Direct action tax collection?
Published:
November 07, 2010 12:10
by Class Worrier |
Neighbourhoods: clumber_street nottingham
On Saturday 6 November, Notts SOS held a protest outside the Vodafone store on Clumber Street. Although the store was effectively closed even before campaigners arrived, this was far from an inspiring demonstration with the analysis leaving much to be desired.
Vodafone is potentially a useful propaganda focus for the anti-cuts campaign. At the same time as the government are making almost 500,000 people unemployed, slashing benefits and attacking welfare, they are allowing corporations like Vodafone to avoid paying billions of pounds in tax. It is clear demonstration of the fact that the cuts are neither "necessary" nor "fair."
Unfortunately, the local left appear to have confused an illustrative point (the government say we don't have any money, but are letting Vodafone and others dodge billions in tax) with a political demand (Vodafone should pay their tax). The result was a muddled, embarrassing spectacle.
"Pay your tax!" is hardly a slogan to set the working class alight and indeed many of the passers-by (and this being Clumber Street, there were many) seemed bemused at best. At one point a Toryboy heckler reduced the protest almost literally to Pantomime ("Vodadfone owe their tax. Oh yes they do"). For me the low point was when one of the megaphone users began suggesting that the Vodafone board should meet on Monday and have as the first item on their agenda "why paying tax is important."
Listening to the speakers you got the impression that if only Vodafone paid the tax they owe (which, in an intriguing instance of lefty inflation, rose from £6bn, the figure estimated by Private Eye to be Vodafone's liability, to a baseless £7bn) the government wouldn't have to be cutting services as they are. Because they don't want really want to. The truth of course, is that this is exactly what they've wanted to do for years and the cuts constitute a deliberate policy to make the working class pay for the economic crisis caused by bankers.
As if to underline the limited ambition of the speakers, there was a bizarre focus on the cuts being made to the police and armed forces. Gone, it appears, are the demands that troops be withdrawn from Afghanistan and the money invested in social welfare. Ditto demands that the UK slash its defence spending and channel it into something useful.
The anti-cuts movement has real potential for growth as the cuts begin to bite, but if this is the best we have to offer to people dismissed from their jobs, denied welfare or evicted from their council house, then we shouldn't be surprised if they ignore us. I continue to hope that when things get going, popular anger will render the more ineffective sections of the movement irrelevant. Whether there is any real basis for this hope is another question entirely.
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Comments
Agree - it is Inland Revenue at fault here
Published: November 07, 2010 20:31
by
Diogenes
Agree. The argument is with HMRC, and the protests should be down the road at the tax headquarters. They are the ones who agreed the tax settlement. And all the top management of HMRC are Gordon Brown people. We are not going to get anywhere by pretending otherwise. The protests are simply ways to attack Cameron & Co, but when they are so clearly based on a false premise, all that happens is the mis-fire.
Transitional Demands
Published: November 07, 2010 23:50
by
Laura Norder
The article points out that protesting for fairer capitalism (i.e. for the rich to be made to pay their taxes) will get us nowhere if we want to fundamentally change society and get rid of social classes and class privilege. The Trotskyists say they want to change society like that too, but nonetheless they make transitional demands pretending that the rich can be called to account under the present system(to educate the rest of us, when we finally realise that the rich are not accountable to us after all).
It's far more effective and honest to make the case simply that Vodaphone shows how hypocritical the system is. But we should also have a strategy to suggest, and one that it is better than making dishonest transitional demands.
The problem is how to empower working class people and enthuse them about abolishing the state and capitalism as part of a mass movement, without allowing the ranks of the authoritarian Left to bore and alienate them with their back-room conspiracies and petty rivalries.
Stop going to Notts SOS meetings...
Published: November 08, 2010 14:57
by
...for a start.
As you have pointed out, the trots will always act in a dishonest and treacherous way. The only solution is to work separately from them. There are more anarchists than trots in Nottingham after all - why should they always get to run the meetings?
Here's a good idea...
Published: November 09, 2010 18:36
by
Mika Salo
...why don't we all spend our time as keyboard warriors playing "Leftier than Thou" games and slagging each other off? That'll sock it to the Tories, stop the cuts, bring the masses round to our ideas and put an end to capitalism.
thank god
Published: November 09, 2010 19:00
by
fuck tax, let's try some direct reappropriation instead!
Thank god for some critical analysis of actions/demos in an indymedia article for once! Thinking critically about what 'we' (somewhat broadly defined in this case) do is a really important step towards having a non-lame movement.
Also, quote: "There are more anarchists than trots in Nottingham after all - why should they always get to run the meetings?" - hear hear!!
Great demo,please lets stop the snipety snipe yawn
Published: November 09, 2010 22:28
by
@norakist?
come on this was a pretty good demo, nice one!!
This article is abit bizarre, have some fellow anarchists had their humour stran removed from their dna whilst in jail or something,
c'mon its pythonesque,
or has this thread been written by tory headscrewers??
Don't split
Published: November 15, 2010 19:41
by
Anarchist against the cuts
The article describes the exact issue we had at the Bristol demo and therefore I assume many others. But lets not split off from the moderate/mainstream left just yet. In Bristol our Anarchists Against the cuts campaign works alongside the Bristol anti-cuts alliance. It's not been easy and at times it has got quite heated but we are working for something much bigger than petty nuances in politics and personal gripes, lets be the grown-ups round here! We covered this issue here - http://bristolaf.wordpress.com/2010/09/25/anarchists-against-the-cuts/
The trots need our tactics and energy more than they let on, In bristol we have been far more active than the alliance because their hands are tied by bureaucracy. They however have the numbers we desperately need to make this a mass movement.
This is the blog for our group: http://anticutsaction.wordpress.com
There's Lots of good noises coming from Nottingham, keep your focus fight the cuts not each other but don't compromise your morals.
In Solidarity
Anarchists Against The Cuts (Bristol)
You don't know Nottingham
Published: November 17, 2010 10:53
by
Notts@
It's all very well for people who don't know Nottingham to tell us to work with the trots but would you really work in a situation where:
* You turn up to meetings with self-appointed Chairs who end up dominating
* You find out that a solution has already been agreed amongst 'comrades' in advance
* Decision making is carried out through an adversarial system of voting
* You never get to write any leaflets, slogans, etc but have to put up with the uninspiring and often flawed rhetoric of the old left
* Direct action is always a strict no no
The trots do indeed need our energy. But in Nottingham they don't have the numbers to make them worth working with.
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Couldn't agree more.
Well said Class Warrior, couldn't agree more. The Tories are only doing what Tories everywhere do.
They have always hated the welfare state and have never stopped working towards its destruction in order to hand the remnants over to its parasitic pals in the City and big business to make vast fortunes from. Whilst I would be one of the first to say that the rich should be taxed more, and made to pay it, it's not the answer on its own.
As for calling on the Vodaphone board to put paying their tax dues on the agenda, what a laughable and naive idea. Since when did capitalism/capitalists go in for ethics and morals or have a conscience?
Dave.