Tim Gopsill explains the background to the arrest of former News of the World executives and calls for media corporations to be held to account.

Bent coppers in the Metropolitan Police must be boiling with rage at former newspaper boss Rebekah Brooks for giving the game away and crashing their gravy train into the buffers. To arrest her and husband Charlie Brooks – Daily Telegraph columnist and fellow racing enthusiast – on the opening day of the Cheltenham Festival, not far from their Cotswold home, displayed a spite that could only come from deep resentment.

For three decades, until a few months ago, the Met police and Rupert Murdoch’s News International (NI) stable of national papers were embedded in an intimate relationship. Information, tip-offs, jobs and money flowed both ways to considerable mutual benefit.

It started with the Wapping dispute of 1986-87, when Murdoch lined up the forces of the Met to obstruct and beat the 5,000 strikers trying to save their jobs. For years bent cops and ex-cops sold the journalists protected personal information in the highly lucrative trade that has had to be halted. They collaborated in the entrapment of individuals to commit offences such as drug-dealing or kidnapping that could have landed harmless people in jail.

They engineered the cover-up of the shenanigans at the News of the World. For four years police sat on mountains of evidence, 11,000 pages of notes seized from the jailed private eye Glenn Mulcaire that identified hundreds of phone-hacking victims, all the while sticking to Murdoch’s “lone maverick reporter” line.

The fact they now find themselves on opposite sides of the law is one of the entertainments of the phone-hacking affair, along with the spectacle of NI bosses at each others’ throats, grassing each other up over the News of the World debacle and suing each other over their crushing legal costs. Even if nothing more comes out of it, the affair will still have been the most devastating display of the British establishment at work. The greed of the police, the hypocrisy of the press and the servility of the politicians are truly nauseating.

However, a great deal more must come out of it. The longer the Leveson Inquiry goes on, the worse the evidence that comes out – and there are still the politicians and their 30 year corrupt relationship with Murdoch to come.

Police corruption is more serious than the journalists’ phone-hacking. It is the journalist’s job to root out information by whatever means come to hand, including paying money. Even phone-hacking can be justified if it is genuinely in the public interest. The Guardian’s doughty investigations editor, David Leigh, has stated that he used it in his expose of corruption at British Aerospace.

But it is worse to receive than to give. The police’s job is supposed to be to uphold the law and inspire public trust – something no-one could reasonably expect from the British press. Now we have the confusing phenomenon of the same police as public saviours, rounding up the bad guys. If this leads to convictions – which, almost incredibly, it looks as if it might – then the credit will be due not to them for actually doing their jobs, but to the campaigners, the media unions and the honest journalists who have forced the authorities’ hands at every stage.

The same goes for the regulation of the media, Leveson’s ultimate task. There is a common thread to the submissions to the inquiry – that the size of the big media corporations must be restricted, that their holdings must be subjected to a public interest test, and that a tougher regulatory system must – while remaining independent of the state – be backed with the force of law.

It’s going to take a lot more pressure to make these reforms stick. Just as the police want to be seen to be rehabilitating themselves, so do the Murdochs, and the rest of the national press. The industry is heaping adulation on Rupert Murdoch for his valour in launching the Sun on Sunday, a cheap-to-produce substitute for the NoW. The politicians, including the Labour front bench, are happily co-operating with the papers again.

Murdoch wants to think it’s back to business as usual. The Fleet Street establishment is confidently going about setting up a non-statutory replacement for the discredited Press Complaints Commission with something that looks just a teeny bit tougher. Campaigners for calling big media to account are going to have to raise their game if the scandal is to lead to any real change, and if this extraordinary opportunity is to be seized, they will need the support of the left.

Mike Phipps, Brent Central CLP, reports on a difficult conference and wonders whether the campaign’s strategy may be isolating it from potential supporters.

It was a nasty start to a pretty bad-tempered meeting. Within seconds of Jeremy Corbyn MP opening the 2012 Stop the War Conference, he was being literally screamed at by people who had invaded the platform with the clear intention of causing as much disruption as possible. The culprits were the Communist Party of Britain Marxist-Leninist (CPBM-L), not to be confused with the Communist Party of Britain (Morning Star) or the Communist Party of Great Britain (Weekly Worker). The CPBM-L had apparently produced a leaflet accusing Stop the War of being “bamboozled by non-stop and ubiquitous Goebbelsian propaganda” and “betraying” Libya to “NATO genocide”.  This was apparently because officers of the Coalition had recognised the popular support for the uprising there and allowed articles on the website criticising the Gaddafi regime.

The Stop the War leadership had decided to disaffiliate this group, which is perhaps an administrative way of dealing with a political issue, and scheduled a debate and vote on this later in the day. This was not good enough for the CPBM-L, who demanded an immediate debate and vote. This they got – but they then proceeded to disrupt the meeting because it went against them, thus losing any sympathy they might have had.  All credit goes to Jeremy Corbyn in the chair for calmly refusing to allow a minority to hijack the agenda.

So far, it’s so irrelevant. The problem with this type of behaviour, however, is that it makes both the platform defensive and the mood of the meeting intolerant. Thus it wasn’t uncommon for later speakers to be rebuked by the former or barracked by the latter during the course of the day if they deviated too far from the official line.

The organisers claimed there were 250 delegates at the conference and most of them were genuine local activists. There were some good speeches, particularly from Kate Hudson of CND, Stop the War President Tony Benn and Hugh Lanning, Deputy General Secretary of PCS and Chair of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign. There was also the annual vote on whether to allow Hands Off the People of Iran (HOPI) to affiliate, and as usual the conference followed the leadership’s advice and voted not to (wrongly in my view).

The officers’ view is that the broadest possible platform against an attack on Iran is necessary and having campaigns that criticise the Iranian leadership detract from that. However, by excluding HOPI, not only is the breadth restricted, it also makes the support the campaign receives from defenders of the Iranian regime look more important.

This matters all the more in the context of the Arab Spring, which has perhaps wrongfooted some in the campaign. Many of us support the courageous attempts by people across the Middle East and north Africa to overthrow dictatorial, repressive regimes. We want nothing to do with the politics of the CPBM-L which wants to declare its full support for some of these butchers. However, nor do we want a hierarchy of solidarity based on the reverse of how western imperialist governments view the situation. Yet this was the clear intent of John Rees, when he said: “Until you’re willing to help the Bahrainis, don’t tell us about helping the Syrians or anyone else.” This is plain wrong. Obviously the priority of Stop the War is stopping wars – but why the hostility to the idea of human solidarity with the people of Syria against an inhuman regime?

Earlier this year local anti-war groups mobilised for a protest outside the US Embassy. We were treated to the unedifying spectacle of the Stop the War platform looking on helplessly as a “Hands Off Iran” banner was pulled down. Meanwhile, a man carrying a flag with a portrait of Syrian dictator Assad on it was able to parade peacefully. To say this sends out the wrong signals is an understatement. Worse, instances like this may serve to wall off the campaign from people who loathe the tyrants of the Middle East, but equally oppose western intervention.

Paul Collins, War on Want, exposes the grim reality behind the glitzy façade of the Olympics.

Walk down any high street and you will see people stroll by confident with their coolness, dressed in top sportswear brands. However, another trend is raising serious doubts about these labels – the trend of exposing these clothes as sourced from Asian sweatshops.

Last July, little more than a year before the London Olympics, reports indicated that Indonesian factory workers producing fashionable Converse trainers for Nike were paid a mere 30p a day and routinely hit and abused. In December the Playfair 2012 campaign, whose supporters include War on Want, disclosed that Cambodian employees received just 19p an hour to make clothes for the official sportswear Olympics partner Adidas in the capital Phnom Penh.

In January the campaign group Labour Behind the Label revealed that staff in China’s Jiangsu province earned just 18p for each Olympics mascot they produced that was sold for £20. In February the TUC and Labour Behind the Label told how in another Chinese province, Guangdong, pin badges for the Games were made by children paid 6p per hour for gruelling 11 hour shifts.

In early March, War on Want launched a study which found workers turning out sportswear for Adidas, Nike and Puma in Bangladesh earned on average only 16p an hour – in some cases just 9p an hour, well under the legal minimum. Researchers pointed to exhausting working hours, as well as frequent verbal and physical abuse, with sexual harassment and discrimination widespread. Two thirds of the workers interviewed toiled over 60 hours a week, in breach of Bangladeshi law, to earn the money needed for basic essentials.

Most of the workers lived in a single room with their families, sharing a kitchen and toilet with their neighbours. Rahima Khatun, 21, who works as a sewing machine operator at one Adidas factory, said: “I had my first child last year, but I can’t spend enough time with her as I have to work at the factory twelve hours a day, seven days a week. I have no choice, working overtime is compulsory. My managers are constantly swearing at us and pushing us if we don’t work fast enough. Sometimes the factory does not even pay us for three months at a time.”

Among employees interviewed, just one in seven reported there was a trade union at their factory. Workers from three of the six plants covered in the research said colleagues had been fired for trying to organise a union.

In stark contrast to this exploitation, Adidas has declared its full-year profits up by 18% to a record £559 million; Nike has cited £1.3 billion profits and Puma recorded £71 million profits. Adidas has spent £100 million on the Olympics, securing its place as the sole official Games sportswear partner. It hopes to achieve over £100 million in sales from its Olympic clothing lines alone. Moreover, Adidas seeks to use the boost to its brand from the Games to overtake Nike as the UK’s sportswear market leader – increasing sales for all its product lines.

Will the legacy of the London Olympics be abused garment workers and the marginalisation of local communities? That is the question War on Want – along with the Battersea and Wandsworth Trades Union Council and east London community groups – will pose as the charity holds a conference on 24th March in London, entitled Blood, Sweat & Gear.

Speakers at the conference will include Amirul Haque Amin, president of the charity’s partner, the National Garment Workers’ Federation, union organiser and ex-sweatshop worker Arifa Akter, and Playfair Co-ordinator Sharon Sukhram. Among other speakers will be Mzonke Poni, chairperson and founder of War on Want’s South African partner, Abahlali base Mjondolo from the Western Cape, who will tell how activists fought evictions linked to another mega sports event, the World Cup in 2010, former War on Want vice-chair Niaz Alam, chief operating officer at the organisation UK Sustainable Investment and Finance, and Tower Hamlets councillor Rania Khan.

• People can support War on Want’s campaign for a sweatshops-free Games by emailing STOP to This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .
• Labour Party and/or trade union members who would like a model resolution about the Olympics for their branches should contact This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .

Darren Williams, Cardiff West CLP, looks at the effect Plaid Cymru’s new leader Leanne Wood will have on politics in Wales.

Leanne Wood, the left candidate (and occasional Briefing contributor), has won Plaid Cymru’s leadership election. The South Wales Central Assembly Member secured 55% of the vote over her main rival, Elin Jones, on the second ballot, after former leader Lord Dafydd Elis Thomas had been eliminated.

Her victory is remarkable for a number of reasons. First of all, she came from behind: virtually no one was predicting that she would win when the contest began in January. She overtook her rivals partly through the sheer energy and the determination of her campaign, which saw her speaking at meetings all over Wales on a nightly basis while also making extensive use of social networking and other online tools. Equally important was the clarity and forcefulness of her ideas – and the passion with which she has communicated them. While Leanne’s campaign inspired young people in particular, and undoubtedly played a big part in the 23% increase in Plaid’s membership during the campaign, the original favourite, Elin Jones, was left looking staid and complacent.

Second, the result is significant because of who Leanne is. She is the first woman to lead Plaid and the first leader from a working class background in the South Wales Valleys. She is the first leader not to have grown up speaking Welsh as her first language (although, as a long-time adult learner of Welsh, she had become sufficiently confident to take part in hustings conducted entirely in the language – which will have impressed many in her Party). By contrast, Elin Jones is a farmer’s daughter from rural west Wales who has spoken Welsh all her life – far more the leader one might have expected Plaid to have chosen.

Third, Leanne is left wing not just in Plaid terms but by comparison with virtually anyone involved in electoral politics in Britain today. She is a sincere and committed socialist, whose ideas have been profoundly influenced by Marxists like Raymond Williams and Gwyn Alf Williams, and who has looked to Cuba for inspiration. She is an outspoken republican who has consistently boycotted the Queen’s visits to the Assembly – latterly opting to work with the homeless instead. She is as passionate and serious-minded about green politics as any politician today: see her Greenprint for the Valleys, which sets out proposals for the sustainable economic regeneration, on a co-operative basis, of South Wales’ ravaged former industrial communities.

Leanne’s election does not mean that Plaid as a whole has embraced her socialist ideas in their entirety: the Party remains a very broad coalition, stretching from Leanne herself to conservative cultural nationalists on the right. However, her election shows that it is Leanne and her comrades on the Plaid left who will now be setting the Party’s agenda. Part of her success can be attributed to her serious and unapologetic approach to the issue of Welsh independence, which has relied neither on romantic appeals to “blood and soil” nationalism nor to a preoccupation with purely juridical sovereignty. Instead, she has talked about “real independence”: the social and economic substance behind any meaningful conception of self-government.

Leanne’s victory should be welcomed by all serious socialists. Sadly, it will be greeted with hostility or indifference by many within Welsh Labour. Some will deny that anything has changed fundamentally, claiming that Plaid has no consistent commitment to social justice or the interests of working people. Others will be preoccupied by electoral considerations, fearing that Plaid will now take votes from many who previously supported Labour.

If nothing else, Leanne’s election almost certainly rules out any future coalition between Plaid and the Tories, something that was a real possibility after the 2007 Assembly election and opposition to which Leanne has made a an important plank of her leadership campaign. More fundamentally, Leanne’s victory will shift Welsh politics to the left, keeping Welsh Labour under pressure to maintain and strengthen its “clear red water” policy programme and to resist the influence of the small but highly-placed number of crypto-Blairites seeking to drag the Party to the right.

The Welsh political landscape has changed significantly with this election result. Socialists should celebrate – and set about engaging with the new realities.