columnist for the German youth socialist paper Junge Welt.
In litigation before the US Court of Appeals in 1998 he successfully established his right to write for financial gain in prison. The same litigation also established that the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections had illegally opened his mail in an attempt to establish whether he was writing for financial gain. When, for a brief time in August 1999, he began delivering his radio commentaries live on the Pacifica network's Democracy Now! weekday radio news magazine, prison staff severed the connecting wires of his telephone from their mounting in mid-performance.
His publications include Death Blossoms: Reflections From A Prisoner Of Conscience, in which he explores religious themes, All Things Censored, a political critique examining issues of crime and punishment, and We Want Freedom: A Life In The Black Panther Party, which is a history of the Black Panthers drawing on autobiographical material.

Dias Lourenço –legendary leader of the anti-fascist struggle in Portugal

António Dias Lourenço the legendary Portuguese communist leader and editor the party’s paper, Avante!, died on 7 August in Lisbon at the age of 95.
He was born in the village of Vila Franca in 1915 and became a lathe operator, joining the party as a 17 year-old in 1932. Portugal was at the time suffering under the iron fist of fascist dictator Salazar – which would become the longest surviving fascist dictatorship in the World. Dias Lourenço was responsible for the illegal publication of the party paper Avante! from 1957 until 1962, under the dictatorship, and became its editor from the day of its first legal issue in 1974 until 1991.

He was imprisoned twice under Salazar in 1949 and in 1962 and spent 17 years in fascist prisons. He made a spectacular escape from the notorious prison fortress of Peniche in 1954. This damp and formidable medieval fortress, on the western coast, is lashed by the sea and from which it was believed impossible to escape. But Dias Lourenco managed to hide in the prison, before jumping off the high wall into the freezing Atlantic waters and swimming to safety. While in prison he was viciously tortured to reveal party secrets, but kept silent.

When I was filming in Portugal only a few months after the momentous 1974 April revolution, we made a portrait of Dias Lourenço for GDR television. We accompanied him to Peniche prison where he related his story. While filming in his old cell, now holding former fascist guards (in very liberal conditions I might add), he rushed out, feeling nauseous. We wondered what had happened and he told us that one of those guards was had been his torturer during his own incarceration.
He took an active part in the reorganisation of the party in 1940/41 in the area of the Baixo Ribatejo and was elected to the regional committee. From then on he led a life of clandestine political activity, responsible for party publications and their distribution. Together with the party’s general secretary, Alvaro Cuñhal and others, he was able to forge close links between the country’s progressive intellectuals and workers, thus building the party’s unique standing throughout the country and giving the anti-fascist struggle a broader base.
He was elected to the central committee in 1943 and remained until 1996. He was one of the chief organisers of the mass strikes of July and August in 1943 and in May of 1944. He also led the struggle for the eight-hour working day for agricultural workers.
António Dias Lourenço was elected a member of parliament after the revolution 1975-87. He also wrote several books about his experiences under fascism and in the party.
He was a man of incredible courage, passion and commitment. With an unassuming modesty and love for his country and its working people. He will be sorely missed by progressives in Portugal and internationally.
END

Injustice – why social inequality persists
By Daniel Dorling
Policy Press
Hdbck. £19.99

This book is a must read for all those looking for an evidence-based demolition of free-market capitalism. It is a fine complement to The Spirit Level: Why More Equal Societies Almost Always Do Better, by Wilkinson and Pickett. It is a combination of passion, compassion and astute factual argument.

Dorling, who is Professor of Human Geography at Sheffield University, argues that there are five tenets underpinning injustice in our society: elitism is efficient, exclusion is necessary, prejudice is natural, greed is good and despair inevitable. He amasses a whole gamut of compelling facts and statistics to make his case. These tenets were central to the Blairite agenda and Con-Dem agenda. Dorling provides us with one of the most incisive analysis of society’s ills to be published for a long time.

He argues that in affluent countries ‘social injustices are now being recreated, renewed and supported by new sets of beliefs which need confronting’. His central thesis is that inequalities in our society are more rampant than ever, despite our living in an era of labour saving technology, abundance and wealth. This fact, he says, demands a complete change in the thinking we all to some extent hold.

‘Greater equality is easily possible,’ he writes, ‘even in the US. In 1951 the communist-hating soon-to-be consumer society and nuclear-powered USA taxed the rich at 51.6% on earnings.’ Today the rate is between 10-30%, although Obama has recently undertaken a redistributive budget in an attempt to haul the country out of recession – only a year earlier an unimaginable step for a US government. Here in Britain, on the contrary, our government is doing the opposite.

Incredibly, ‘in countries like Britain people last lived lives as unequal as today, measured by wage inequality, in 1854 when Charles Dickens was writing Hard Times,’ he says. Inequality is plastered over by having more police to enforce state power, building more prisons and prescribing more drugs. Interestingly, too, the most unequal of rich countries were the most willing to go to war since 1939. That’s another way of taking people’s focus away from inequality and injustice at home.

Dorling, though, is adamant that injustice and inequality can be successfully fought, but it requires rethinking and concerted action by the supposedly powerless. Almost every time there has been a victory for humanity against greed, he writes, it has been the result of millions of small actions mostly undertaken by people not in government. ‘Resistance has always been most effective when exercised by those taught that they were the most powerless.’

He is in no doubt that ‘the human condition is fundamentally social and the modern preoccupation with individuality is really just a fantasy, a form of self-delusion.’

In conclusion, Dorling makes no attempt to offer facile solutions or utopian vistas, but says we can change this system if we all take some responsibility and don’t leave it up to others. In other words those in power can only continue to hold and abuse that power because we let them. He also illustrates how easy it would be to redistribute wealth, given the will to do so.

In this book he combines his skills as a human geographer with a sound understanding of economics and sociology. He has an easy, informal, yet authoritative style – essential reading for everyone concerned with social justice.
END

Time to celebrate our own revolution?

The French are proud of their bourgeois revolution and celebrate it. Why do we pretend we never had one and why do we vilify the man who led it?
Today, on 3 September, 352 years ago Oliver Cromwell died. Despite being the leader of the English bourgeois revolution – the first in the world - which transformed Britain’s historical trajectory, he is someone we appear to want to disavow like a disreputable relative. British historians still insist on calling our revolution the ‘Civil War’(1642-51). Every year the French celebrate Bastille Day - the anniversary of the symbolic storming of the Parisian citadel on 14 July 1789; the rallying call of that revolution was adopted as their national anthem. They are proud of that legacy and celebrate it, despite the fact that it unleashed unprecedented violence and the bloodbath of the ‘Terror’. We are ashamed of our revolution so we prefer the euphemism ‘civil war’, which bowdlerises that momentous event. Novels and most historical narratives written about the period since glorify the Cavaliers and romanticise the aristocracy while denigrating the ‘vulgar and brutal’ Roundheads and the ugly and ‘tyrannical’ figure of Cromwell. The old ruling classes, despite their defeat, were able to impose their interpretation on the narrative. There are only two statues or monuments to his memory (one in front of Parliament and one in Manchester) and none, as far as I am aware, to the revolution in the whole of Britain.
Few leaders and no revolutions are pure, ideal or completely virtuous; what matters is their historical significance and the role they have played in changing society for the better. Cromwell we know was certainly no paragon in this respect. His suppression of the really radical elements within the revolution and his, later, brutal oppression of Catholic Ireland sullied the ideals and aspirations of the revolution. He also became increasingly reactionary in power and turned on the more progressive elements in the New Model Army, extirpating any attempts to build a truly more just and egalitarian country. All that, though, should not blind us to the extraordinary changes he did usher in and the role the revolution played in releasing those bourgeois forces which later made possible Britain’s industrial expansion, transforming it into the ‘factory of the world’. He was the founder of the Republican Commonwealth – England’s first Republic. He was certainly no dyed-in-the-wool revolutionary, even from the outset, nor was he a leader of the oppressed, but he did have a strong sense of the injustice prevailing in the country. As late as 1650 he said, ‘the law as it is now constituted serves only to maintain the lawyers and to encourage the rich to oppress the poor.’ We perhaps also need to remember, as another positive example of Cromwell’s rule, that in 1656 he was responsible for re-admitting Jews into England for the first time since they were expelled in 1290 under Edward I.
In order for the merchants, traders and gentry to push through the radical changes they desired, they had to enlist the support of the general populace if they were to achieve success, but it was an uneasy alliance. Well before 1642 piecemeal enclosures had forced thousands off the land, excessive taxation and exploitation had also played their parts in driving people from the countryside into the cities. These were people full of anger, frustration and class hatred who readily embraced the Cromwellian revolution as a means of getting even with their oppressors and ushering in a more just political system. They formed a sort of masterless, anarchic army of the poor with no roots and nothing to lose. Cromwell’s New Model Army was the most democratic army the world had seen, with ‘agitators’ appointed to regiments (comparable with the Commissars in the Bolshevik Forces). The army became a university for the soldiers – there were avid debates, radical political groupings and fiery preachers. Officers were obliged to win the respect of their men if they didn’t wish to be demoted or removed.

As the historian Christopher Hill points out, there were actually two revolutions taking place during the sixteen forties - a revolution within the revolution. From around 1645 to 1653 ‘there was an overturning, questioning and revaluing of everything in England,’ he says.

Cromwell was the man who created the conditions that allowed the common people to express their own ideas for social change. The revolution provided the space and opportunity for the expression and development of radical and truly revolutionary ideas. Ideas which had been fermenting among the people for decades before Cromwell’s rule now began frothing in earnest. Groups like the Levellers, Diggers and Ranters attempted to impose their own solutions on the problems of their time. The fact that Cromwell led a successful revolt against the corrupt and privileged feudal aristocracy and wrested power from the king, demonstrated to the people that radical change was possible. With each Parliamentary victory, the people saw that their oppressors and even the monarchy itself could be defeated; the world could be ‘turned upside down’.

Although the Parliamentary Army was made up of officers largely from the bourgeoisie, many of the foot soldiers were ordinary men who were fighting for other things - justice and equality and a better quality of life for their class. It could be said that this army was more representative of a cross section of the population than any other national body before or since.

The revoloutionary period of the 1640s was also a time of unprecedented religious debate. The church, whose hierarchy identified with the king, was as hated as the aristocracy itself. It was corrupt, autocratic and levied its own taxes through the tithe system. Already before Cromwell, there was a strong tradition of fiery anti-clericalism and the revolution only provided it with more oxygen.

It was a period, as Hill describes it, ‘of glorious flux and intellectual excitement’, when everything must have seemed possible. The brief years of the revolution ushered in the most extensive liberty of the press, more than had been experienced before or would be afterwards. It brought with it a complete breakdown of censorship and the demise of the hated church courts. Judges no longer went on circuit for fear of their lives. This anti-clericalism and explosion of radical thinking laid the foundations for the ideas of revolutionaries like Tom Paine and the Chartists, generations later.

Despite his maltreatment by history, Cromwell was voted one of the ‘top ten Britons of all time’ in a 2002 BBC poll. However, he and the English Revolution need to resume a place of honour in our history books and their achievements given due prominence.

In a couple of decades we will be coming up to the 400th anniversary, so surely now is the time to renew the campaign to have England’s Civil War renamed as the English Revolution and ensure that it is celebrated as something for us all to be proud of – the precursor of our present day freedoms and parliamentary democracy and as a needful reminder that we once lived in a republic and perhaps now is the time to reignite the campaign for a new one!
END

Crack Capitalism
By John Holloway
Pluto Press
Pbck £17.99
Since the ideas of socialism were first debated there has been conflict between reformist and revolutionary advocates; those who feel justice and equality can be achieved through piecemeal reform and those who argue that only a single momentous revolution can accomplish that goal. Holloway tries to bridge this apparent contradiction. He maintains that we need to create pockets of resistance, islands of alternative life styles or, as he prefers to put it, create ‘cracks’ in the system. In a sense he is also advocating what has been termed the ‘second culture’, ie a culture in opposition to and alongside the hegemonic capitalist one.
He offers 13 theses in what he hopes is a clear and accessible guide to moving beyond capitalism by creating mini-revolutions in our own individual lives, in our localities and communities. He argues that the dangers facing humanity are so urgent that we can’t wait (do revolutionaries wait?) for the revolution but must work to undermine the system where we are. He says ‘…the idea of a future revolution has become the enemy of emancipation.’ The practice of the left has been ‘to repeatedly commit suicide …by ignoring or destroying lines of continuity [between small victories and the chief goal]; by condemning reformism, by using language that only the initiated understand, by the use of violence in a way that alienates many people.’ While that may be partially correct, it is certainly not the whole picture; most revolutionaries I know fight actively for local and partial victories, but these don’t lead irreversibly or smoothly to the overthrow of the system.
We have to think the world through our ‘misfitting’, he argues. We must see capitalism not as something solid, as dominant, but in terms of its cracks, its crises, contradictions and weaknesses. Of course we have to protest against the system, he says, but if we only protest, we allow the powerful to set the agenda.
The long section on abstract labour is unfortunately very complex and highly theoretical and will have little relevance for the reader looking for concrete ways forward. Although it is a valid discussion, it seems that Holloway is advocating opting out of the labour process altogether as the only real means of challenging and overcoming capitalism. In today’s complex society in which we rely on sophisticated commodities this may seem utopian. It could be better discussed in terms of alienation, I feel.
This book is an attempt to answer the question: what can we do? We know taking state power is not an option at the present time. We cannot hope for the great revolution, we have to start creating something different here and now. Moving from capitalism to socialism is qualitatively different from that of feudalism to capitalism. Socialism cannot arise within the interstices of capitalism but only when the world of capitalism is overthrown. It seems, however, that Holloway is arguing for building the new system within the interstices or cracks in the system. A challenging and useful book, but does it offer a solution?
END

No time to sit and wait - countering the Tories
It is no exaggeration to state that working people and the trade union movement under this government are facing the most ferocious onslaught in recent history. However, while the Tory-Lib coalition unleashes its Blitzkrieg with incredible ferocity, the public appears to be mesmerized like rabbits caught in car headlights. Of course, that’s not entirely true. There are those who saw this coming and who are now desperately sounding the reveille, but the government has stolen a march on us.

How has this Eton crowd been allowed to get away with diverting the widespread public outrage at their banking friends for dragging us into the present financial mess? All of a sudden the solution to the crisis, they say, is to be found in attacking public sector pay and pensions, welfare and benefits. While the previous Labour government was complicit, it was the finance capitalists who engineered the crisis, but the Tories are managing to make Labour the scapegoat. So, how can we mount an effective resistance against their attacks?

There is a widespread awareness that old methods of struggle either on an individual workplace or single union basis will not be sufficient to withstand this rogue wave of Tory policies that threatens to engulf us.

Despite the transformed social and political tapestry, trade unions, by and large, are still dependent on the same well-worn last resort method to fight their corner: the strike. While these can still be effective, they lost much of their clout once sympathy and solidarity action was outlawed under Thatcher’s anti-union legislation. The other downside is that – particularly those strikes involving the public sector – they can very often become counter-productive, as they involve inconveniencing ordinary citizens, causing anger and irritation. Methods of struggle need a thorough rethink in the present climate. We can’t afford to alienate large sections of the general public – our potential allies. We may also have to face even more restrictive anti-union legislation if the Tory right-wing gets its way.

A transport strike or one by local government workers hit the general public hardest; they impinge on their daily commute to work, their holiday plans or mean their benefits are not paid etc. Even if there is initial sympathy with the striking workers, this can soon wear thin, the more the public’s lives are affected and the longer time the media have to implement their insidious work.

Can we try subtler methods? During a recent rail strike in France workers chose to let people travel but refused to collect ticket money or check passengers’ tickets. This was very popular with the public and very effective in bringing the employer back to the negotiating table. Could such action be taken here?

One thing is certain, and a number of union leaders have realised this and are already taking action, that in trying to reverse the devastating attack on the welfare state and our other social achievements, action by individual unions alone will not be effective. There needs to be much more widespread and better co-ordination of action against Tory policies, despite the trammel of anti-union legislation. There is an urgent need for a unifying strategic programme in the form of a pro-active defence. We are, though, still somewhat hamstrung by a legacy of inter-union rivalries and, on the left, a clash of personalities and sectarianism that renders us effectively leaderless. The TUC should be playing the central role here, but don’t hold your breath. Trade Councils, too, can play unifying and co-ordinating roles.

Individual unions are of course already mounting their own campaigns but these will necessarily remain limited in their effectiveness. In this connection our trade union movement could learn something from our brothers and sisters in the USA who have had to fight even more draconian anti-union legislation than we have over many decades. They were forced to look at methods of struggle other than strike action. They have actively sought support and solidarity in their communities and from the general public which has usually worked. If you can get the public on your side, half the battle is won. Without the widest possible alliances, an effective riposte to the Tory coalition government will be impossible. Allies can be found in the churches, among activist groups, the left in the Labour Party, the Greens and even those leftists among the Liberals as well as progressive celebrities as long as we are prepared to accept difference as something not necessarily negative, and reject sectarianism and vanguardist ambitions; we cannot afford to be exclusive. The miners’ strike in 1984/85 demonstrated how communities and individuals could be mobilised across an enormously wide spectrum to support what was clearly seen as a monstrous injustice.
Unite’s Health B4 Profit Campaign is aimed at educating and empowering local health sector activists to challenge the fragmentation and privatisation of the NHS. The union says: ‘The NHS ‘should not be carved up for the benefit of private profit and this must be the time for us to fight for our Health Service and ensure that people come before profit. We want NHS staff, service users and the wider community to work together to challenge the policies that will lead to large amounts of public money being siphoned off into private company profits, rather than on delivering health care.’
UNISON’s library workers are defending their jobs and library provision by recruiting support from their local communities and readers, rather than closing the libraries with strike action. UNISON has its own campaign. ‘Everyone needs libraries for facts, for fun and for the future,’ it says. ‘A good public library service is at the heart of the community.’ It has won well-known writers like Dame Jacqueline Wilson, Alan Gibbons and Roger McGough to sign up to its campaign.
Unite has joined forces with PCS, and other unions and political organisations to call on the government to urgently rethink its welfare reform plans. It also has ongoing campaigns on house building and similar issues. The RMT is campaigning for rail renationalisation. Other unions are doing similar things, but they are mostly one-offs, not part of an overall and co-ordinated strategy, often by single unions. Outside the confines of a small activists’ circle they are often unknown.
Unions also need to utilise the media more effectively. It is no use simply putting out press releases and hoping newspapers will print them or offering sound bites to TV interviewers. The need is to be pro-active and win over the public before the establishment can put over its case and queer the pitch. The case for defending jobs, pay and public services needs to be communicated clearly and effectively, addressing public concerns and emphasising trade unionists sense of social responsibility. Campaigns need to be imaginative and events need to be eye-catching and headline-grabbing. There have been some very effective advertising campaigns in the past, particularly by UNISON, in defence of public services, but we should have more of these. They can be expensive to mount, but their impact is significant. More use could also be made of sympathetic celebrities, musicians and artists.

Above all, though, union activists have to ensure that they achieve or maintain a strong density of membership in all workplaces, but particularly in the public services. Without high union membership densities the government and employers will not listen as readily. Now is an ideal time to recruit when jobs, wages and conditions are under serious threat. That should become the number one priority for all union members.
END

Re BBC News on One Friday 9 July.

I wish to complain about your news coverage on Friday 9 July BBC1 10.00pm news. You had only three items: the main one (which took up almost a qare of an hour – half the time) being a report on the hunt for Raoul Moat. The second item was on the football world cup and the third on the London Olympic Village. That is, two items on sport and one on the hunt for a lone gunman – hardly ‘news’ in the real sense of the word, whether world or British.

The fact that the police hunt for a lone gunman in Rothbury was given almost half of the total news coverage is pandering to tabloid-type sensationalism and demonstrates a gratuitous infatuation with crime. It may have deserved a mention but surely not more coverage than a major world catastrophe would normally receive. The police were clearly keeping all outsiders away from the focus of their hunt and were divulging few details of what was happening, but such a lack of genuine information did not stop you milking the story even though it was dry. Your journalists talked of being ‘only 100 yards from the scene’ as if this is of relevance to their story. They interviewed ‘experts’ about ‘what might have been happening’ (because no one knew apart from the police officers involved). This is not news but empty speculation and imparts no information or understanding to the viewer.

The fact that a lone gunman on the run after killing one person was now being hunted by a heavily armed police force in an operation almost unprecedented in peacetime outside Northern Ireland or in connection with serious terrorist offences, elicits no interrogation by you is incredible. You don’t question the use of such force; you don’t question the use of draconian powers to close off civilian areas and impose a curfew on ordinary citizens – actions of doubtful legality or legitimacy. Now tht would be proper investigative journalism!

BBC News has become increasingly obsessed with individual acts of crime, giving gratuitous coverage of little informational or educational value. This is ‘bread and circuses’ of the worst kind and not the sort of intelligent news coverage one expects from the BBC with its mandate to inform, educate and entertain.
Let us have real news please!