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Emily James spent over a year embedded in activist groups such as Climate Camp and Plane Stupid to document their clandestine activities. With unprecedented access, Just do It takes you on an astonishing journey behind the scenes of a community of people who refuse to sit back and allow the destruction of their world.
Torpedoing the tired cliches of the environmental movement, Just Do It introduces you to a powerful cast of mischievous and inspiring characters who put their bodies in the way; they super-glue themselves to bank trading floors, blockade factories and attack coal power stations en-masse, despite the very real threat of arrest. Their adventures will entertain, illuminate and inspire.
CUTS IN CONTEXT – TESS RILEY GETS SOME PERSPECTIVE
Oct 12, 2011 • 4:07 pm
Quote:
As the Brighton Nine trial comes to an end, anti-cuts campaigner Tess Riley is in no doubt that this is just the beginning.
So, the Brighton Nine’s verdict is out and it’s a split one.
All nine of us were acquitted of causing criminal damage after gluing ourselves to the inside windows of Topshop. Success.
However, five of our crew were found guilty of allegedly scuffing two mannequins. The five have been given a six months conditional discharge as well as £200 fines each.
You can read more about why we took action and the subsequent two-week trial here. For anyone interested in direct action, this sets out the rationale behind what we did and why we’re proud to be playing a very small part in the anti-cuts movement. In the words of Michael Meacher MP himself (quoted further in that article), direct action “is far more effective [than the parliamentary process] – another indication if we need any how limited Parliamentary accountability has now become.”
The anti-cuts movement is highlighting the disastrous spending cuts being imposed on public services. The point we made in court – with the help of expert witnesses Dr Ron Singer and Caroline Lucas MP – is that frontline services, and thus the lives and livelihoods of the vulnerable people who most rely on them, are being sacrificed to fulfil the Coalition’s dogma that the only way to deal with the budget deficit is through large-scale spending cuts.
There are alternatives – adequately addressing tax avoidance is one but by no means the only one of them – and, even playing the ConDems at their own game, the spending cuts are not synonymous with savings in spending, as shadow work and pensions secretary Yvette Cooper made clear when she highlighted the links between cuts, subsequent unemployment and the negative impact that has on an economy.
It is important to place these cuts in context as part of a much wider neoliberal agenda, the foundations for which were laid – let us not be mistaken – in part by previous Labour governments. The rhetoric epitomising this world states that the market takes precedence. We only need to glance at the Health and Social Care Bill being debated by the House of Lords this week and it is clear that deregulation, privatisation and other neoliberal policies are firmly stamping the rule of the market onto even the most fundamental of public services.
That’s right – public services, not private ones, and that’s the way it should stay. This may only be early days in what is set to be a long-fight to stop the ongoing erosion of the fabric of our society. The good news is that many of us are in it for the long haul.
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