The sweet, strong god of wine.

I have a host of books to read at the moment. I re-read 1984 over the past weekend (you can never tire of that book, and its very appropriate to read today) and have just finished Hermann Hesses' 'Peter Camenzind' (which was only ~130 pages). This was a great little book, detailing the adolesence and maturity of Peter Camenzind, a Swiss peasant. Its written in an autobiographical style, charting his experiences growing up amidst the Alps in a small rural village. He has a profound sensitivity towards nature, and paints some fantastic pictures of the snow-clad peaks, the spring thaws, and how he loves clouds:

"Find me a man in the whole wide world who knows and loves clouds more than I! Show me anything that is more beautiful! They represent the spirit of play, the wrath of heaven and the power of death; they are a comfort to the eye, a blessing and a gift of God, as tending, yielding and gentle as the souls of new-born children..."

Peter later moves to Zurich to study, and becomes preoccupied with St.Francis of Assisi, and relates through him his own love of nature. The rest of the book just details Peters growing maturity, his failure of finding love (and complains why was he gifted with all this emotion and love and cannot find a woman to share it with?), his longing to write a book about all the positive aspects of nature and his wish in sharing what he feels with people. He also suffers from great bouts of depression and melancholy (perhaps he was bipolar), which is caused mainly from his failure to attract the two main women that he falls in love with. He turns to drink:

"Disappointment in love achieved something that had been beyond my father's powers - it drove me to drink. The effect was more far -reaching than anything I have so far mentioned in the narrative. The strong, sweet god of wine became my true friend - as he remains even today. With whom can he be effectively compared? Who is more handsome, whimsical, exuberant, cheerful and melancholy? He is both hero and magician. tempter and brother of Eros. He can accomplish the impossible; he fills poor human hearts with beautiful and splendid poetry. He transformed me from the hermit and peasant I was into a King, poet and sage. He fills the emptied vessels of life with new destinies and sweeps those who are beached back into the swift main current."

I guess I can relate to this a lot, with my own deep, dark periods of depression. For me, wine is a companion, a 'companion' in my madness; it makes my tongue flow less restrained and relaxes me; it loosens my taut, uptight mind and behaviour, allows me to forget unnerving and distressing past experiences which are always nagging me at the back of my head. It's character forming! All hail the god of wine!

All in all, this is a great little book. Peters main message is that in order to really love and accept nature, you cannot place it as a single entity; you have to love, understand and not judge ordinary humans as well. This includes handicapped people, and the last part of the book details Peters introduction to a handicapped man, Boppi, who he initially rejects, but then, with self disgust understands that he was being prejudiced, and ends up forming a great friendship with him. Peter never gets around to writing his book on nature; he decides to humble himself by returning back to his native Alpine village to help his ageing father mend his house and continue his life where it began.

"If there was hope, wrote Winston, it lies in the proles."

"If there was hope, wrote Winston, it lies in the proles.

If there was hope, it must lie in the proles, because only there, in those swarming disregarded masses, 85 per cent of the population of Oceania, could the force to destroy the party ever be generated. The party could not be overthrown from within. Its enemies, if it had any enemies, had no way of coming together or even of identifying one another. Even if the legendary Brotherhood existed, as just possibly it might, it was inconceivable that its members could ever assemble in larger numbers than twos or threes. Rebellion meant a look in the eyes, an inflection of the voice; at the most, an occasional whispered word. But the proles, if only they could somehow become conscious of their own strength, would have no need to conspire. They needed only to rise up and shake themselves like a horse shaking off flies. If they chose they could blow the Party to pieces tomorrow morning. Surely sooner or later it must occur to them to do it? And yet-----!"

George Orwells 'The Lion and the Unicorn'.

'The Lion and the Unicorn: Socialism and the English Genius' was written in 1940 for Searchlight, a series of books produced during the war for left wing writers to state their 'war aims for a better future'.(Obviously not revolutionary defeatist then..)[1]

My version came with the penguin series of books called 'Great Ideas', and this little pamphlet also contains 'Why I Write', and 'A Hanging'. I want to get my hands on his Essays, especially the stuff he wrote on James Burnham, whose works had influenced 1984. But lets examine 'The Lion and the Unicorn' a little bit:

Orwell starts by identifying what is Britishness, by basically comparing so-called British traits with those of Europeans. For instance, he suggests that the UK is not a particularly intellectual country, having not produced composers such as Mozart, artists as those found throughout French history, etc. But to be British (although he uses the term 'English' more than 'British'...sorry Scotland and Wales) is to like flowers, stamp collecting, pigeons and hobbies. It is customary to place great emphasis on defeats, and remember events such as Mons, Gallipoli, Ypres through poems and literature, but nothing really memorable celebrating Waterloo or Trafalger.

Orwell's Socialism does shine through sometimes, recognising the Government is corrupt and that the nation is divided between rich and poor, but underlying this is a sense of 'cultural solidarity'; Patriotism is stronger than class hatred, which is seen in the lack of Internationalism in the working-class, and Orwell brings up the total lack of support for the Republicans during the Spanish Civil War: "For two and half years they watched their comrades in Spain slowly strangled, and never aided them by a single strike."
He does briefly mention the 'Hands of Russia' campaign after the 1917 Revolution, but other than that he appears quite pessimistic about the Internationalist capability of the British Working Class; xenophobia (and therefore racism) is stronger in the working class than it is amongst the Bourgeoisie, he goes on to claim. Despite this, Orwell does say that Britain is the most class ridden country 'under the sun', but then claims that it has a kind of 'emotional unity', that its inhabitants act together in moments of national crises. England 'resembles a family, a rather stuffy Victorian family..' and when faced with an enemy, it closes ranks. "A family with the wrong members in control - that, perhaps, is a near as one can come to describing England in a phrase".

Next on Orwell's list, is the left-wing intelligentsia. These come under attack for a lot of things; for instance he blames them for the 'weakening of imperialism' and the stagnation of morale the UK suffered during the 1930's (of course this has nothing to do with the depression and mass unemployment...tut..as if they were responsible for the wall st. crash). He attacks the intelligentsia for not being patriotic enough, and that their defeatist attitude is caused from their divorce from 'common life' and severance from the 'common culture'. That the fact that Fascism plunged into war because it saw countries as being 'decadent' partly lies at the door of the left-wing intelligentsia!

Orwell sees 'traditional' class distinctions breaking down, with the traditional heavy industry workers being slowly marginalised (which is true), and the growth of a middle-class of lawyers, doctors, artists etc. He sees middle-class ideas permeating through to the working-class, and that conditions of life for the working-class have improved, recognising the role Trade Unions have played, but also with the advance of science. Rich and poor read the same books, listen to the same radio shows, etc. Council housing has led the working-class to grow up with a middle-class outlook rather than someone brought up in slum (which again were slowly decreasing).

'The Lion and the Unicorn' was written in 1940 during the Battle of Britain. France had been conquered, the remnants of the British Army had been evacuated from Dunkirk, and Hitler had started his air-warfare over the UK. Orwell's case for Socialism is quite bizarre at this stage of his pamphlet; he sees private capitalism has being partly the cause of the defeat in France, because despite everyones knowledge after 1936 that war was imminent, the moneyed class still produced private commodities (motor cars, silk stockings, chocolate etc) as there was more profit involved in these goods than in re-armament. The capitalists were still selling raw materials to Germany right up until the outbreak of war (rather reminiscent of the Soviet Union exporting to Germany up until the invasion in 1941...anything to make money). The Dunkirk evacuation was again an example of the nation 'pulling together', and what I think is completely naive is that Orwell thinks that this exposed the bankruptcy of private capitalism, or in his words, the 'rotteness' of the system. The case against capitalism has been proved, and all classes can see this!

He goes on to say that to defeat Hitler Socialism would have to be established. Orwell is not so reformist as to suggest that this can only come through parliament, but he still thinks it has to be a peculiarly 'English' thing:
"It is only by revolution that the native genius of the English people can be set free. Revolution does not mean red flags and street fighting, it means a fundamental shift of power. Whether it happens with or without bloodshed is largely an accident of time and place. Nor does it mean the dictatorship of a single class. The people in England who grasp what changes are needed and are capable of carrying them through are not confined to any single class, though it is true that very few people with over £2000 a year are among them...."
Is it me, or is Orwell just incredibly naive?? He obviously is appealing to the middle-classes here, or at least lower-middle class. Later on, he attacks Communists for alienating the middle-classes from Socialism, and goes on to say that the Marxist idea of class-antagonism (warfare) is based in the 19th Century and has no relevance for today. The thing he seems to recognise is the importance of the middle-classes to society at the time he was writing, but, and what I think he still fundamentally believes in is: "We cannot look to this or any similar government to put through the necessary changes of its own accord. The initiative will have to come from below". And this he sees as not coming through the Labour Party which stands for 'timid reformism.' The rest of 'The Lion and Unicorn' goes on to state a case for Socialism, how it would liberate the colonies, and so on.

What Orwell was arguing was for a 'third way' to achieve Socialism, recognising the importance of the middle-classes and therefore moving away from both Marxism and Labourism, one for alienating the middle-class (but I also think was based on his opinion of Stalinism and the Nazi-Soviet pact), the other for its 'timidity' and being tied to capitalism. He still sees that to achieve Socialism it has to 'come from below', and also recognises the bankruptcy of Capitalism, sees the corruption of the ruling class etc. I guess really the pamphlet really exposes Orwell's own class prejudices, but I am no expert. What is important (to refute those on the right that like to claim Orwell for themselves), is that his belief in Socialism was still very bright, even though it was not of the Marxist variety. He would have been disillusioned with most Marxist-Stalinist organisations from his experiences in Spain though, and of course from that he went on to produce the best literary criticisms of Stalinism and Totalitarianism in the form of his last two novels, Animal Farm and 1984.

Notes:
[1] http://www.isj1text.ble.org.uk/pubs/isj85/chen.htm

'Work till you drop' society

We must have the most right-wing Labour Government ever. I think that is pretty obvious. Its a Government that is hell bent on destroying any vestiges of publically owned organisations, such as our National Health Service, selling off all council housing (and not replacing it), gutting the Department of Social Security (I think they were even thinking of outsourcing the helplines India), and anything remotely to help poor people, they want to 'modernise'. This doesnt even mention the attack on Pensions, with the Queens Speech last week spelling out policys to make people work until they are 68 before they would be entitled to a State Pension. Essentially, we are living in a three mortgage society (see Socialist Worker), whereby we need a mortgage to buy a house, for education, and now to have any decent pension when we retire. All this is so obviously directed at the workers; council workers, nurses, builders, i.e all the most vunerable sections of society who are low paid will have to pay the cost of this neo-liberal economic agenda.

Blair and co. want to bring the private sector into every aspect of our society, whether it be in our NHS or in our schools. Bringing the private sector into the NHS will drive down wages even further in order to compete; the pursuit of profit becomes a holy grail to the managers and to reach this elusive goal means trampling over any remaining vestiges of free health care for all. Thats right folks, New Labours ultimate intention is to destroy our NHS; bringing market forces into health will only, once again, lead to poor people suffering because of the future costs.

All New Labour has done since the 1997 election is continue what the Tories started under Thatcher. There are some good things like the minimum wage, but below the veneer of Labour Social Policy, is the most rabid right wing attack on workers and our society. This doesnt even go into the 'disaster' in Iraq, or cash for peerages, or the corruption amongst our 'elected representitives'. It goes to show that we really do live in a one party state...neither the Liberals and least of all the Tories will change a single iota of the offensive started by Thatcher in the '80s.

Highly depressing. I am off for another drink.

Sylvia Pankhurst and the struggle for the vote.

Syliva Pankhurst was the daughter of Emmeline and Dr. Richard Pankhurst, and sister of Christabel, Harty and Adela. Her father was a barrister, member of the Manchester Chamber of Commerce and founder of the Manchester Liberal Association and later when on to become a member of the Independent Labour Party (ILP). Emmeline, also a active member of the ILP, founded the Womens Social and Political Union (WSPU) in 1903. Emmeline intended the WSPU to:

"..conduct social as well as political work; she envisaged the provision of maternity benefit, and other such amenities for the members of the new organisation, which at that time she intended should be mainly composed of working women, and politically a women's parallel to the ILP, though with primary emphasis on the vote."

Initially, the WSPU acted on behalf of unemployed women, textile strikers in Yorkshire, of 'native races' in Natal and other causes, besides women's suffrage. It organised large demonstrations under the banner of 'Votes for Women', and between 1906 and 1907, the demonstrations became larger and more frequent, with mass arrests usually taking place. On 21st June 1908, between 250,000 to 500,000 women took part in a demonstration at Hyde Park, with the WSPU paper Votes for Women saying: '...it is no exaggeration to say that the number of people present was the largest ever gathered together on one spot at one time in the history of the world'.

The Liberal Govt. did not pay heed to any of these demonstrations, and due to the imprisonment of many of the WSPU members, more militant action started to form, such as breaking the windows of 10 Downing Street and breaking up Liberal Party meetings. Those imprisoned started to go on hunger strike, and its here that we get the infamous 'cat and mouse' methods employed by the authorities, whereby prisoners would be sent home after a deterioration in health, only then to be re-arrested when healthier again.

Christabel Pankhurst, who became dominant in the WSPU, wanted an organisation based, not on class lines, but rather one based on womanhood. She saw working class women as the 'weakest section of the sex': "Surely it is a mistake to use the weakest for the struggle! We want picked women, the very strongest and most intelligent!" The WSPU was drifting more and more to the right, with Votes for Women attacking striking male workers, saying that they had votes and could '…gain improvements in their condition without resorting to strikes.' On the death of King Edward in 1910, Christabel competed with the Conservative papers in her expression of devotion to the throne, the WSPU suspended all agitation and mourned heavily in its paper.

Desperate times call for desperate tactics, and so with the Liberal Govt. ignoring the WSPU, they started to resort to chaining themselves to railings, organising mass window-breaking, and arson directed at prominent rich people. On June 3rd 1913, Emily Wilding Davison attended the Derby and threw herself under the King horse and was killed.

The WSPU was also turning against all men, with Christabel publishing a book called The Great Scourge and How to End It. This was about VD, stating that men had to change their moral standards before women got married, and that the cure was 'Votes for women…and chastity for men'. By the time of WW1, the WSPU had become the most 'chauvinistic organisation in the country', and spent the war years organising women for the munitions industry, and their paper became known as 'Britannia', with its subtitle being: 'For King, For Country, For Freedom'. It was the WSPU which introduced sending White Feathers to civilians who did not join the armed forces, and launched an Industrial Peace campaign which denounced 'Bolsheviks' and those fermenting class struggle. They had paid members who worked in the high industry areas, such as Glasgow and the South Wales Valleys to keep an 'eye' on things. Progress reports were then sent to the Prime Minister.

Whilst the WSPU, under an increasingly autocratic Christabel, focused on more 'patriotic' duties, which as stated considerably shifted the organisation to the right, Sylvia Pankhurst remained active in the Labour Movement. She made a significant contribution to working-class struggles in the East End of London, and believed that the WSPU should focus more on a strong appeal to the masses rather than individual acts of militancy, which divorced the WSPU from any serious struggle. From this viewpoint, she was expelled from the WSPU in January 1914, after speaking at a meeting in support of Dublin workers, and also from her opposition to arson attacks.

Sylvia Pankhurst

She set up the East London Federation of Suffragettes (ELFS), which became Workers Suffrage Federation in 1916, then in May 1918 the Workers Socialist Federation. Her paper, 'Women's Dreadnought' was formed in March 1914, defined its task as:

"The Women's Dreadnought is published by the East London Federation of Suffragettes, an organisation mainly composed of working women, and the chief duty of The Dreadnought will be to deal with the franchise question from the working women's point of view, and to report activities of the Votes for Women movement in East London. Nevertheless, the paper will not fail to review the whole field of the women's emancipation movement."

The 'Women's Dreadnought' changed its name to the 'Workers Dreadnought' in 1917, 'as members realised that solidarity between men and women was essential if they were going to win their fight'.


The new subtitle was 'Socialism, Internationalism, Votes for All'. Sylvia was a committed Socialist, and saw the Russian Revolution of 1917 as hope: 'Our eager hopes are for the speedy success of the Bolsheviks of Russia: may they open the door which leads to freedom for the people of all lands.'

This eventually led her to meet Lenin, the architect of the Russian Revolution, but also showed Sylvia to be on the left of the Bolsheviks, by opposing all participation in parliamentary elections, which led Sylvia to break with Lenin and ended up in her forming the Communist Party, British Section of the Third International, instead of handing over Workers Dreadnought and being made to conform to the formation of the Communist Party of Great Britian (CPGB) in 1920. Lenin responded to this break, in his pamphlet 'Left Wing Communism-An Infantile Disorder, which caused the split with Lenin.

Sylvia eventually dropped out of left wing politics and moved to Ethiopia. Whilst there, she opposed the Italian invasion and turned into anti-fascist and anti-colonial work. She died in Ethiopia in 1960.

Women in Britain eventually got the vote in 1918, but it was not a full enfranchisement (only women over 30 could vote, whilst for men it was 21). In 1928, women gained the vote on the same term as men. It is worth noting that in France, women did not get the vote until after WW2, and France is seen as a more liberal country. Obviously, the Liberal Government realised that after WW1 concessions had to be made for all the suffering which people had endured during the war. Also, women were now an essential part of the Labour force, being incorporated into the factory system during the war. The threat of a successful workers revolution in Russia also must have been on their minds, and the last thing the government wanted post-war was more increased militant agitation for the vote. After WW2, we gained the National Health Service; post WW1, it was an increased franchise for both men and women.

Currently reading...

I am currently working my way through E.P Thompsons 'The Making of the English Working Class'. E.P Thompson was a Marxist social historian, and was part of the group who split away from the Communist Party in 1956 over disagreements over the Soviet response to the Hungarian Uprising. The book details the rise of the Working Class from the late eighteenth to early nineteenth Century, and it covers the growth and early birth of radicalism, starting from the Jacobins and the formation of the the London Corresponding Society, who were influenced by the events of the French Revolution, and Tom Paines 'Rights of Man'. The late eighteenth Century was the period in the UK of the rise of mass-industrialisation, the time when the Industrial Revolution 'took off'; it was also a time of massive social upheaval, with the peasants being slowly forced off their land, due to the Enclosure Acts, and forced into the towns to work for a wage. The immense social deprivation which resulted from the initial period of Industrialisation is well documented in Thompsons book.
Incredible low wages, child labour, extreme poverty, unsanitary living conditions are all associated with this period, whilst the Capitalists who owned the factories and means of production raked in immense profits and wealth.


'Dark Satanic Mills

But it was also a time of the formation of Trade Unions and Working Class Cooperative societies, and due to the Combination Acts, which essentially outlawed any grouping of workers on a collective basis, they turned to underground activity. Artisans such as weavers, who were specialised in their trade, were slowly being undercut by the factory system, whereby machinery and cheap labour were destroying their means of subsistance. In response to this, we get the Luddite movement, which went about destroying machinery which threatened the weavers traditional way of life and trade. So, despite the massive displacement of people throughout this period, resistance to the Capitalists did occur, and under very unfavourable conditions.

E.P Thompson states as his aim for this massive work:

"I am seeking to rescue the poor stockinger, the Luddite cropper, the 'obsolete' hand-loom weaver, the 'Utopian' artisan, and even the deluded follower of Joanna Southcott, from the enormous condescension of posterity. Their crafts and traditions may have been dying. Their hostility to the new industrialism may have been backward-looking. Their communitarian ideals may have been fantasies. Their insurrectionary conspiracies may have been foolhardy. But they lived through these times of acute social disturbance, and we did not. Their aspirations were valid in terms of their own experience; and, if they were casualties of history, they remain, condemned in their own lives, as casualties".

Its a great book, weighing in at around 900 pages, but the amount of research need to undertake a task of this size is phenomenal. It shows for one thing how the middle classes turned away from the most revolutionary working class agitation, and how workers of the period, most working 12 hour days, would come home and educate themselves. The book also shows how reactionary the Government was toward radicals, working class organisations and any form of organised dissent. During the French Revolutionary Wars, the Pitt Govt. suspended Habeas Corpus, organised 'Church and King' counter-riots, increased stamp tax to stop or stifle working class journals, and acted in a most barabic counter-revolutionary manner against the British Jacobin societies and workers combinations.

'The Levelution is begun,
So I'll go home and get my gun.
And shoot the Duke of Wellington.'

'Big Brother' Britain 2006...

George Orwell was extremely prescient when he wrote 1984 in 1948. Although his dystopian novel was seen as an attack on 'Socialism', in fact it was an attack on the perverse Totalitarian version of 'Socialism' that had taken over after the revolution of 1917, or more importantly, after Lenin had died in January 1924. On his death bed, Lenin had warned against Stalin, suggesting that he should be removed from his post of General Secretary because he was becoming too powerful. What happened next was a battle waged by Stalin and the bureaucratic apparatus he had seized control of, against the old Bolsheviks, vintage-1917, such as Leon Trotsky. After the defeat of the Left Opposition and the exile of Trotsky (1928), Russia became a monolithic State, ruled by a dictator (Stalin), and with the GPU (later the NKVD and KGB), hounded the critics which eventually culminated in the Moscow Trials and the Great Purge of all the remaining old Bolsheviks, Trotskyists and other so called 'opponents' of the direction the regime was headed, during 1936/39.

As Animal Farm states, 'four legs good, two legs bad'; this eventually becomes 'four legs good, two legs better! Orwell wrote this animal fable as an allegorical portrayel of what he believed had happened to the Russian Revolution of 1917, whilst still retaining hope in the revolutionary process and seeing the workers as the only real agent for social change.

What on earth has all this got to do with my blog? Well, Orwells '1984' was not an attack on 'Socialism', rather an attack on Totalitarianism, dictatorship and a too powerful invasive State, which includes what could become of Western Democracy. Today, we are closer to Orwells vision than we were back in the 1940s, or even the year 1984 itself. In the Independent today(and all over the news), there was an article about how invasive our society has become over the last nine years, with surveillance techniques that the 'Big Brother' of 1984 would have wet dreams over. Like my earlier post about the slow chipping away of our Civil Liberties under 'New' Labour, this points towards what kind of society we are heading towards, and it ain't a pretty one; in fact, its pure hell.

The major surveillance techniques include:

* Video cameras monitoring buildings, shopping streets and residential areas. Automatic systems can now recognise vehicle number plates and faces.

* Software that analyses spending habits and the data sold to businesses. When we call service centres or apply for loans, insurance or mortgages, how quickly we are served and what we are offered can depend on what we spend, where we live and who we are.

* Electronic tags to monitor offenders on probation.

* DNA taken from those arrested by the police and placed on a database.

* Information stored about foreign travel.

* Smart cards in schools to determine where children are, what they eat or the books they borrow.

* Taps on telephones, e-mails and internet use that can screened for key words and phrases by British and US intelligence services.
Some more facts:

* The national DNA database holds profiles on about 3.5 million people.

* There are an estimated 4.2 million CCTV cameras in Britain: one for every 14 people.

* More than half of the UK population posseses a loyalty card issued by the firm that operates the Nectar scheme.

* Since 2002 there have been more than 8 million criminal records checks for jobs, of which around 400,000 contained convictions or police intelligence information.

* There are plans to expand capacity to read vehicle number plates from 35 million reads per day to 50 million by 2008.

* Some 216 catalogue companies in the UK are signed up to the Abacus data-sharing consortium, with information on 26 million individuals.

* The database of fingerprints contains nearly 6 million sets of prints.

* An individual can be captured on more than 300 cameras each day.

* By the end of 2002 law enforcement bodies had made more than 400,000 requests for data from mobile network operators.

* The number of motorists caught by speed cameras rose from 300,000 in 1996 to over 2 million in 2004.

* In the year to April 2005 some 631 adults and 5,751 juveniles were electronically tagged.

Now, it seems as if our ruling class have digested 1984 and 'seen the benefits'. People, something needs to be done to stop this madness in its tracks, before Orwells vision really does become a reality.

The slow erosion of British Civil Liberties under 'New Labour'

If you want evidence that our Civil Liberties in the UK are slowly disappearing, liberties won by workers over the last Century, then just take a read of Simon Carrs excellent Independent article dated 15 April 2006. He lists 34 points of Civil Liberty erosion which makes for very uncomfortable reading. This so riled 'New Labour', that they produced a 14 page response to Mr. Carrs article. Obviously, 'New Stalinism', err, 'Labour' felt threatened enough by the article to warrant a rebuke of this size. It find it really unnerving, because despite thinking that they have to 'get tough on terrorism' hence less freedom, these are the type of things which can be used against organisations like Socialist Worker, Stop the War Coalition or other left-wing opponents of the Iraq War and 'New' Labours barbaric, rascist and Imperialistic Foreign Policy.

1) As from the beginning of this year (2006), all offences are arrestable.

2) There are three million DNA samples held on file (rising to four million in two years).

3) People can protest in Parliament Square only with the writ- ten permission of the police. Where "reasonably practical" six days' notice must be given.

4) Damaging GM crop fields is defined as a terrorist act.

5) In 2001 two peace campaigners were prosecuted for causing "harassment, alarm and distress" to US servicemen at their base in Britain by standing at the gate holding a placard reading "George W Bush? Oh Dear".

6) A minister can declare a state of emergency and suspend all legal proceedings, including Parliament.

7) The penalty for breaking an anti-social behaviour order can be five years in prison.

8) Anyone's internet history - the sites you've visited, who has e-mailed you and whom you have e-mailed - can be called up by public servants in a dozen departments, as well as all local councils.

9) A journalist's second e-mail requesting information from a council press officer was designated "harassment" and sent to the police.

10) The presumption of innocence is no longer a fixed legal principle.

11) People wearing satirical T-shirts in a "designated area" may be arrested under the Prevention of Terrorism Act. The City of London is a permanently "designated area".

12) Police may take, and retain indefinitely, DNA samples (by force, if necessary) from people who have been arrested but neither charged nor cautioned.

13) Profiles of 37 per cent of all black men are held by the police.

14) The existence of an interception warrant (to monitor internet activity) is a state secret, and the penalty for revealing its existence to the person concerned is five years' imprisonment.

15) It is a criminal offence to prevent an inspector from entering a nursery school for the purposes of inspection and punishable by up to two years in prison.

16) Of 3,069 Asbos issued to the end of March 2004, only 42 requests were turned down by the courts.

17) Foreigners detained under the 2001 Terrorism Act are able to appeal only to a new court (SIAC), which has no jury. The court isn't obliged to inform the detainee of the case against him, and any appeal against the court's judgment is heard by the same court that passed the judgment.

18) The Law Lords advised that the Act was illegal as foreigners were being sanctioned in a way that British citizens could not be. The Government responded by applying the sanctions to British citizens as well.

19) Trial by jury is abolished for certain fraud cases.

20) A judge may direct a jury to infer guilt if a prisoner claims his right to silence.

21) Hearsay is now permitted in court.

22) "Double jeopardy" has been abolished.

23) "Bad character" can now be produced as evidence of guilt.

24) Britons can be extradited to America without any evidence of wrongdoing being presented.

25) "Control orders are not designed to punish people for having done something wrong, but to prevent people from doing something wrong." Hazel Blears.

26) "Where the court of first instance or appeal court quashes a control order... this does not prevent the Secretary of State exercising his power to make a new control order - even if it is to the very same effect, and it is based on the same evidence, as the original order."

27) Under the Inquiries Act 2005, the powers of independent chairmen to control inquiries has been removed and given to government ministers.

28) The state can sue for the pro-ceeds of crime under civil law (where the standard of proof is "balance of probability" rather than "beyond reasonable doubt").

29) Under the Anti-Terrorism Act 2005 it is an offence to recommend the violent overthrow of national dictators such as Saddam Hussein.

30) The Serious Organised Crime Agency can obtain a warrant for the forcible entry and search of anyone's premises, whether or not they are suspected of an offence.

31) A person hosting a British website auctioning Nazi memorabilia can be extradited to France to face charges of "inciting racism" - even though the site is legal in Britain.

32) The National Identity Register may be used to record every sort of personal information - such as withdrawing more than pounds 200 from the bank, getting prescription drugs, voting, applying for a mortgage, taking out an insurance policy, applying for a fishing licence.

33) Officials can demand access to any bank account or financial records (credit cards, utilities, mobile phone companies) without a warrant for the purpose of detecting benefit fraud.

34) Any cabinet minister may make "emergency regulations" if he believes that an emergency has occurred, is occurring or is about to occur.