Tuesday 8th July 2025
Blog Page 1263

Review: The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher

Ben Cooke
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Review: The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher

★★★☆☆
Three stars

Of her many accolades, Hilary Mantel can perhaps be most proud of arousing the Daily Mail’s ire. She did so by doing what novelists are supposed to – spotting that which is too directly in front of everyone’s noses for anyone else to notice. To her we owe thanks for observing that Thatcher was a ‘psychological transvestite’ and for noting that the media sees Kate Middleton as a doll on which to hang clothes. Her talent for capturing an attitude in one wry, glancing phrase is abundantly displayed in her latest collection of stories – The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher – as is her deeply felt ‘Maggiephobia’. 

The first story, ‘Sorry to Disturb’, easily eclipses the rest. This autobiographical piece recalls the years she spent in Jeddah, Saudia Arabia, where a Pakistani businessman’s knock at her door resulting in a comedy of crossed cultures and crossed wires. Yet the overall impression is not comic, because it is as much a sketch as a story of a woman, both claustrophobic and agoraphobic, trapped far from home in a cockroach-patrolled flat, and unwilling to venture into the unfriendly city. 

Unfortunately, not all the stories are so good. ‘Winter Break’ follows a couple’s taxi journey, where the driver hits some creature then finishes it off with a rock, and dumps its corpse in the boot. The classic structure of the short story is identifiable: the ambiguity, about whether the ‘kid’ the car hit was of the four-legged, grass-chewing sort, finds its inevitable resolution in the final sentence. The trouble is, no author in their right mind would finish a story by saying, “Oh, it was just a goat,” so we already realise the car actually hit a human child long before Mantel confirms it. 

Like ‘Winter Break’, ‘The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher’ describes a bourgeois life interrupted – by the Prime Minister’s eye operation at the hospital near the narrator’s house, then by a call from an IR A assassin requiring a vantage point. The cliché-heavy dialogue which these two very different anti-Thatcherites exchange dissipates the early promise of the story. This makes it the crassest of what is generally a subtle and highly readable collection. 

Loading the Canon: Gil-Scott Heron

Lily Mcilwain
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Loading the Canon: Gil-Scott Heron

Given his status as one of the twentieth century’s most influential poets and musicians, Gil Scott-Heron’s early prose fiction has had a tendency to be somewhat eclipsed. The ‘godfather of rap’ took a year out of a degree he never finished to complete his novel The Vulture, which was published simultaneously with Small Talk at 125th and Lenox in 1970; and, while he did go on to publish another – The Nigger Factory – in 1972, the LP Heron made of Small Talk was to mark the beginning of a recording career from which he would not look back. 

The Vulture is ostensibly a murder mystery – one which weaves together the lives of four men as it relates the story of the death of John Lee – but the novel is not so much a thrilling page-turner as a rich, poetic evocation of the lives of young black New Yorkers in the 1960s. The prose is imbued with the rhythms of Heron’s poetry, and it hangs somewhere between fiction and music even as it describes the grittiest of drug-related murders; indeed, when the characters name (as they often do) the songs playing at certain moments of their story, it only provides a label for the organic beat that has been running through the words themselves. The political consciousness and satirical edge present in Heron’s recorded music are equally felt in The Vulture, and there’s no denying that it’s a novel which is going to make you uncomfortable. The visceral reality of the world his characters inhabit gives you the feeling that you should just shut up and listen – this murder mystery is not one that invites the reader’s judgment.

The Vulture captures better than most other novels of the time the intangible atmosphere of the era it describes. You’re really living and breathing it until you’re hit with a killer line, such as, “They had decided long ago that the game of life really was not worth playing, because the inventor of the game kept most of the rules a secret,” that reminds you that this is the work of a poet who has constructed with absolute mastery a world that to you seems so very, very real. The ‘mystery’ element isn’t by any stretch the most exciting part of the book – indeed, the revelation of the murderer is so anticlimactic that it’s not initially obvious who it is – but it doesn’t matter; this novel is important. You only have to read it to know.

Jonathan Yeo: the controversial yet charming artist

Emma Irving
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Jonathan Yeo: the controversial yet charming artist

Jonathan Yeo is interviewing me – and oh, he’s good! “How’s Oxford?” he asks, with the ease of genuine interest. “What are you doing over the holidays?”

It’s almost impossible to dislike Yeo – he’s all twinkly eyes and charm, even down the phone. I wonder if Britain’s leading portrait artist, with a landmark exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery and a major 2014 retrospective at The Lowry to his name, is actually most talented as a master in charm offensive, which might originate from the artist’s close observation of the games people play. “No matter how much [people] try to put a particular face on when you first meet them, at some point they let their guard down. But sometimes you’re dealing with manipulators of their own image – actors, models, politicians all fall into the same category – and you can’t always be sure with people who are so good at doing that whether what you are getting at the end isn’t just a very sophisticated performance.”

And what actors, models and politicians. They include Damien Hirst, Paris Hilton, and a glistening, naked, flagrantly pregnant Sienna Miller, as well as Tony Blair’s infamous official portrait. On painting celebrities, Yeo notes, “Obviously it’s harder when you’re dealing with people [whom] you tend to know a bit about, [but] I try to go in neutral and without any preconceptions.” 

I query whether portraiture is arguably a record of an interaction rather than a portrayal of the sitter. “All portraits are a document of the relationship between artist and subject.It’s more interesting if you can start with a relatively blank sheet and see how [the subject] comes across to you.” So is the success of a portrait related to how much you like the person? “The ones I feel like hanging onto are the ones where I’ve enjoyed the process because I’ve enjoyed their company. You don’t always have to like someone. Sometimes you haven’t particularly liked the subject, but you have had a strong enough reaction to them…to make something interesting of it. The ones that don’t work are the ones where you get bored along the way.” I am struck once again by his conviviality, how Yeo manages to be both figurehead of the contemporary artistic intelligentsia and naughty schoolboy, permanently perched on the edge of a chuckle. 

He also defies art scene fads. “It seems obvious to me that fashions always change and people who’ve got something interesting to say will always have relevance.” A trustworthy schoolboy, then, with languid tones that are punctuated only by the sharp wit skimming beneath the surface. No wonder the establishment likes him.

Except, that is, when he decided to collage the President of the United States, amongst others, in hardcore porn. As you do. Apparently, however, it was not the response to a cancelled commission from Bush that the press made it out to be.

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 “[The subjects] were very much public images and so they were trading off their reputations,” he explains, “I wasn’t trying to give any sort of insight into who these people actually were, it was a purely Warhol thing of using their reputation as public image and playing with that.” A social comment then? “They all in some way trade off sexuality or nudity or their attitude towards things. [The project] became just as much about the proliferation of pornography…five, six years ago the pervasion of pornographic and semi-pornographic images in the media and advertising seemed to be increasing, and so we had immediate access to them all.”

There’s a defiance to him too that can be seen in these pieces that writhe with eroticism and intensity. “I was aware that my style might adapt well to collage because of the way I tended to break things up on top of the painting anyway, and the obvious question therefore was where would you get a lot of skin going in the source material.”

It was a similar situation with a series of portraits documenting women before and after cosmetic operations, “I got distracted for a while by all the possibilities [for meaning] with that…working out how much you could read into that person’s motivations and self-doubt and compulsion to follow fashion or a certain way of being seen and what they were doing to themselves, rather than any kind of penetrating, psychological character study.”

“As I’ve gone on, I’ve gotten more into letting in [other possibilities for meaning within portraiture], subtly layering complex narratives or wider ideas into a picture. I think it’s a shame not to try that, not to be a little bit ambitious.”

And then? “There was a logic to [the series], but I was very aware that it would be a playful thing as well…it’s fun then when people realize what they’re looking at and that changes their relationship with the picture as an object. And then you go into a whole new territory beyond painting, so that’s the fun of it really.”

We’re back with the witty schoolboy, tongue very much in cheek. 

The Campaign: OSFA for dairy-free G&D’s ice cream

Josh Hagley
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The Campaign: OSFA for dairy-free G&D’s ice cream

Oxford Students for Animals’ ‘Less Meat More Veg’ campaign began by working on making life easier for vegetarians and vegans at Oxford colleges. However, since college food is not the only way students feed themselves, it seemed the campaign could be taken further. People decide to explore veganism for various reasons, and with the growing amount of interest in reducing animal product consumption, OSFA’s campaign aims to make vegan food more accessible both in and out of colleges.

With such a successful promotion of animal product-free food in several Oxford colleges, OSFA decided it would be beneficial to look at places that students eat out of college. G&D’s caught the attention of OSFA for several reasons, but primarily because all three branches have high student interest and early opening and late closing times. Additionally, high quality dairy-free ice cream is already available in supermarkets, and we should therefore look towards providing the product in popular cafés, like G&D’s, making it easier for vegans and those who are lactose intolerant, as well as drawing in those looking to reduce animal product consumption.

As a society primarily interested in issues surrounding animals, OSFA recognises the lack of attention towards the treatment of animals in the dairy industry. A commonly held view is that, unlike the meat industry, the dairy industry does not kill its animals. However, dairy is a business, and in order to deliver the product from cow to consumer, the young calves must be removed as soon as possible.

Thecalves are separated shortly after birth, which is psychologically distressing for young animals. Male calves are shot on site and sold as cheap meat or veal. In order to lactate, the female cows must be impregnated every year, often by artificial insemination, and when they are no longer of use financially, are sent to slaughter. Colourful pictures of happy cows in G&D’s are ironic, as is the company’s statement, “We like cows and dairy products.”

Of course, OSFA’s campaign is not aiming to force veganism on people. We just want to provide a dairy-free alternative for anyone interested to try it. Hopefully, however, we will show more people that there are environmental and ethical impacts of the dairy industry, which will lower demand and hopefully lead to a nation less dependent on dairy.

To sign our petition go to: www.change.org/p/g-and-d-s-oxford-introduce-dairy-free-ice-cream

 

Interview: Roger Bootle

Harry Gosling
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Interview: Roger Bootle

For almost everyone, the New Year brings with it a fresh sense of optimism, a feeling that this year will be different, better even, than the year just passed. But after only a week of 2015, the overbearing reality of the state of the world’s affairs seems quite enough to extinguish any lasting optimism. Conflict and change, it appears, will be common themes in 2015. But how do we go about forecasting political and economic trends, as well as significant events that will undoubtedly punctuate the year ahead? 

It was with 2015 in mind that I looked forward to interviewing Roger Bootle, Executive Chairman and Founder of Capital Economics, an independent macroeconomic forecasting agency. The firm, as Bootle is proud to admit, has “a really quite impressive track record”, and emerged as the top economic forecaster of 2014 in a Sunday Times study.

In an amusing twist, it becomes apparent that Bootle is able to empathise closely with my experiences as an undergraduate at Merton, having also studied PPE there. Much to my disappointment, he confirmed that Merton had the same reputation when he was an undergraduate as it does now. Bootle mused that it had good food but “it was pretty academic,” and everyone regarded it as full of students who “work all the time and don’t have any fun”. It is interesting, we agreed, to see how reputations and trends persist through time.

The notion of trends persisting across generations is one that Bootle applies to his own macroeconomic forecasting. He informs me that both he individually and the firm Capital Economics have a very different approach to other macroeconomic forecasters.

“We place a lot of emphasis on history. At Oxford when I was a graduate student, I was briefly supervised by Sir John Hicks who although he was a great theoretician, was also very interested in economic history. He made me constantly want to look at previous periods for historical parallels with today’s events. So, for instance, when it came to Britain’s exit from the ERM in 1992, which was probably one of our greatest forecast successes, I was fully aware of the experience of 1931, when Britain came off the Gold Standard. Most of the economists in the City were not.”

It is Bootle’s ability to relate current events to historical trends which appears to set him and Capital Economics apart from the competition. Given his impressive forecasting record, I decided to pick his brains about what he expects from the world in 2015. Bootle suggests that elections in Greece scheduled for later this January are “already the big story of 2015”. Opinion polls point to victory for Syriza, the far-left populist party. Its leader, Alexis Tsipras, wants to maintain the country’s status as a member of the Eurozone, but end austerity arrangements, repudiate some of Greece’s debt burden, and ditch the bail-out conditions imposed by Germany and the ECB. “A very inter- esting package,” muses Bootle, a hint of irony in his tone, “I think there’s a significant chance that Greece is going to be out of the Euro.”

Were this to happen, what would be the plan? Bootle, referring to his winning entry for the Wolfson Economics Prize, insists that people would have to continue using the Euro and that “accordingly the denomination of the new currency [the Drachma] should be exactly the same, so that people carry on using the Euro domestically.” Tantalisingly he tells me: “We’ve had a certain amount of interest in the [Wolfson] report and the issues it raises from at least one government in the Eurozone.” Unsurprisingly, however, Bootle declined to disclose to exactly which government he was referring.

With much of the continent in dire straits, many people, I suggest to Bootle, will wonder why the UK would want to continue its close relationship with Europe, at the expense of free trade with China and the US for example. He agrees that the EU is “a very flawed institution” but contends that the UK and Europe have “a number of interests and attitudes in common” and that therefore “it makes sense for us to have some sort of association. The question is what sort of association that should be.” Reform is needed but seems unlikely to happen soon, given the bureaucratic nature of many of the EU’s institutions.

Bootle does not, however, agree that Britain should vote to leave the Union should there be a referendum during the next Parliament.

“It is possible, it seems to me, that for political reasons, if we left, the remainder of the EU could be quite nasty with us, even if it was against their immediate economic self-interest.” Britain cannot simply pick–and-choose which parts of being in the EU it wants to retain, and which parts it wants to discard. The European question has no easy answer it seems.

Concluding the interview, I begin to recognise the balance of change and continuity as we move from one year to the next. As Bootle shows me the way out, he asks me whether I’ve got Collections before term starts, recounting his experiences of them during his time as an undergraduate. It looks like although there will be considerable change in 2015, some things always remain the same.

Interview: Shami Chakrabarti

Luke Barratt
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Interview: Shami Chakrabarti

Jon Gaunt famously referred to Shami Chakrabarti as “the most dangerous woman in Britain” in his column for The Sun, a label which he apparently intended to be negative. Chakrabarti seems now to wear it as a badge of honour.

In her time as Director of the human rights group Liberty, the organisation has campaigned on behalf of whistleblowers, fought against legislation such as Gordon Brown’s proposals for 42-day pre-charge detention for terror suspects, had the courts confirm that evidence obtained through torture is inadmissible, and fought modern slavery, amongst a myriad of other causes.

Despite all this, Liberty is still not that widely known. Chakrabarti explains, “We’re a multi-disciplinary team of human rights campaigners. In“particular, we’re the champions of the Human Rights Act. We are also a membership organisation, and I’d like to say that loud and clear, because we’re dependent on our members.”

Liberty works in litigation, bringing test cases to the courts which they believe will move the law in the right direction. “We’ve got scarce resources,” says Chakrabarti, “so we have to choose carefully, and it’s heartbreaking, because of course legal aid has been all but destroyed. Civil legal aid in particular is all but dead in this country.” Liberty also does parliamentary work: policy analysis and research, “mostly around government legislation and legislative policy that impacts on human rights”.

Before she joined Liberty, recalls Chakrabarti, “I did Law at the LSE. I was always drawn to the idea of Law as a means of achieving a better life, a better society; as an agency of change, not just a means of maintaining the status quo. In particular, that grey area between law and policy and politics always fascinated me.”

After bar school, Chakrabarti’s first work in law was uninspiring to say the least. “Getting up at five in the morning to go and possess somebody’s house in Folkstone one day and going to wind up some company the next didn’t do it for me. The glamour and excitement of standing up in court wasn’t enough, it was the issues that I was most interested in. And I saw an advert for a job as a lawyer in the Home Office, and I thought that would be more interesting.”

She’d heard about Liberty at university, Chakrabarti tells me, and read about cases in which they’d been involved, including numerous important cases against the government. Harriet Harman had been a lawyer at Liberty years before. There’s a famous case called ‘Harman and the Home Office’ where she’s taking on official secrets and” – a slightly derisory laugh here – “abuses of power and so on.”

Harman, of course, was heavily involved in the 2010 scandal surrounding MPs’ expenses. After she failed to make MPs’ expenses exempt from the Freedom of Information Act in 2009, it was revealed that she was amongst 40 MPs who had secretly repaid wrongly claimed expenses between 2008 and 2010.

This scandal is extremely important for Chakrabarti’s perception of the state of modern politics. When I wonder why people are so disillusioned with politics at the moment, she is quick to reply.

“We’ve had crises of trust. The government misled us over weapons of mass destruction. That’s the executive. Then you’ve got MPs, who were wagging their fingers at ordinary people saying ‘don’t be a benefit scrounger, don’t commit crime and anti-social behaviour’ on the one hand, and on the other hand rifling through the till – that was MPs’ expenses. So now we’ve lost trust in the executive and the legislature; then we have the bank managers, who we think are the most trustworthy people, and they’re in the back room with a roulette wheel, and we lost trust in them. And then even the journalists, who we rely on to hold power to account, with phone hacking and all that, and then the police…

“It’s not necessarily that these institutions are more awful than they’ve ever been, it’s partly proper scrutiny and exposure and so on. However, we do need these institutions, because democracy relies on institutions. We do need government, we do need a parliament, we do need journalism, we do need banks.

“These various institutions, particularly the political leadership, have not done enough to show us a new direction and inspire us; instead they’ve been leading us down this cul-de-sac of politics of fear and hate and xenophobia.”

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The recent rise in xenophobia in Britain, argues Chakrabarti, grew out of political battles in the late 90s, when Michael Howard and Tony Blair “fought an authoritarian arms race in British politics”.

“Yes, it was law and order and terrorism, but it was immigration too. Many of their battles in the courts in the mid-90s were about immigration. They started putting home affairs issues on the front pages again. And then when 9/11 happened that escalated, and immigration and anti-terror policy became conflated. Administrative detention, to which immigrants have been subject for a long time, now became used as a device for circumventing criminal charges in the anti-terror context. With rhetoric and politics you demonise the other, and then you use immigration-type laws as anti-terror laws.”

It is often argued that the rise of UKIP and other far-right parties across Europe owes much to hard circumstances brought on by the recession.People in difficult times,it is said, are driven to the authoritarian right. “I don’t think they’re driven,” Chakrabarti insists, “but I think they can be led.

“They’re not driven,” she underlines, “but they’re misled.

“The people are scared, and they’re rightly scared, of economic uncertainty, and crime and terrorism and so on. But they’re being offered scapegoats. Talk is cheap, tough talk is cheap, legislation is cheap, and picking on vulnerable scapegoats is cheap and easy. The bottom line is, it’s a quick fix but it doesn’t work. It’s pure divide-and-rule, and I think the powerful have been doing this to the vulnerable all over the world forever.”

Chakrabarti talks about the political and economic elite whom she holds responsible for so many of the human rights issues which exist in our society with anger.

“Tony Blair was so tough on asylum seekers, and what an irony, when this man is now a great world traveller. He’s the globe-trotter of the first-class lounge.

“The biggest irony of all is: capital is globalised, the internet is globalised, climate change is globalised, and the one thing they say shouldn’t be international is human rights. What [they think] shouldn’t be global and international are the values which protect ordinary people and link them to each other all over the world. And that should give the game away.

“There is internationalism for the powerful! They’re in the first-class lounge, they’re trading their money from one country to another, from one Byzantine financial arrangement to another, and they’re all mates in the first-class lounge, but they’re saying we the people outside the first-class lounge shouldn’t be brothers and sisters and have human rights protection all over the world.”

The Human Rights Act is Liberty’s main project at the moment. Passed in 1998, the act protects all persons resident in the UK, and is based on the articles of the European Convention on Human Rights. The act effectively means that judges must act in a way compatible with the Convention, and that it is unlawful for a public authority to act in a way that is incompatible with it.

Chakrabarti calls the Conservative government’s plans to scrap the act, “the existential threat to rights and freedoms in this country at the moment”.

The “fundamental question of our time”, she says, is, “do we want to be human beings everywhere, with shared problems and shared solutions, or do we want to retreat into the cave, and be citizens with privileges bestowed upon us by the ruling elite of our little country?

“Remember, it’s still a young instrument, which had a really traumatic infancy. It came into force on October 2nd 1998, and soon after we had 9/11 and the War on Terror. It’s a lot of pressure to be put on a young Bill of Rights. Bills of Rights need time to bed down, to be shared by the people, to be read. But our politicians don’t want to share this with us, and most people who comment on the Human Rights Act have never actually read it.

“How many politicians can tell you that they’ve actually read the Human Rights Act, and that they understand how it operates, what the rights and freedoms are in it?

“The reason Guantanamo Bay still stands is that someone advised the American President that despite their great written constitution, and their American Bill of Rights, they’re for Americans. So if we stick these people off- shore, and we only do it to foreigners, we can get away with it. When we retreat from human rights towards citizens’ privileges, that’s the way to Guantanamo Bay.”

Liberty has come a long way since Shami Chakrabarti was appointed Director, but it’s clear she has no intention of resting on her laurels. Liberty’s battle over the Human Rights Act is just beginning, and when I ask her if she thinks it will survive this threat to its existence, she enthuses, “Will it survive this week, next week, next general election…? The real answer lies with you and your colleagues”.

We need students to participate

James Blythe
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We need students to participate

Oxford students, indeed students all across Britain, are dangerously disengaged from politics, both national – only 40 per cent of us have registered to vote – and local – only 14 per cent voted in the OUSU elections, attendance at common room meetings is often ropey and our student political parties are populated by tiny groups of dedicated keenos.

I’ll hold my hands up as pretty much the archetypal Oxford student politician: I am a sabbatical officer of the student union, and before that was JCR president and a member of the Labour Club.

You won’t be surprised to learn that I don’t think the solution to the problem of engaging students in politics lies in gimmicks or politicians trying to be cool.

The solution, and my proposal for 2015, is simpler than that: politics needs to have more impact. Both national and student politicians often seem interested more in personal gain for themselves than in making change happen.

It’s my view that only when student politics makes more of a tangible difference in the day-to-day lives of more students will we have created a real incentive for students to care. OUSU is changing: finally, thanks to last year’s team, we’ve got the budget we need. Your sabbatical officers finally have the support they need, and we are all committed to changing this university.

To achieve this, I’ll be launching OUSU’s first ever Vision for Education this Hilary. This process will involve OUSU spending serious time listening to what Oxford students want from their education, and then devising a plan to campaign effectively and systematically over the next five years to make that happen. Feedback on prelims, better doctoral supervision, a more diverse curriculum: we’ll be joining up the most vital student academic issues for the first time, and campaigning on them consistently, year after year.

I believe students are some of the most passionate, proactive and progressive people in the world. I’m proud to serve the students of Oxford.

You deserve politics to achieve more for you. Only once we do more for you will we have earned the right to moan about you not engaging with us.

If you care about education at Oxford, get involved in the Education Vision process this term by sending me an email at [email protected] 

Warwick’s occupation shows students how to fight

James Elliott
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Warwick’s occupation shows students how to fight

While most students were packing up to head home for Christmas, myself and a group of friends camped out on the top floor of a conference centre in the University of Warwick, the most visible and notable of last term’s resurgent wave of student occupations.

You may have missed how this began. Students carried out a peaceful sit-in for free education in a reception area of a University building, not unlike the Exam Schools sit-in that took place a year ago here in Oxford. They were then met with police tasers and CS gas being sprayed in students’ faces. This was unprecedented – the first use of such weapons on students at a British university. Students then occupied a university conference centre in protest at the police violence. Rather than apologise for management’s decision to call in the police, or condemn the police brutality, Vice-Chancellor Nigel Thrift rushed to defend the heavy-handed tactics.

The demonstration following the use of CS gas saw over a thousand students gather on Warwick University campus, the largest demonstration in the institution’s history. Fol- lowing that, students rushed into the Rootes building, the University’s most lucrative conference his was a commercialised space in the University, reclaimed by the student community in protest not only at how education was being marketised, but also against how the institution perceived of and treated its students. In response to this occupation, the University went to the courts to seek a possession order and an injunction, banning occupations on campus for a year. They have effectively criminalised the last form of protest available to students, when all other channels are closed off.

The student protests that have bubbled up over the last 12 months have resulted in a variety of responses from management, some of which have been as draconian as Warwick’s. Two students at Birmingham were suspended for nine months for their part in an occupation, while the University pushed for them to be expelled outright. Five students at Sussex University were suspended for organising an occupation to protest the outsourcing of 200 jobs on campus, later to be reinstated after a campaign.

The mechanisms by which universities repress people are well known. The more interesting question is why universities act in this way. It is not simply a feature of ‘the neoliberal university’ which is repressive. My father’s university, Lancaster, tried to expel him in the 1970s for his part in organising an occupation there. The pre-Blair ‘public’ university could be just as repressive towards students.

Education has always been a function of the status quo where norms become ‘good behaviour’. Any student wishing to challenge that, to question the way we organise our universities, our society, puts themselves at great personal risk. 

University bosses are not our friends. The bosses who cut cleaners’ pay, victimise their union activists and then cajole them, are the same bosses who demand that we pay more tuition fees, that our loans are privatised for profit, that our repayments are changed, and that our welfare as students is secondary to our purchasing power as consumers – all this while raking in an average of over £250,000 a year, and in our own vice-chancellor, Andrew Hamilton’s case, £424,000 a year!

It needs to be understood that violence on the part of the University and the police is not an unexpected twist, but a part of the struggle.

If we fight, then people will be hurt, arrested, beaten by cops and tear-gassed. Someday soon, those tasers brought to the Warwick sit-in could even be used. But leading activists are suspended and threatened with expulsion to cow the rest into accepting the present order. These are risks that Warwick students have shown they are willing to overcome. The challenge for the rest of the student movement is to join with them 

Cuba and the US? Close but no cigar

Stephanie Stafford
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Cuba and the US? Close but no cigar

A few weeks ago, the US and Cuba announced to the world their plans to restore full diplomatic relations. A happier Christmas wish there could not have been. The global analysis of the situation has been optimistic – a positive change for Cuba, a step towards the democratic nirvana the West supposedly enjoys. Then, just before the New Year, Cuba went and detained several well-known political dissidents in Havana. And once again the world was reminded that though Cuba’s relations to the US might be changing, those to its people remain grimly unchanged. Beyond looking at the potential for a myriad of invisible trade routes to open up, the world needs to remember the Cuban people. Economic freedom does not mean social freedom. When private enterprise is still strictly regulated in Cuba, the possibility to buy US Coca Cola over Cuban Cola means little to the average Habanero or Guantanamero.

So what does the historic announcement made on 17 December 2014 mean for the two countries? Well, for the US, their citizens will now be able to travel to Cuba and use their American credit cards there. It will be easier to buy Cuban goods (ideal for those congressmen partial to a good cigar), and easier for the US to export its own products. But who in Cuba will benefit from this trade? The state-controlled economy has hardly allowed the average Cuban to acquire a disposable income. That the effects of trade and business might eventually trickle down to the Cuban people is of course hoped for but, while the current regime remains in place, even this seems unlikely.

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However, most of our assumptions are being made (perhaps erroneously) on the premise that the US trade embargo of Cuba, otherwise known as the Helms-Burton act, will be lifted. Unfortunately, there seems little hope of this occurring anytime soon. Relations between Cuba and the US frosted over in the early 1960s when Castro and his guerrillas overthrew the corrupt right-wing dictator Batista who had let US businessmen make their fortunes and launder their dirty money on the island. Obama’s proposals to end the trade embargo are still awaiting approval by the US congress, where they are being met with strong opposition.

The US trade embargo has shaped the island through economic and political isolation for over five decades. Walking through downtown Havana, the lack of brands and product advertising is striking. Cuba has remained sealed off from tidal waves of global brands and advertising that have swamped nearly every other corner of the globe. It’s nigh on impossible to track down a can of Coca Cola in Cuba, though of course their own version, Cuban Cola, is on sale everywhere. The extremely limited scope of goods on offer in shops, just like those elegantly dilapidated colonial mansions, may seem charmingly quaint to a burgeoning tourist industry that pulls nearly 3 million visitors a year to the island (set to grow once the gate is opened to US citizens). But it is a stark reminder of daily life for the average Cuban.

What is not so immediately obvious when you visit Cuba is the sheer enormity of state-control the government has over its citizens, who are neatly indoctrinated through their education system from an early age. Although Cuba’s atrocious record of human rights was allegedly one reason why the US clung to the frosty relations (in the mean time turning a blind eye to countries such as China, Vietnam and Venezuela), the US seems to have put to rest all hope of changing Cuba’s internal politics through the embargo. Certainly, it should not have taken the US over half a century to realize the futility of its aim – the embargo was benefitting no-one – but one is now left to wonder how realistic the dreams of democracy are for the Cuban people.

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While its aged figurehead Fidel Castro has retreated from public life, his younger brother Raúl has tentatively allowed the development of a small private sector, and many Cubans are beginning to voice their opposing views. Yoani Sánchez is one such example. She writes an award-winning blog, Generación Y which records the oppressive reality of life in Cuba’s capital city. The regime censured her website in Cuba but it is maintained abroad via emails of blog posts Sánchez sends to her loyal friends and supporters. In April 2014 she established Cuba’s first independent digital media outlet, 14ymedio.

However, with Cuba it can sometimes seem one step forward, two steps back. Sánchez’s husband, journalist and dissident Reinaldo Escobar, was among those arrested on 31 December 2014. His arrest, like many of those before him, comes under the ominously titled Law No. 88 for the Protection of National Independence and Economy of Cuba. It prevents organized group meetings, protests or any action suspected of bolstering so-called anti-Cuban measures. The law has resulted in numerous human rights violations and prison sentences last between seven and twenty years for those found guilty.

Since Law No. 88 repeatedly cites as its raison-d’être the US’ Helms-Burton Act, many are hopeful that better US-Cuba relations would remove a pretext for the regime’s repression. Yet again though, without any concrete assurance that the US will repeal the Helms-Burton Act, significant domestic political change in Cuba seems far off.

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In light of the recent arrests, the regime is not showing any sign of abandoning its strong grip over its people. According to an independent Cuban human rights group, the regime carried out a record number of detentions in 2014, totaling nearly 900.

The US have found a short-term solution to the tricky subject of human rights. As part of the deal, the two countries agreed to trade political prisoners. US Aid-worker Alain Gross, who was convicted of espionage five years ago, was released in exchange for the three remaining Cuban spies who formed part of the Grupo de Los Cinco, imprisoned in the US since 1998. Cuba has not published the identities of the 53 people who will be released which has aroused concern. Without the details of each prisoner, for all anyone knows, the 53 people could be US common criminals instead of Cuban nationals and dissidents who truly deserve their freedom. This trade-off of prisoners changes nothing.

If life for the Cuban people is to improve, two key things need to happen: the US trade embargo needs to be lifted and Cuba needs to introduce real political changes to aid the move towards a more democratic form of government. Amid the excited flurries from international press that a new era of friendship has dawned between two historic enemies, a closer examination of the actual terms of this new friendship is needed. The world also needs to be reminded that the official Cuba, whose envoys speak to the US and arrange such deals as the one in December, is still not the Cuba of the Cuban people. While the dictatorship continues, so does their hardship. 

Free speech does not mean we have the right to offend

Tom Robinson
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0
Free speech does not mean we have the right to offend

As Charlie Hebdo releases their ‘Survivors’ issue, in which the Prophet Mohammed is depicted, people have appealed to the values of a society in which such publications can exist, and defended our right to offend. But whilst we might accept no one has the right to not be offended, is it the case that we do have, as Charlie Hebdo’s lawyer argued, “the right to blaspheme” or, in general, the right to offend?

For many in the wake of the attack in Paris, upholding the right to free speech is the most important thing we can do. Drawing the Prophet, making jokes at the expense of Islam or parts of it, no matter how insulting it is to some, is crucial in showing that we will not be swayed by the oppressive actions of others.

And of course, there is something powerful in that message. We know all too well that we could have called for an invasion or an upping of the bombing over IS-held areas. We’ve done it before in response to terrorist attacks. But this time, instead, we pledged to buy a magazine, brandished pens in the air, walked through the very city that was attacked and declared that our values will not be swayed by the actions of a maligned few.

Yet, this is to encourage the publication of images that we know will probably be insulting not only to radical extremists but also to the overwhelming majority of Muslims that do not hold the beliefs of the Hebdo attackers. That we desire to offend a few at the expense of many who are our friends, neighbours and fellow citizens seems contradictory to another of our beloved values: tolerance.

The depiction of Prophet Mohammed to a non-Muslim is inconsequential. In isolation, for any non-Muslim individual, it means absolutely nothing at all. Depicting him only becomes meaningful to a non-Muslim when it’s done in relation to others – when it’s done to provoke, to insult, to offend.

There will be those who argue that in a tolerant society, there will be opinions against particular creeds, and whilst we tolerate religion and religious diversity we must also tolerate those who speak out against what they see as something damaging for society. We cannot be tolerant of one without being tolerant of the other.

Certainly, I have no right not to be offended by the words and actions of others. I might be offended when someone preaches the Second Coming or that abortion is sinful, but I have no right to have these people silenced. As I express my opinion, so too can they express theirs.

Neither, however, do I have the right to intentionally offend others.

I am offended by the street-corner preacher because my beliefs are in conflict with those of the person who offended me. The preacher’s intention was to change my beliefs, to persuade me, and not to offend me. Were the preacher to say certain things just to make me angry, I would question his right to say those things. Similarly, I have no right to swear in a church just because I wish to rile the local Vicar.

I can be offended, and accept that as the case, without someone having the right to offend at the same time. This ‘right’ as a concept seems nothing more than a glamorous attempt at justifying the entitlement of people to be deliberately hurtful towards others.

In the aftermath of such horrific attacks, where we seek to reassert and find solace in our values, we should be careful not to misconstrue their meaning and damage those values in the process. We hold free speech dear because it promotes tolerance, acceptance and constructive debate.

Publishing depictions of Prophet Mohammed is not a re-affirmation of our values in the way we think it is. Whilst no one has the right not to be offended, we certainly don’t have the right to offend. Free speech and tolerance are values we hold to ensure cohesion and peace, not animus. 

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