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big data and widening inequalities

One consequence of the global digital revolution is that growing numbers of citizens are now placing significant amounts of personal information, and trust, into the ownership of private, online multi-nationals. Although seemingly innocuous, this submission of privacy has effectively ‘morphed the public into a database of users’ (Lovink, G. 2016: 21), wherein citizens willingly update their profiles and input new data about their worries, desires and actions every single day. Political value can be extracted from this data, providing insight into the fears and motivations of an electorate. This value is now recognised internationally and has resulted in the emergence of a global market for political consultancy and strategy organisations, whose focus is on the compilation and analysis of privately-owned user data, commonly referred to as Big Data (BD) analysis.

This paper explores the utilisation of BD analysis within contemporary political strategy through the case study of influential political consultancy firm, Cambridge Analytica (CA), discussing its relationship with Facebook and contribution to populist political campaigns within the United Kingdom (UK) and United States (US) (Bartlett, 2018; Goodwin, 2018; Moore, 2018; O’Neil, 2016; Wylie, 2019), looking to highlight the inadequacies in online regulation regarding the misappropriation of private user data and spreading of misinformation. Additionally, this paper will investigate the stifling effect such analyses can have on the ‘emancipatory potential’ of digital technology and explore widening inequalities in Asia through review of Jason P. Abbott’s (2001: 99) ethnographic analysis of the online political economy in China. However, before exploring how individual instances of BD’s political application display regulatory inadequacies and serve to perpetuate inequality, it is necessary to further define BD, discuss the current regulatory climate surrounding the prominent social networks, and assess the impact such analysis is set to have on future state sovereignty.

BD is the analytic field concerning the complex, predominantly online, datasets that are commonplace in the digital age (Moore, 2018; Moore & Tambini, 2018; O’Neil, 2016). These datasets accumulate by default within the functionality of social media platforms, with private entities allowing for increasing levels of ‘out of sight’ data aggregation.  In this essay BD refers to the use of data scientists and consultancy firms by political parties and organisations to calculate the ‘how best to manage their various communication channels’ (O’Neil, 2016: 74) in real-time during the runup to a democratic vote. Again, this process seems rather inoffensive, as the digital age requires updated means of political campaigning; however, the contention surrounding BD analysis in political campaigning stems mainly from the manner in which data is acquired. Such analysis often requires private entities to misappropriate user data from social networks on behalf of state interlocutors, both undermining the democratic process and breaching numerous data privacy regulations.

In a Bourdieusian sense, these new tools of political analyses contribute to the construction of a new digital form of governance, wherein state actors are granted ‘soft power’ (Nye, 1990) over citizens in the form of access to private and personal data, internet browsing habits, and even location tracking. What makes this digital power ‘soft’ is that it relies on the influencing of the public through co-opting and persuasion, in the form of targeted advertisements, as opposed to coercing through bribery or threats of violence. Such co-opting requires access to a specific technical capital, in this case BD analysis, the possession of which, whether direct or indirect, enables state actors to reproduce forms of governance that deliberately concentrate power into select social groups (Bourdieu, 1986). This power is only maintained through the continued willing and passive submission of data and privacy from citizens, with contemporary democracies relying on this submission in order to exploit the aforementioned inadequacies of current online regulation, highlighting the precarious nature of privately-owned datasets and the threat to digital democratisation that such co-opting poses. Of the three most prominent online multinationals (that is: Facebook [subsidiaries: Instagram, Messenger and Whatsapp]; Alphabet Inc. [parent company of Google and Youtube]; and Twitter), this essay will focus predominantly on Facebook, whose role in the digital public sphere has been heavily debated in recent years (Bartlett, 2018; Moore, 2018; O’Neil, 2016). Currently boasting an active userbase of over two billion (Facebook, 2019) its value as a tool for improved communication and global publishing is simply impossible to ignore, and its exponential growth has seen the site become a primary news source for many citizens (Moore & Tambini, 2018). However, as a result of the social network possessing the largest informal database of the global population, and with their mobile app sitting at the top of the most downloaded list of the 2010’s (CNET, 2019), it is only natural that the platform finds itself at the forefront of contentious online political strategy as ‘the leading space in which election campaigns (and referenda) are fought’ (Moore, 2018: 111).

Beyond the controversy surrounding Facebook’s psychosocial effects, such as the potential for addiction and negative mental health (Moore & Tambini, 2018; Morozov, 2001), the site has been accused of facilitating the spreading of fake news and the misappropriation of user data (UK HC, 2019; Wylie, 2019). In the UK, this manifested in the form of the 2017-2019 Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee’s final report on ‘Disinformation and ‘fake news’’ (2019). This select committee was called in direct response to the public and media outcry that followed the UK’s 2016 European Union (EU) membership referendum, which will be discussed in the following section, where claims of foul play were made against campaigning organisation Vote Leave as a result of their relationship with CA and Canadian political technology company, AggregateIQ (AIQ), both of whom have been found to have misappropriated user data through Facebook in order to deploy targeted adverts for the Leave campaign (UK HoC, 2019).

The resulting report was scathing of Facebook’s current lack of regulatory guidelines for data protection. It stated that CEO Mark Zuckerberg had ‘shown contempt towards both the UK Parliament and the ‘International Grand Committee’ for his failure to appear before the committee or ‘respond personally to any of their invitations’ (UK HoC, 2019: 89), suggesting that Zuckerberg believes Facebook are dealing with issues of data privacy and misinformation on their platform adequately. The report also recommends a ‘compulsory Code of Ethics’ for social media platforms overseen by an ‘independent regulator’ (UK HoC, 2019: 89). The committee advocate for a significantly more robust system of legal liability for the social networking giants in order to prevent them from shirking regulatory responsibility and ‘hiding behind the claim of being merely a ‘platform’’ (UK HoC, 2019: 89), which, in an era of fake news, misinformation and rising national populism (Goodwin, 2018),  would only serve to further facilitate the abuse of their network.

The UK’s referendum result, which left much of the world’s democracies ‘flabbergasted’ (Moore, 2018: 110), presents the direct threat that BD analysis poses to marginalised communities. The new algorithmic campaigning methods that BD enables have been proven to be the most efficient means of building, engaging and speaking directly to voters (Moore, 2018; O’Neil, 2016), and the communicative shift within political campaigning prioritises the online world and side-lines traditional, boots on the ground methods. Moore (2018) posits that the days of fretting over access to Royal Mail constituency directories are long gone, and that political campaigns are now able to reach nearly every voter in a specific constituency ‘without even having to pay for postage’ (ibid.: 127). This evolution in campaigning methods is a direct result of the rich user profiles that BD analysis creates.

Before 2014, such profiling was used primarily by marketing agencies and advertisers, as it allows for the delivery of tailored advertisements for each individual consumer, increasing the likelihood of a potential purchase and contributing to a more efficient mode of marketing. However, in 2014, in a move made in the interests of online UK advertisers, Facebook merged their UK user database with that of Arkansas-based marketing company Axciom (Moore, 2018). This new data ‘contained lots of different ways to split users geographically’ (Moore, 2018: 126) and sparked a new interest in BD analysis for political campaigners (Bartlett, 2018; O’Neil, 2016; Wylie, 2019).  Most notably in the case of AIQ and CA, who despite ongoing investigations from UK, US and Canadian governments (Gizmodo, 2018; Ljunggren, 2019; UK HC, 2019), have already managed to blindside the traditional political class, facilitating a transformative populist shift which has rocked the UK and US political landscape. This paper argues that in these cases (2016 UK referendum & US Presidential Election) BD has been weaponised by political campaigners to promote national populist rhetoric (Goodwin, 2018), and has directly contributed to the further marginalisation of minority groups and those of lower socioeconomic status (SES) in both nations.

Although both campaigns ran on uniquely divisive narratives, the mutual nature of their campaign rhetoric was fundamentally characterised by a similar nativist nostalgia. This similarity also rang true for the practical side of the respective campaigns, with both placing large emphasis on BD analysis for the distribution of their national populist messaging (Moore, 2018; UK HC, 2019; Wylie, 2019). The calculated delivery of such political messaging involves the systematic construction of a database of ‘persuadables’ consisting of the unmotivated young, the unconfident and ‘the downright apolitical’ (Moore, 2018: 127). Theoretically, this focus on untapped, or floating, voters unlocks new sections of the electorate who for one reason or another avoid mainstream news sources. This should be a positive effect; however, offset with the aforementioned nativist nostalgia, encapsulated by slogans such as ‘Take Back Control’ (Vote Leave, 2016) and ‘Make America Great Again’ (Trump, 2016), the electorate are exposed to messaging whose core hinges upon a longing for regaining control over the political and socio-cultural infrastructure of the respective nations, control which is framed as being directly under threat from the globalised structures of the EU and NATO. ‘Powellite’ (Virdee & McGeever, 2018: 1804) in its nature, this messaging promotes an insularity that has paradoxically followed the British for centuries, paradoxical in that continues to dwell on a ‘deep nostalgia for empire’ (Virdee & McGeever, 2018: 1803) whilst remaining sceptical of the aforementioned super structures of the contemporary political world.

This form of campaigning boils complex ideology down into consumable, and most importantly marketable, chunks of information, often oversimplifying to the point of meaninglessness in the case of ‘Get Brexit Done’ (Conservative Party, 2019), it then distributes these chunks at a moment of the campaigns choosing through BD targeted delivery. This is not to say that the contemporary electorate is bereft of personal or political agency, but instead that when at the behest of persistent online stimuli, voters naturally begin to normalise and internalise rhetoric, which in this instance was built on the reclamation of national and community identity and supported by staggered phases of targeted messaging. Such rhetoric plays on latent nationalist sentiment within the electorate and seeks to vocalise feelings of lost cultural identity within target demographics and remedy them with national protectionism at the expense of perpetuating anti-immigrant sentiment. For example, in the last ten days before the 2016 referendum the Vote Leave campaign homed in on the ‘powerful but questionable claim’ (Moore, 2018: 127) that if the UK remained in the EU floods of Turkish migrants would enter the country. Not only was this messaging factually inaccurate, but it actively sought to mobilise anti-immigrant sentiment through formulating a ‘desirable’ and ‘undesirable migrant’ (Bulat, 2017: 1). This formulation, although indirect, is a clear example of the new digital co-opting process, wherein BD analysis not only facilitates the promotion of falsified claims regarding the EU (Ref) but claims that damage both migrant communities within the UK and perpetuate difference for new citizens outside of the country.

Similar themes of paradoxical nativism can be found in President Donald Trump’s 2016 election campaign, whose utilisation of CA’s BD analysis is well documented (Bartlett, 2018; Moore, 2018; Wylie; 2019). The President-to-be’s inflammatory campaign rallies promoted the kind of national isolationism explored by Goodwin (2018), and this was echoed in Trumpian campaign materials (Warner et al., 2018). The persistent mobilisation of anti-immigrant sentiment in his rallies, campaign propaganda and even tweets ensured that ‘immigration would become the topic most associated with his candidacy’ (Benkler et al., 2018: 105). Initially, this mobilisation focused on the potential migration of peoples from fellow North American nation Mexico, with Trump launching his campaign on June 17th, 2015 with the statement:

‘The U.S has become a dumping ground for everybody else’s problems…’ and ‘When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best.’

Trump’s rhetoric gradually shifted over the course of the campaign from a focus on ‘Building the Wall’, to one whose central concern was on Muslim migration into the country and the threat of ‘Radical Islamic Extremism’ (Benkler et al., 2018: 105). This shift encapsulates the core aim of the campaign, which was to perpetuate the othering of migrant communities and play up to the idea that ‘the ordinary man or woman on the street is being sold-out by out-of-touch elites’ (Geddes, 2013: 247). It is important to note the relative unpopularity of both candidates amongst the electorate (Benkler et al., 2018: 105), which ensured the result would be one of tight margins, fought ‘over a small number of key marginal districts’ (Bartlett, 2018: 100). This made for the perfect terrain for the application of CA’s refined messaging methods and provides another indirect example of BD analysis contributing to the success of national populist campaigns, which in this instance effectively sought to other migrant communities and promote racial and cultural discrimination (Warner et al., 2018). These two examples provide an insight into the disruptive potential of BD analysis within democracies who adopt a comparatively laissez-faire approach to internet usage and regulation among their citizens.

In order to move beyond assessments of BD analysis within laisses-faire, liberal democracies and strengthen the argument that BD contributes to widening inequalities globally, this paper will now look at the work of J. P. Abbott (2001), whose comparative ethnographic analysis of the online political economy in China and Malaysia explores the degree to which active conservative regulation of the digital realm impacts on political mobilisation and perpetuates longstanding race, gender, and class inequalities in the region. In addition, this work investigates the stifling effect of globalisation, in the form of increasing commercialisation and privatisation, on the online world’s potential to alleviate inequality through increased democratisation.

Abbott first posits that the online world is akin to the ‘19th century American West’ in that it is ‘vast, unmapped, legally ambiguous’ (Abbott, 2001: 99) and without any formal warden. This analysis of the digital public sphere implies that the politically disenfranchised would be able to use the net in China as ‘an alternative medium’ through which their opposition to state intervention and regulation could be voiced (Abbott, 2001: 99). This runs in direct contrast to the common view held regarding Chinese state intervention within the online world, suggesting that despite heavy surveillance and filtering of content activists are still able to negate their government’s wariness of online dissidence. Abbott states that Chinese State has continuously acted to try and clamp down on the use of online communications by political activists, whether in the form of raiding ‘so-called ‘illegal’ internet cafes’ or introducing ambiguous regulation regarding the publishing of content which contains ‘state secrets’ (that is, anything that has not been formally verified by the government) (Abbott, 2001: 103).

Here we see the active use of the new form of digital governance play out directly, with state actors utilising BD analysis and online encryption to limit the potentially damaging effect that open access to the internet may have on perceptions of a nation. It is also important to note that this analysis was published in 2001, and that since then the Chinese Government has developed and now is implementing a system of National Social Credit. This relies on the use of both BD analysis and facial recognition within cityscapes in order to ‘rate the trustworthiness of citizens’ and is intended to promote ‘transparency and ‘sincerity’’ among the population (Bartlett, 2018: 199). This disconcerting development highlights the urgency of the battle for positive digital transformation, and clearly displays the enormous political value of this emerging technological capital within contemporary democracies. Abbott’s work further supports the argument that despite the emergence of communicative technologies that seek to remove limitations on an individual’s ability to communicate, exchange and produce capital there are both direct and indirect forms of state resistance which look to challenge new forms of collectivity.

To summarise, this paper has demonstrated an understanding of the potential impact of BD analysis on widening global inequalities. It has achieved this firstly through highlighting the developing regulatory pressures facing contemporary social networks, with particular focus on the accountability challenges Facebook poses internationally (Moore, 2018; Moore & Tambini, 2018; UK HC, 2019; Wylie, 2019). In addition, it has illustrated the new form of digital state governance that is shaping contemporary democracies globally. This was then supported by two key examples of BD analysis facilitating the widening of inequality through the perpetuation of anti-immigrant rhetoric, which has served to give voice to distinctly nativist ideology in both the UK and US. After which it has sought to comment on the ‘emancipatory potential’ (Abbott, 2001) of the digital evolution through review of ethnography on the Chinese political economy, which displayed both state suppression of free political debate online and the genuine conceivability of BD analysis being used to police citizens in real-time (Bartlett, 2018).  

In conclusion, it is apparent that the digital public sphere holds immense potential for increased democratisation and voter participation; however, in its current form BD analysis is being utilised, both directly and indirectly, as a force for reproducing state political power, breaching individual privacy and the further marginalising of minority and lower SES groups.

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crime, consumer culture and the city

In order to explore the interrelationship of crime, consumer culture and the city,  this paper will focus its attention on the British night-time economy, using comparative ethnographic analysis  of consumption-based leisure activities to explain how the city accepts and facilitates the normalised use of specific illicit drugs, and negotiates public opinion and moral panics (Cohen, 1971). This paper will firstly touch on the criminalisation of drug use in Britain (Coomber et al., 2013; Hadfield et al., 2015; Sanders, 2006; Shiner & Newburn, 1997; Stevens & Measham, 2014) and certain influential subcultural movements in its history (Mods, Rockers and Ravers) (Martin, 2009; St John, 2009; Thornton, 1995), and the impact of public opinion on drug policy (Cohen, 1971; Hitchens, 2012). This introductory section will act as the foundation of the piece, contextualising Britain’s culture of consumption, from whence we will move onto discussion of the evolution of a consumer-based economy (Hayward & Kindynis, 2013; Hayward, 2004; Aldridge et. al, 1998; Raymen, 2015). This discussion will seek to explore the hypothesis that the city has been made to adapt to the normalisation of subcultural drug trends and will assert that there is now wilful facilitation of the consumption of specific illicit substances. Such discussion feeds into the wider debate around securitisation, as well as the cost-benefit analysis of allocating police resources to deal with individual consumption, and will provide a theoretical framework for analysis of contemporary ethnographical accounts of the abundance and normalisation of illicit leisure activity within the urban night-time economy (Nayak, 2003; Treadwell & Briggs, 2013; Vorobyov, 2019).

In formulating a theoretical construction of the city as the foremost urban social space - and hence the centre of consumer capitalism in Britain (Hayward, 2004; Raymen, 2015; Treadwell & Briggs, 2013) - it is important to investigate the relationship between densely populated cities and the neoliberal context in which they economically operate, and are politically governed (Roy & Steger, 2010). Therefore, in exploring specific case studies of criminal activity occurring within the night-time economy, this paper will suggest that the free-market approach to urban city management and resource allocation influences public opinion on the acceptability of specific crime, and shapes the normalisation of consumption driven decision-making (Hayward & Kindynis, 2013), the impact of which has been observed most notably in cities which have experienced mass de-industrialisation: Leeds, Liverpool, London (Vorobyov, 2019), Manchester (Aldridge, Measham & Parker et al., 1998, 2001; Aldridge, Measham & Williams, 2011), Newcastle (Nayak, 2003), and Sheffield, cities whose efficient governance depends on social behaviour following ‘predictable patterns of orderly consumption’, unlike the ‘spontaneity’ associated with recreational drug consumption (Raymen, 2015: 502).

Section One - Neoliberal Priorities

Raymen states that the neoliberal approach to city governance: ‘dictated a need to ‘regenerate’ city centres as commercial spaces of consumption, leisure and business in order to make them relevant with affluent young professionals and to make these cities economically viable and competitive in a new post-industrial economic reality’ (Raymen, 2015: 501; Minton 2012). This consumer-based social order is upheld by state actors, whose policy approach remains focused on the reproduction of securitised social spaces. One example is the ‘Business Improvement Districts’ (BID), which enables businesses in a specific area to collaboratively invest in other privately-owned businesses in their area, maximising commercial interest and fortifying their local economy (Raymen, 2015; 501). Another example can be found in the actions of Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, whose hiring of London’s first Night Czar, that is, a city ambassador focused on  diversifying a city’s night-time economy, was motivated by a desire to champion the cultural value of London’s night-life and further develop the vision of a ‘24-hour London’ (Mayor of London, 2017). This could also be seen as a response to the well documented closure of London nightclub, Fabric, whose doors were forced shut due to an investigation into the death of two young men at the club. Such action from the state actor governing Britain’s largest city represents an clear attempt to retain grassroots venues in the Capital, 35% of whom have been lost since 2007 (Mayor of London, 2017: 15). Sadiq Khan’s cultivation of a 24-hour London, consciously or unconsciously, contributes to the wider normalisation of illicit consumption-based leisure activities. Primarily, this results from the reliance on private securitisation in the city, or bouncers and security staff in this instance, who in theory free up state resources in the night-time economy. Consequently, such private security measures prioritise preventing violent crime, and the supply of illicit substances, over limiting the recreational consumption of illicit drugs by individuals, simplifying the process of illicit drug consumption.

Although evaluating the economic impact of Britain’s austerity state on the night-time economy is beyond the scope of this project, there is a distinct opportunity to investigate neoliberal governance of the city, and its accommodation of illicit consumption-based leisure activity. Neoliberal thought has dominated British politics for over three decades now, principally focusing on the financialisation of the state economy, the rolling back of the state welfare provision, an active search for the reproduction of neoliberal cityscapes, and reliance on a market-based approach to the voluntary, community, and social sectors (Hayward, 2004; Milbourne, 2013; Roy & Steger, 2010). This approach has led to a situation wherein policies regarding drug consumption remain vague or oversimplified, see UK govt. classification system, and barely begin to grapple with the reality and complexity of consumption in Britain. One can argue that this is because of the interplay between a general disregard for youth and subcultural movements in the late 20th century and a burgeoning resource allocation dilemma, manifesting in criminal gang activity (county lines, trafficking), online activity (dark-net markets), and small scale social supply and consumption (Taylor & Potter, 2013). Furthermore, Britain’s ‘resilient’ night-time economy is one of the few industries that has seen continuous growth over recent years, managing to maintain stability despite economic uncertainty (London First, 2018: 18; NTIA, 2015). These circumstances have resulted in the policing of inevitable illicit drug use becoming a problematic area for neoliberal policymakers, especially with current uncertainty around the UK’s exit from the European Union requiring state actors to prioritise sustainable markets, the night-time economy being a prime example (London First, 2018: 18).

Neoliberal ideology prioritises market competition and sustainability, seeking to minimise the role of the state in the provision of goods and services which are considered market friendly. In addition, through their focus on individual choice, neoliberal states claim that free-market economic sentiment looks out for the wellbeing of the public and reflects public opinion on community organisation (Roy & Steger, 2010). However, the rise of national populism within the UK (Eatwell & Goodwin, 2018), and discontent with the manner in which urban cities have been offered up to wholesale advertising, assessments of marketability, and various national and international investors and migration, have displayed that such governance is not without contestation. This approach, in favouring businesses and owners of capital who are most flexible to changing market circumstances, prides itself on its ability to adapt to public policy issues, yet, when it comes normalised illicit drug use and the night-time economy, there are a number of legal and academic disputes over the facilitation of consumption and ‘social supply’ of drugs (Shiner & Newburn, 1997; Taylor & Potter, 2013). This paper will examine contemporary examples of such disputes (Fabric, London; Phonox, London; Diamond Strip, Newcastle), and locate them within the ‘consumer-crime nexus’ (Hayward & Kindynis, 2013), displaying the unique interrelationship between contemporary consumerism, crime control and urban city management.

Section Two: Criminalisation and Stigmatisation of Recreational Drug Use in Britain

    In keeping with the broader theme of neoliberal city governance, and its focus on ‘individualization and responsibilization’ (Raymen, 2015: 501), this section will address shifts in public opinion and new moral concerns regarding the use of illicit recreational substances and their prevalence in the British night-time economy. Which will allow for discussion of the Situational Crime Prevention (SCP) strategies utilised by clubs and bars, the difficulties of policing recreational drug use, and the public health aspects of consumption.

A number of scholars have investigated the role of recreational drugs in contemporary club culture (Measham et al., 2001; St John, 2009; Thornton, 1995). Despite their prohibited status and the general view of their ‘essentially problematic’ nature (Coomber et al., 2013: 9), recreational consumption of illegal substances has been pivotal in the development of Britain’s urban night-time economy. There is a general consensus that public perception of these substances operates within a complex moral continuum (Cohen, 1971), with normalised substances, alcohol, tobacco, and cannabis, being viewed as less immoral when compared to other ‘dirtier’ drugs like cocaine, heroin, ketamine, and MDMA. The moral classification of substances among the population is significantly more complex than the UK Government’s scheduling system portrays, though classification primarily hinges upon the public health aspect of drug use or, in other words, the ‘risk’ of a specific substance (Measham et al., 2001). On the ground, situational crime prevention and CPtED (Crime Prevention through Environmental Design) strategies are clear to see. Raymen (2015) offers an example of this moral categorisation in action within urban city management, in the installation of ‘anti-homeless spikes’ and designing of benches and public spaces that seek to prevent young people and those without homes from sleeping or congregating around certain areas of the city centre at night (Raymen, 2015: 502). Raymen’s account of urban city socialisation asserts that for criminological understanding to stratify how social spaces which accommodate criminal activity are cultivated, it is necessary to approach multifaceted nature of crime through analysis of ‘the underlying drives, subjectivists and motivations to commit crime.’ (Raymen, 2015: 498)

For the most part, the focus of public policy is on the pursuit of organised crime in the supply of recreational drugs, with particular media attention placed on the current campaign to target county lines drug rings. As a result, a moral panic surrounding drug trafficking and emerging online forms of drug accessibility in the UK (Taylor & Potter, 2013; Volteface, 2019) has emerged, which has provoked suppression of debate around the ‘normalisation’ (Aldridge et al., 1998) of certain substances - in particular, debate around the impact decriminalising cannabis consumption may have on organised criminal activity. This has led to an inconsistent policing approach throughout British cities, where individuals in one city may receive a mark on their criminal record for illicit consumption-based activity that is practically decriminalised in other cities. A pertinent example of this can be seen in Durham, where in 2015, following orders from the late Durham Police and Crime Commissioner, Ron Hogg, cannabis was effectively decriminalised, accompanied by an increase in public support of council funded consumption rooms for drug addicts. Hogg’s justification for this was modelled on the Scandinavian approach to drug addiction. Despite Durham Constabulary’s suggestion that this approach succeeded in reducing crimes associated with problematic drug use, Hogg’s reorganisation of force’s priorities was met with apprehension in the right-leaning press: “State-funded crack dens: Addicts could soon be injecting heroin at taxpayers’ expense in police-run city centre drug rooms” (Daily Mail, 2013).

This form of media sensationalism, pertaining to stories about illicit drug use has a history within the British press. The archetypal example of which can be explored in the reporting of Leah Betts’ death (1995), this event displayed the political capacity of print media to manufacture moral panics and influence political debate. Stanley Cohen (1972) explores this in the third edition of his seminal work ‘Folk Devils and Moral Panics: The Creation of the Mods and Rockers’ (2011), wherein Cohen details the media’s response to the death of Betts, who fell into a coma and died after consuming ecstasy in a London nightclub at the age of 18. Cohen suggests that beyond the obvious tragedy of the story, few reports acknowledged the evidence surrounding her condition. The inquest that followed her death concluded that her death had not in fact been caused by the consumption of ecstasy, but instead her excessive consumption of water, which when combined with MDMA’s potential to reduce the ability to urinate, resulted in Hyponatremia, and swelling of the brain. A clear victim of the government’s insufficient provision of drug education, Betts’ case preceded the Public Entertainments Licenses (Drug Misuse) Act 1997, which provided councils with the power to close down licenses venues if police believed illicit drugs were being consumed ‘at or near’ venues (Collin & Godfrey, 1998: 309).  Which displays the manner in which public opinion can be shaped and potentially manipulated by media actors, resulting in changes to public policy.

Section Three - Subcultural Movements and the Commodification of Club Culture

Folklore has it that the early proponents of the country’s acid-house rave scene were influenced by an ecstasy fuelled adventure in Ibiza, an island notorious for its commercialised EDM (Electronic Dance Music) scene, where they were able to witness the emerging electronic dance scene, and experience the excess of ‘empathogenic MDMA’ for the first time (Coomber et al., 2013; St John, 2009: 3). Their experience influenced a new wave of British ravers, and what followed was an explosion of subcultural phenomena under the umbrella of acid house. Unlicensed events in abandoned warehouses, factories and rural fields were organised weekly, with dancers fuelled mostly by amphetamines. The rural nature of the scene made it especially difficult to police, effectively enabling it to ‘blossom into a substantial movement’ within British youth culture (Coomber et al., 2013: 53).

The movement was shaped by the socialising effects of new recreational substances and a collective identity offset by the emergence of neoliberal politics and Thatcherism, and despite events operating with limited violence or extraordinary deviance, the amorphous nature of the scene and its embrace of drug consumption and supply resulted in government sanctions progressively dismantling the movement, and by the early 90s, ‘raves were beginning to be subsumed into mainstream culture’ (Coomber et al., 2013: 53), marking the transition to the commercialised club culture of contemporary Britain.

This transition was characterised by an increase in licensed venues marketing popular music-driven club experiences to the masses, and an inflow of private securitisation measures (Hadfield et al., 2015), with a small number of underground clubs gaining licenses in deindustrialised cities. One particularly draconian signifier of the transition came in the form of Criminal Justice and Public Order Act of 1994, which opposed the playing of music ‘containing a succession of repetitive beats’ (Colin & Godfrey, 1997: 222). Akin to the subsuming of punk into popular rock, acid-house raves were co-opted by commercial investment and interest (Collin & Godfrey, 1997; Hesmondhalg, 1998). This transition was welcomed by local governance and police forces, who, along with the public, were growing concerned about the involvement of organised criminal activity within and outside the scene’s subcultural hierarchy (Hesmondhalg, 1998; Thornton, 1998).

Section Four – Britain’s Culture of Consumption and Contemporary Frictions

In establishing the subcultural value of recreational substances, and their relationship with the contemporary club culture we see in urban British cities today, this paper looks to assess the way in which criminal activity, or morally deviant behaviour, i.e. drug consumption, operates within the moral continuum that Cohen delineates (Cohen, 1972; Thornton, 1995). This also portrays drug consumption for what it is, a constant in British life, a social issue that supersedes class structure, and one whose fatalities do not discriminate. For city planners and state actors, this type of consumption-driven leisure creates a plethora of issues that diverge from the securitisation issues of the urban shopping mall (Hayward, 2004).

Hayward and Kindynis’s (2013) construction of the ‘crime-consumerism nexus’ provides an ideal framework through which to approach contemporary examples of friction in the urban night-time economy. The new forms of ‘concomitant subjectivity based around desire, individualism, hedonism, and impulsivity’ that are cultivated by Britain’s culture of consumption present urgent public policy conflicts for state actors. These subjectivities, in their impulsive nature, are difficult to regulate, and logistically create an invisible enemy for city planners who wish to avoid the potential negative press of a club shutting down or a clubber dying as a result of drug use. An example of the way in which the night-time economy in a major British city outside of London and Manchester that facilitates the consumption and supply of recreational drugs is Newcastle upon Tyne. Newcastle’s subcultural attachment to licit substances, like alcohol and tobacco, and illicit substances, like cocaine and MDMA, have been documented by sociologist Anoop Nayak (2003), who explores the material negotiations of young men from the area in the face of changing local and global economic times (Nayak, 2003: 7). Nayak approaches the relationship between social groups, recreational substances, and neoliberal environments noting that ‘despite transformations, the participants observed exuded a self-righteous confidence in the face of the economic situation’ (Nayak, 2003: 21). This confidence in the face of bleak economic conditions, Nayak suggested, was due to immovable cultural values and traditions which the city’s working class male population maintained: ‘loyalty to the region through the support of NUFC, and the perseverance of working-class manliness exhibited through drinking, fighting, humour, and alleged sexual prowess’ (Nayak, 2003: 21). This ethnographic account of subcultural resistance to the commercialisation of the urban cityscape presents an interesting comparative opportunity, and a chance to approach the embedded nature of drug consumption and supply in Britain, and the private securitisation conflicts that have surfaced.

In August 2019, nine men were sentenced at Newcastle Crown Court for involvement in serious drugs offences. These men were staff of the city’s notorious ‘Diamond Strip’, working as management, PR, and door staff, and were accused of conspiring to supply cocaine and MDMA through their clubs. Operation Doncaster was launched to investigate increasing evidence of the link between drug use and violence in the city centre (Chronicle, 2018), and saw the clubs receive temporary suspensions over the Christmas period. However, the threats to these ‘high-end’ bars of the removal of their licenses came to nothing, despite clear evidence of the businesses’ staff peddling illicit drugs and taking advantage of their subcultural positions as those ‘in the know’, converting their subcultural capital into economic capital (Thornton, 1995).  

The accommodation of recreational drug use in the urban cityscape is amorphous: its presence as a policy approach is too hard to pin down. However, there is clear evidence that, within Britain, consumption of recreational drugs is welcome in certain social spaces. To conclude, the paper will look at the example of underground London club, Phonox, whose downstairs chill-out space with accessible water taps typifies the urban space adapted to the drug user. This, coupled with the club’s online guidelines for their events, which state: ‘Enjoy the party; please avoid using phones or cameras to take photos: our dance floor’s for dancing’ (Phonox, 2019), show a clear desire to facilitate the hedonistic club experience associated with British club culture. Such policy enabled individuals to enjoy their experience, sober or not, without fear of judgement or damage to their social world. This policy approach from the club fits succinctly into the blind-eye approach to club security, which we have previously discussed, prioritises the prevention of violent crime and supply of substances, over the individual consumption of recreational drugs, which contributes to the wider normalisation debate.

Conclusion

In conclusion, the complex interrelationship between crime, consumer culture, and the city, presents a unique challenge for contemporary criminologists. As this paper showed, through its focus on consumption-based leisure activities, and their subcultural relationship with the contemporary club scene, the role of state actors and political representatives in the accommodation of deviant behaviour is blurred, with the city offering a range of normalised consumption-based leisure opportunities, whilst simultaneously stigmatising others.

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i. undergrad diss

This article seeks to explore the wider narrative of normative drug use amongst young people, establishing the social, and socioeconomic, factors that influence the consumption of specific substances.

Exploring the full range of poly drug relationships prevalent amongst students is not within the scope of this article. However, through a particular qualitative focus on one substance, the dissociative psychedelic Ketamine, it will instead look to investigate normative attitudes towards: recreational drug use; individual and friend-group perceptions of use and supply of the drug; social, and socioeconomic motivations behind use; and experience of, or with, the drug or its implications for group sociality.

This is an attempt to challenge social models of peer networks that focus on the concept of peer pressure, a theoretical framework that overlooks how socialites of ‘safe’ or ‘acceptable’ use are produced among young people; oversimplifies the generational shift in the negotiations of morality for contemporary student drug and poly drug users; and contributes to the further marginalisation of certain student groups, and the neglect of pertinent public health issues around recreational drug use. 

quantitative aspect will be focused on:

how many students are engaging in drug or poly drug consumption? 

what are popular poly drug relationships? (incl. alcohol, tobacco) 

prevalence of ketamine comparatively to other normalised substances

prevalence of the use of online educational and informational resources 

prevalence/awareness of harm-reduction practices

In order to answer the question, relating to overarching policy angle of the research, how do we create an environment of effective prevention and harm-reduction strategies for young people?

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http://ecstasy.org/testing/pillstilJuly.html

why bother

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Club drugs: review of the ‘rave’ with a note of concern for the Indian scenario

Kaustav Chakraborty, Rajarshi Neogi, and Debasish Basu

Indian J Med Res. 2011 Jun; 133(6): 594–604.

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Agora is the UK’s open forum for foreign policy. It bridges the gap between people interested in and knowledgeable about foreign affairs and decision makers in foreign policy by providing a platform for blogs, briefings and policy papers. The think tank is also committed to growing its active community, with regular meet ups in London for writers and those interested in international affairs.

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How does critical sociological work on ‘race’ and class help us move beyond symbolic stories of Brexit?

In the build-up to the 2016 European Union (EU) Referendum, ‘analysts concluded that there was ‘little risk’ of an anti-establishment backlash for then Prime Minister, David Cameron’ (Goodwin et al., 2017) but the result that followed sent shockwaves across the global political landscape.

Numerous political framings emerged in the wake of the ‘Brexit’ vote, seeking to explain how the status quo had been rocked so royally; some blamed it on a loss of national sovereignty to the EU; others working class Britons voicing their discontent about years of austerity; and many focused on public anxieties over immigration. However, there was a common theme amongst these explanations, that was the symbolic body of ‘left behind’ Britons, often posited as being ‘white and working class’ (Bhambra, 2017: 217). Critical sociological work on ‘race’ and class provides us with the tools to approach these symbolistic arguments in a more nuanced manner, by genuinely engaging with the emerging culture divide in UK politics. Bhambra states that rationalising the Brexit vote in these symbolistic ways risks conflating ‘socio-economic position with racialised identities’ and therefore can diminish the value of identity politics in understanding the UK’s political shift. (Bhambra, 2017: 217)

The vote itself highlights clear, but intricate fractures in the UK’s population, only emphasised further by the 2019 General Election results. Dubbed the Brexit Election, this was an opportunity for voters to realign themselves with rising national populism in the country and regain autonomy by expressing their desire to ‘Get Brexit Done’. The climate of stagnation perpetuated by the right-wing press (Alleyne, 2017) played into the hands of the UK’s technocratic right, as they were able to portray the opposition as cosmopolitan blockage, which undoubtedly influenced the further disruption of the UK’s ‘long-term tribal allegiances’ (Goodwin, 2018).  Yet again the Labour Party finds itself in an existential crisis, after refusing to accept that it relied on a structurally unsound electoral foundation. However, Labour falling to its largest defeat in over 80 years does not come as a surprise to some, most notably, Adam Przeworski, in Capitalism and Social Democracy (1985). Przeworski predicted that social democracy’s electorate was going to gradually, over time, become increasingly incoherent and divided between ‘university educated, middle-class’ voters and the remaining ‘socially conservative, working class’ voters (Przeworski, 1985), and with two thirds of Labour held seats voting Leave in the 2016 EU Referendum, it is clear that this cultural divide Przeworski predicted is beginning to materialise in Socially Democratic parties, like Labour. However, this essay is focused on the fundamental components of the Brexit vote and how sociological analysis has helped to better understand them, so on the topic of the collapse of Labour’s ‘Red Wall’, we will move North to look at the misappropriation of Sunderland as a symbol of the vote to leave the EU (Jackson, 2016).

In the aftermath of Brexit, attempts to highlight areas that have experienced post-industrial decline, particularly northern constituencies like Sunderland, as the crux of the Brexit methodology, personally became part of the issue. Lumping Briton’s from de-industrialised towns and cities together, and anthropologising that their decision was simply one of uneducated bigotry missed the narrative that the Leave campaign developed, which was one of culturally conservative, traditional, national identity. In order to progress beyond the anecdotal condemnation of cities to bigot status, Jackson engaged with the work of sociologist Anoop Nayak. Nayak’s research offers case studies of three specific subcultural youth groups in the North East, whose identities (Real Geordies, Charver Kids and Wiggers) are divided and differentiated by their closeness to Localist, Survivalist and Globalist ideologies respectively (Nayak, 2003). This work sought to make the case that subcultural studies have clearly overemphasized ‘race’ when studying non-white Britons, citing that “an over-racialization of visible minorities results in a de-racialization of ethnic majorities” (Nayak, 2003: 139) which constrains one’s ability to approach the issue of rising romantic nationalism in the UK.

To further explore the idea of romantic nationalism, we will engage with elements of the Leave campaign that played on a certain colonial nostalgia and mobilised anti-immigrant sentiment. The work of Virdee and McGeever (2018) addresses this directly and postulates that the Brexit vote actually comprised of two inherently contradictory but inter-locking visions of Britishness, the first was a ‘deep nostalgia for empire’ (Virdee & McGeever, 2018: 1803), which engaged with the issue of colonial reflection and was activated through ‘long-standing racialized structures of feeling about immigration and national belonging’ (Virdee & McGeever, 2018: 1803). The second, was more insular and sceptical of globalised structures, ‘Powellite’ (Virdee & McGeever, 2018: 1804) in its narrative of retreat. Throughout the campaign, the Leave side, more nativist in its ethic (Alleyne, 2017), played on existing racialized feeling within the UK, stoking ‘anti-EU and moreover anti-immigrant sentiment’ (Goodwin et al., 2017) in its slogans, speeches and leaflets. This familiar theme was ever-present in the language of Nigel Farage, whose ‘right-wing claims about potential mass immigration played into both public fears and the idea that the ordinary man or woman in the street is being sold-out by out-of-touch elites.’ (Geddes, 2013: 247)

Alexandra Bulat’s (2017) discourse analysis of Leave campaign leaflets suggested that the rapidly emerging literature on Brexit ‘lacked a detailed analysis on the nature of immigration arguments’ (Bulat, 2017: 1). Stating that campaign leaflets successfully mobilised existing anti-immigrant sentiment through the formulation of the ‘desirable’ and ‘undesirable migrant’ (Bulat, 2017: 1). Furthermore, there was a marked lack of Remain arguments and leaflets that provided a platform for voice of EU migrants, in fact there were none. This suggested that they were ‘spoken for’ (Bulat, 2017: 4) and not only did this unfairly represent the UK’s migrant population (Bulat, 2017), but this enabled the Leave campaign to mobilise national protectionist sentiment completely unchallenged.

‘Europe’s neoliberal consensus has been drastically unsettled’ (Virdee & McGeever 2018), and the culture divide between traditional, socially conservative classes and socially liberal, cosmopolitan classes is only expanding. Therefore, with national populism on the rise, and the future of post-Brexit Britain proving to be uncertain, it is clear that sociological and cultural analysis hold enormous responsibility in helping us understand the changing political tide, ensuring that we move beyond symbolistic binaries of Brexit that only further strengthen the politics of division.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Alleyne, B. (2017) 'Not in the Family Portrait: BME Voters and Brexit.’ Bhambra, G. (2017) 'Brexit, Trump and Methodological Whiteness.' British Journal of Sociology. Bulat, A. (2017) 'The brightest and the best' London: LSE. Geddes, A. (2013)  ‘Britain and the European Union.’ Palgrave Macmillan. Goodwin, M. (2018) ‘National Populism: The Revolt Against Liberal Democracy.’ (2018) Goodwin, M. Clarke, M.D. & Whiteley, P. (2017) ‘Brexit: Why Britain Voted to Leave the European Union.’ Cambridge University Press. Jackson, E. (2016) 'On the Mis/uses of Sunderland as Brexit Symbol.’ Nayak, A. (2003) ‘Race, Place and Globalization: Youth Cultures in a Changing World.’ Przeworski, A. (1985) ‘Capitalism and Social Democracy.’ Virdee, S & McGeever, B. (2018) Racism, Crisis, Brexit, Ethnic and Racial Studies, 41:10, 1802-1819.

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Why is the private ownership of social media data a problem for civil society?

In the digital era, the services of private social media companies (YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, WhatsApp, Twitter) are entrenched in civil society and their influence on both the personal and political sphere continues to grow exponentially, presenting new generational challenges to our democratic processes and right to privacy. 

Social media, that is, the interactive forms of media that enable users to publish and interact with content online, rely heavily on the docility of their users to willingly hand over chunks of personal data in exchange for their services. This has ‘morphed the public into a database of users’ (Lovink, G. 2016: 21) and Big Data (BD), the extraction and analysis of large and complex data sets, ‘has become a key area for economic and political development’ (Langlois, G. 2014: 170) in recent years. BD companies are launching in all corners of the world with one common promise, to make complex sets of data manageable. Obviously, this is highly valuable as it enables businesses to analyse how their websites are being used and develop reports for potential funders or collaborators. However, such powerful tools of data analyses come with the caveat of placing ‘soft power’ (Nye, J. 1990) into the hands of unelected, privately owned companies. 

We have witnessed a huge shift in the social landscape over the past 30 years, with networked technologies completely restructuring our communicative framework, making social media the foremost tool of mobilisation (Lindgreen, S. 2017: 39). For the United Kingdom (UK), the scale of this communicative shift is best observed through the size of its digital population, with 44 million (ComScore, 2019) connected citizens there is no wonder why academics, such as Prof. Natalie Fenton (2015), Evgeny Morozov (2014) and Dr. Geertz Lovink (2011, 2016) write with a distinct urgency on the BD paradigm and the threats it poses to the ‘networked public’ (Ito, 2013). 

In her 2018 publication ‘Digital, Political, Radical’, Fenton reminds readers of the enormous challenges to progressive social change that this neoliberal age presents. Stating that ‘the increased power of corporations and transnational financial agencies over public priorities continues unabated despite the evident damage it has wrought’ (Fenton, 2015: 350). With neoliberal politics having this knack of invading spaces of public interest, the ‘networked public’ provides the perfect apparatus to manipulate popular opinion at scale (Wylie, 2019: 96). This, coupled with the BD boom, has seen the emergence of a new form of power, one where a private company can directly influence the flow of ideas and production of new forms of knowledge.

In theory, social media is not inherently dangerous to civil society, although there are pressing health issues of a psychosocial nature (Lovink, G. 2016: 8), the concept of interconnected online communities being able to connect and re-connect, and to create and share content is positive. The issue lies instead within the scale at which private social media companies are able to compile databases filled with personal information (posts, likes, even messages). When in the wrong hands, this information can be used to suppress political discourse and undermine democratic processes. Lovink argues that the BD paradigm has now ‘superseded the power structures of the 1960’s’ with its exponential growth leaving us at the mercy of ‘a coalition of innocent entrepreneurial IT monopolies and equally large security agencies where ignorant users are more than willing to comply.’ (Lovink, 2016: 166) There are calls to ‘democratise the tools used for data collection and analysis’ (Langlois, G. 2014: 172) as their influence in global elections grows hideously larger, but the future remains uncertain. 

A key example of the problematic nature of data harvesting can be explored through Facebook’s relationship with Cambridge Analytica (CA), an offshoot of Strategic Communication Laboratories (SCL) and former political consultancy firm set up in the wake of the 2014 United States (US) Presidential Election campaign. Former CA employee and whistleblower, Christopher Wylie, released ‘Mindf*ck: Inside Cambridge Analytica’s Plot to Break the World’ in 2019, where he describes the firm as ‘a company with large amounts of data that delivered targeted content and was capable of moving public opinion en masse’ (Wylie, 2019: 95), developed as a vessel of disruption that sought to challenge mainstream media. 

The firm utilised datasets obtained mainly through Facebook which, startlingly, Wylie describes as ‘easy to acquire’ (2019: 96). Which is especially topical as newly leaked emails between Facebook and CA depict a remarkably casual relationship, where data security seems to take a backseat. With the datasets they attained from Facebook, CA were able to develop political profiles for voters and target them with personalised political adverts. In the case of the 2016 US Election, states such as Ohio, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Michigan were specifically targeted and proven to be central to the election victory. Known as the “Rust Belt” states, because of the heavy deindustrialisation and economic decline they have experienced since the 1980s, they were systematically assaulted by CA’s ‘secretive psychometric approach’ (Wylie, 2019: 94), ensuring that the campaign promise of rising employment and reinvestment into industry was heard. 

In summary, this instance of CA and SCL manipulating public opinion with social media data is not one in isolation and according to their website they have ‘participated’ in over 25 international political and electoral campaigns since 1994 (SCL Group). Which underlines the fundamental problem that the BD paradigm poses to modern democracy. Although CA currently find themselves under investigation from both US and UK governments, which is a promising step, it is apparent that this new social landscape is barely compatible with our current systems. We are in dire need of privacy reform and communicative restructuring because ‘democracy deserves better’ (O’Neil, C. 2016: 218). 

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Comscore. ‘Client Insights – UK Digital Market Overview, Q3.’ (December 3, 2019)

Fenton, N. ‘Digital, Political, Radical.’ (2015: 350)

Ito, M. ‘Hanging Out, Messing Around and Geeking Out: Kids Living and Learning with New Media.’ (2013)

Langlois, G. ‘Meaning in the Age of Social Media.’ (2014: 170-172) Palgrave Macmillan.

Lindgreen, S. ‘Digital, Media & Society.’ (2017: 39) Sage Publications.

Lovink, G. ‘Social Media Abyss: Critical Internet Cultures’ (2016: 5-166)

Nye, J. ‘Bound to Lead: The Changing Nature of American Power.’ (1990)

O’Neil, C. ‘Weapons of Math Destruction: How Big Data Increases Inequality and Threatens Democracy.’ (2016: 218)

SCL Group. ‘SCL Group – Home.’ www.scl.cc 

Wylie, C. ‘Mindfuck: Inside Cambridge Analytica’s Plot to Break the World.’ (2019: 95-103)

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BAD NEWS FOR LABOUR: Where do we go from here?

Here it is, 2020, the year of Democratic Socialism for all: a revived NHS; buoyancy in the jobs market on the back of a Green Industrial Revolution; and my broadband connection is finally above 75mbps (thank you, Lord Sugar). 

Wait… Blyth Valley’s gone blue? 42 seats down? Well, this year’s already gone to the dogs. 

We’ve had time to reflect (grieve, even), and long may the lamentation continue, given a Conservative majority ensures Boris Johnson has the ‘transformative’ Brexit mandate he so desired. 

It was a campaign defined by media and marketing; the echolalia of a few empty phrases from the Prime Minister, focusing on ‘getting Brexit done’, avoiding ‘dither and delay’, and something about him knowing how to use an oven. Johnson’s puppet-master, Dominic Cummings, applied a near-identical plan of action for the General Election as he did the EU Referendum, following the tried and tested formula for marketing success. Per the buzzwords, Brexit is going to get done, but will their oven-ready plan be Tesco’s Finest or Sainsbury’s Basic?  

The time for slogans is over now and while Labour licks its wounds, the Government has just one year to complete a trade deal with the European Union. So, if you catch Johnson on his way out from Sunday Service, let him know that we, too, are praying for that logistical miracle. May the plastic sealing our ready-meal deal have more integrity than the wax of the candles we light. 

However, if Pinocchio and Geppetto manage to package their deal as remotely appealing, there is a real chance that Labour could be locked out of No.10 for another century. 

 Where did we go wrong? 

To the surprise of some, none of the reasons Labour failed include the British electorate being neo-fascist, uneducated scabs. Brexit; claims of racism; issues of leadership; and hostility towards the more conservative members of our party, peers, and nation as a whole, are mostly valid, but the failure of the leadership team to engage with these issues is illustrative of an inability to present a palatable narrative for the Labour Party’s largely popular policy stance. 

1. First and foremost, we must recognise the impact of media portrayal on Corbyn’s Labour Party. Persistent anti-Corbyn headlines were echoed in broadcast media, shared to digital platforms and then shared by word of mouth in mess rooms, over dinner tables and on factory floors across the country. It isn’t exactly surprising that such a concerted vilification campaign was deemed necessary for a radical, anti-establishment movement. At least not when 71% of the UK’s print media market is dominated by three companies. The Murdochs and Rothermeres of the world felt threatened by a movement they deemed incompatible with their worldview, and also their tax avoidance, as Labour had vowed to scrap their non-domicile status, which allows some UK residents to limit tax paid on earnings outside of the country.

Hence, Labour need to take advantage of their active membership and use this time to develop an active alternative communication infrastructure, because the mobilisation of a Commons Majority can only occur if their vision is not diluted with smears. Goldsmiths’ own, Prof. Natalie Fenton, engaged with this in her 2016 publication, ‘Digital, Political, Radical’, stating that we need to acknowledge that global media in its present form is incompatible with democracy. Fenton believes it necessary for the field of media and communications to mobilise in the face of an agenda content on indirectly subordinating us through their content.

2. On the topic of media and communications, it is also important to recognise that the Labour message did not connect as well as it needed to. However ideologically inspiring, the delivery has been poor in practice, and this goes beyond Corbyn and into his leadership office.

10.29 million heads for Labour in 2019, sees a 7.8% reduction in vote share from 2017, dropping from 40% to 32.2%. A drastic shake up but arguably proving that there is still appetite for a socially radical programme in Britain. The issue is instead with the Labour Leadership office of Seamus Milne, Karie Murphy, Len McCluskey and Andrew Murray who championed a campaign that seemingly took Labour Leave seats for granted and focused resources on rather unattainable Tory Leave seats. This stoked the flames of ideological infighting against Corbyn-sceptic MPs and turned what should’ve been a political open goal for the Labour Party in the form of a ‘Don’t Trust Boris’ campaign, into a cut and shut victory for the Tories. The chart below displays Labour’s 60 offensive targets, only one of which they managed to secure, Putney.

(image: Sunday Times, 2019)

As you can see, the offensive campaign fell flat on its arse and with two thirds of Labour held seats voting Leave in the 2016 EU Referendum, the defensive side of the campaign wasn’t too healthy either. One would argue that the stoic attempt at neutrality on the issue of the UK’s exit from the EU was the straw that broke the camel’s back. Dubbed the Brexit Election, there is no doubt that the Party’s ambiguous position on the constitutional crunch did them no favours. Neutrality was perceived as weakness by the many and was adopted as weapon of choice for the Conservative few. This method, which focused on healing national divisions on the issue, only polarised the electorate further. Uncertainty around the Party’s Brexit position caused Labour’s ‘Red Wall’ in the North of England, to collapse. With 1/5 of Labour Leave voters jumping ship to the Tories it was apparent this position was perceived as a non-position; it’s unfortunate that this just so happened to be the key political issue of the decade that they had managed to cock up. 

In the midst of Brexit we are operating in a climate of rising nationalist populism in the UK and our campaign was reluctant to engage with this; mass immigration was seemingly ignored; patriotism and cultural identity absent; and not one compelling illustration of the low-wage, technocratic economy that the Conservative government are constructing. With a nation-wide tour and massive crowds gathering to hear Jeremy speak, it was easy to think that we would build on 2017.  However, we now know that was not the case and have clear lessons to learn about how engaging with Labour heartlands will need to be more about listening and less about preaching to the choir. 

3. Finally, we mustn’t tiptoe around leadership, time and time again Labour volunteers on the doorstep were met with concerns about Jeremy Corbyn’s perceived incompetence (I was actually marched out of one flat block in Kensington). It’s frustrating, because although I joined the party in 2017 as a result of Jeremy and have the utmost respect for the seeds he sowed in dragging our country’s political conversation to the left, I, too, understand that in the current political climate many see Corbyn as a hark back to the 70’s, and thus render him as an unelectable candidate. 

‘One of the most consistent findings in social psychology is that people find ways to believe what they want to believe. The Conservative Party has always been able to appeal to large numbers of people on the basis of faux patriotism and conning voters into thinking it can deliver economic growth and prosperity.’ (James Melville, Byline Times, 2019)

The media vilification campaign against him forced Jeremy into regularly deflecting issues instead of utilising the pragmatic engagement we have come to expect from him. Making it easier than ever for the right-leaning press to portray the Leader of the Opposition as an unpatriotic shrugging school-boy; wounded by claims of anti-Semitism; and seemingly insufficiently briefed by his team.  

But don’t despair. We have much to learn from the Corbyn project, and plenty to take hope from too. This is merely a post-election reflection, fuelled by the malaise. I am holding out hope that maybe the Labour Leadership team planned this all along, an elaborate rouse to achieve Brexit, whilst their intricate and convincing socialist narrative for post-Brexit Britain is sat warming in the oven. Or maybe that’s just fantasy. However, I know one thing for sure, the past four years have ensured the socialist flame in the heart of the party has been reignited for good, so now Labour must focus on electoral success, which means backing the leader we believe can lead us to victory in the post-Brexit culture war.

Oh, and if you have any ideas about Labour’s post-Brexit rebuild campaign, I encourage you all to start trademarking slogans now, before Dominic Cummings gets there first. 

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Lewisham Irish Community Centre

Bringing the community together over breakfast

Lewisham Irish Community Centre is offering a wide range of nutritious breakfast meals, free of charge, every Wednesday morning from 9:30-11:00am in their communal hall on Davenport Road, Catford. Open to anyone, the community meal is an opportunity for locals to get together; spark conversations; enjoy a hot drink on an iced-over morning; and get in on the craic.

The centre also houses a free, three-course meal on Saturdays, provided by Rushey Green Time Bank and FoodCycle Lewisham, as well as the Lewisham Fridge, aimed at curbing food waste and alleviating the stress of food poverty.

Speaking sincerely about the centre, Manager Kathleen Sheridan, said ‘our hospitality doesn’t just end at the Irish community of South East London, it extends to all of Lewisham’s wonderfully diverse community and our borough’s surrounding neighbours.’ Their goal is to continue developing the local community hub and introduce people to the wide range of social opportunities and wellbeing services that they provide. The centre demonstrates their commitment to the community through three primary focuses: relieving poverty, relieving sickness and relieving distress. This weekly gathering represents a further push to bring local people together, and, already, they are welcoming new faces to the centre week-on-week, forging friendships within the community.

One new attendee, who had popped in to have a chat and meet some new people, took out his wallet after placing his order of scrambled eggs, toast and tea, and was taken aback when volunteers assured him his breakfast would be free of charge. He laughed, ‘I thought you guys were a cafe!’

Community action like this is essential in the face of the mass food poverty and chronic loneliness we see on the rise here. The need to engage the community and bring people together has never been so pressing, and the Irish Community Centre’s Free Breakfast scheme is a shining example of good practice in targeting hunger and ill-health simultaneously.

Local Labour Cllr, James Walsh has been volunteering at the community breakfast, and has spoken about the urgent need to recognise the issues we face in South-East London. Men, women and children are living hungry, without social interaction, and because of this, their faith in the community that surrounds them dies out. The work of committed volunteers, like those here in Catford, holds enormous social value.

Developing community spirit is no simple task, and can appear impossible in this age of digital media. Though still in its infancy, Lewisham Irish Community Centre’s Free Breakfast is proving that sometimes it just takes principled action and a few tea bags to encourage people to come together.

If you want to find out more about Lewisham Irish Community Centre or their Free Community Breakfast contact their Centre Manager, Kathleen Sheridan, via telephone on 020 8695 6264, or via email at [email protected]. For more information visit http://lewishamirish.org/.

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(Image: CAAT News, Issue 246, October-December 2017)

Abstract CEO of Shadow World Investigations, and author of ‘The Shadow World: Inside the Global Arms Trade’, Andrew Feinstein, hosts a screening of the book’s 2016 documentary adaptation, where he speaks frankly about his time in the African National Congress (ANC), as well as our current political reality, investigative journalism, and his thoughts on the upcoming general election.

Hosted by New Cross Learning community library, a regular haunt for young and old to entertain radical discussion, Andrew Feinstein displayed his comprehensive research on the global arms industry. The Metropolitan Police were parked up outside, almost as if they had been tipped off about the weight of what we were about to learn. Instead, they kindly provided ambient blue lighting to accompany the block lettering of “The Shadow World” projected on the wall. I found myself sat against a wall of children’s books, apt, as I was definitely the youngest person in the room.

Five minutes earlier I had been introduced to Andrew: he offered me a remarkably firm handshake, and when I informed him I had been following his work for a little while now, he was grateful. Up until this point my perception of him had been fed solely by my following him on Twitter, where he posts regularly. I felt somewhat informed of his involvement in left-leaning, Jewish political discourse. However, the evening offered a much more complete understanding of his investigative work, and the extent of his involvement in the South African parliament.

Serving as an ANC MP from 1994-2001, and dubbed ‘Mr Clean’ by South African media, Feinstein was held in high regard as a budding young politician in South Africa. Heading the public accounts watchdog, Scopa, he was responsible for addressing issues of inappropriate government expenditure, a role that often brought about scrapes with fellow parliamentarians.

Feinstein began the evening proper with an introductory anecdote, where he detailed his 2001 expulsion from the ANC, a tale that most definitely exceeds a simple ‘scrape’. The year was 1999 and Mandela’s successor, Thabo Mbeki, had just oversaw a £3.7 billion arms acquisition with the apple of the UK government’s eye, arms manufacturer British Aerospace Engineering (ironically abbreviated, BAE).

Side note: we do still deal with South Africa through BAE today, however discourse tends to focus on the dealings with Saudi Arabia, especially after these sales were judged unlawful by the Court of Appeal in June 2019. (Investors Chronicle)

Inevitably, Mbeki’s deal was subject to investigation from Scopa, where the deal’s necessity, in light of a worsening HIV crisis, was called into question. Feinstein asked: ‘What need did South Africa have for this colossal defensive upgrade?’ This was met with shaking heads from the audience. ‘No need at all.’ He responded.

I was surprised with the resistance that the inquiry was met with, but I don’t know why. It goes without saying that if someone was sniffing around my dodgy contracts and accounts post-arms deal, I’d be livid. Unsurprisingly, non-fictional warmongers bear similar resentment.

For suggesting the deal held a whiff of corruption about it, Minister in the Presidency, Essop Pahad summarily launched into a tirade:

‘Who the fuck do you think you are, questioning the integrity of the government, the ministers, and the president?’

I began to envision myself on the receiving end of a Category Five Tuckering from a government minister, perplexed at why I was being called into question for abiding by my job description. I snapped out of it when Feinstein reassured us that he handed in his resignation the day before he was due to be axed.

‘I simply couldn’t have lived with myself had I called an end to that investigation.’

This was the first example of Andrew being burnt by his desire to bring corruption into public knowledge and was far from the last. Since the release of his two books ‘After the Party’ (2004) and ‘The Shadow World: Inside the Global Arms Trade’, Feinstein told us a regular slew of writs and threats of legal action are laid at his feet over their content.

It could be argued that the lack thus far of any ascension to the courts should go some way to dispel suggestions that the work deals in conspiracy. Feinstein’s investigative research lends to a well-sourced documentary, where the unbelievable is made believable. His faith in the claims he makes is apparent and he narrates the documentary with a tone of certainty; providing a suitable lifeboat for the wave of anxiety these revelations arouse.

Through his thorough research, Feinstein looks to engage with the pervasion of neoliberalism in the late 20th and early 21st century. It presented the universality of arms profiteering and the development of a Culture of Perpetual War, with a cross-examination of the key global players, from Prince Bandar, through Dick Cheney and Tony Blair, to Margaret Thatcher. I distinctly remember how much I enjoyed Thatcher’s plummy voice fading in for the first time, a tingle sent down my spine -- don’t be alarmed, this isn’t some closeted awe for the metal woman, but instead a meridian response to the synchronised hiss of the row behind me.

Venturing deep into the archives, the collation of clips from speeches, state visits, select committees and even propagandist adverts from arms manufacturers painting a damning image of a political reality that left me questioning just how royally I had been hoodwinked. I felt I had been on a historical journey, witnessing the progression of an ideological stance that prioritises profits and is therefore content in supporting this problematic, but valuable, market with warmongering and bribery.

This came up in the Q&A that followed the screening, where one lady, feeling particularly hopeless with a need for closure, asked Andrew simply;

‘What can we do?’

His response was framed in relation to the upcoming general election, where he assured us that there is reason to be hopeful and that we have a clear choice on December 12th. This is between an Etonian would-be warmonger, already cosying up to the President of the United States, and Jeremy Corbyn: an uncompromising, active anti-war campaigner, who Feinstein described as ‘one of the most anti-racist politicians the UK has ever had’.

‘The Shadow World’ directs us to explore the Culture of Perpetual War that has dictated our generation’s geo-political landscape; the spirit of our times; but it will only continue to do so as long as we let it.

If you would like to read more about Andrew’s work, visit shadowworldinvestigations.org/ where, along with research partner Paul Holden, he looks ‘highlight the legal and political reforms that are needed to halt the corrosive impact of criminal and institutional corruption.’ (SWI, 2019)

Andrew will be hosting a screening of his documentary at SOAS, University of London on January 16th, but if you can’t make it you can watch the documentary on YouTube, here.

And if you would like to learn more about the arms trade and what you can do to join the resistance why not visit the Campaign Against Arms Trade at: www.caat.org.uk/about

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Stewart Lee - The Money Is Mine

In this 90-second clip from Stewart Lee's Comedy Vehicle (Season Three, Episode Three: "Satire"), Stewart explains conservative economic theory! You can purc...

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Shadow World (2016)

Going to watch the film ‘Shadow World’ this evening followed by an accompanying talk by author Andrew Feinstein on the UK’s arms trade and the corruption it wades in. Will be reporting on the event for [smiths] magazine over the next week. 

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The Curious Case of Mr Broccoli

Senior Political Editor, swobe, looks at the internal politics of Extinction Rebellion UK and whether their recent antics are at all damaging to the Green Industrial Revolution. 

With the Leader of the Opposition promising to grow more cabbages in order to fulfil his Green New Deal; Metropolitan Police Officers arresting a piece of Extinction-Rebellion-branded broccoli; and middle-aged men competing to see who can piss off the most Canning Town residents in one sitting, you would be right to think that London is burning. Metaphorically, that is, at least for now. 

Image of XR & Animal Rebellion’s Mr Broccoli AKA Roland Everson being arrested during Animal Rebellion’s non-violent protests. (Picture: Twitter @ Journotopia)

Global environmental movement Extinction Rebellion’s (XR) two-week shutdown of SW1, commencing October 7, was vehemently opposed by the Metropolitan Police. Roger Hallam (XR Co-Founder) found himself amongst the key rebels arrested during a police raid of XR’s Kennington bunker the weekend preceding the shutdown. To the Met’s dismay, this attempt to limit the shutdown’s reach was in vain, with disruption persisting [x] days later. Gail Bradbrook (XR Co-Founder) has gotten herself in on the arrest action too, having scaled the entrance of the Department for Transport’s offices on October 15. 

The key to XR’s approach is their uncompromising attitude towards non-violent protest. XR is a social movement not predicated on simply burning down the house: as such they have been extremely careful not to rise to the Met’s violent provocations. 

Speaking with Novara Media, one rebel suggested: “We have to double down our efforts on non-violence, as it could be so easy to tip into a slightly different energy and that is what they’re angling for.”

There is no doubt that there are politicians, companies and academics hoping that this is where the rebellion will meet its downfall. However, as yet, the movement has successfully navigated a bureaucratic obstacle course; rebels have persevered (relatively) unscathed in the face of a blanket ban on protests called by the Met, and their peaceful occupations continue to win out in the face of these attempts to quash social disorder. XR is dedicated to its action plan: occupy centres of power until action is implemented, and exclude the working class in the process. Wait, what?

XR’s commitment to transcending class (if we overlook the risible performance art, that is) came into question as a video emerged of two activists climbing atop a rush-hour train in Canning Town. They attempted to halt the capitalist system by playing an extended game of Subway Surfers while the train idled, and a mass of working people fretted over whether they’d be late for work, have their pay docked, and be able to afford meals for their kids that week. I’m sure we all agree that this is a massive farce, and so do XR, who have (thankfully) condemned the two men, who received a mostly-justified beating on the platform. This is one of the many lessons that the movement will undoubtedly have to learn from: absurdities like this one will isolate those XR should aim to empower, and even turn the converted away.

Dipping back into the performative element of XR, events took a bizarre turn when broccoli-identifying eco-activist Roland Everson’s arrest went viral, winning him infamy among the country’s gammon-faced right-wing press and guaranteeing a seat on Good Morning Britain (GMB) across from said gammon-faced right-wing press. It is believed that Everson is an important figure within XR. One can only assume his history of anti-establishment activism had been duly noted, not least after his naked protest in the Commons caused Ed Miliband’s eyebrows to lift a whole inch and a half.

Everson approached his GMB interview bluntly, taking the opportunity to reveal to Piers Morgan and Susanna Reid that he has always been a piece of broccoli, inspiring Morgan to reflect on his recent decision to come out as a “two-spirit neutrois, pan-gender penguin” during one of his many transphobic rants. Everson neglected to detail the depths of the ecological rebellion and foreshadow tales of woe from the ongoing Sixth Extinction, challenging expectations of his television appearance. Mr Broccoli successfully made a mockery of the mainstream media which so excitedly dubs him ‘absurd’ and runs exposees on how he - shock horror! - drives a van and on occasion has a long hot bath after a hard day dressed in a weighty broccoli costume. Classic Daily Mail. 

If the media and the Met’s combined effort towards a broccoli cull can teach us anything at all, it is that the government is taking XR seriously. Pre-emptive, forceful tactics of this nature are typically reserved for extreme cases: they border on an infringement of rights, making it apparent that XR are considered either a risk to public property, to the community, or to the powers that be. This begs the question, who are our police serving and protecting? 

You may have seen Boris Johnson’s pledge to a recruitment drive for the police force, providing a lovely bit of first-week publicity for the Etonian, as well as a political smokescreen for what can only be a genuine fear of civil unrest. Our current political climate has created a palpable sense of public frustration, and it is likely this pledge is in place to combat the predicted potential civil disobedience that the establishment see on the horizon. In the eyes of the economic and political elite,  2020 is set to be a year characterised by large-scale civil disobedience, and rightly so. As a student body we should take courage from the XR movement as we head into this formative year for the UK. Their methods, albeit problematic, are making quite a stir.

Speaking at Byline Festival in August 2019, Roger Hallam spoke powerfully about XR as a necessary, direct vessel of social action by which urgent social change would be achieved. Using Complexity Theory, Hallam described how “under consistent pressure from an outside force, a system will resist and hold together until suddenly it will crack and bifurcate.” Not only does this explanation clearly highlight XR’s overarching aim, it also offers a deeper meaning behind this ecological activism. This movement is not just responding to the degradation of our environment, like many others before it have. It is highlighting a fundamental breakdown in the social contract and trying to alert the UK, and beyond, to the fact that we have been hoodwinked by an agenda of neo-liberal politics.

With a general election looming in the UK, XR find themselves bearing additional weight: hopefully this will be sufficient to wean the UK’s political mouthpiece off of the sour teat that is Brexit. The Labour party have heeded the action of XR, and their manifesto looks to be centred around a Green New Deal, championing a Green Industrial Revolution, where our industry is taken to task and change is demanded, not dreamt about. However, it is still likely that Johnson will try to lead the Conservative election campaign with Brexit politics, a relative insignificance when compared to the permanent effects of the ecological disaster that XR prophesy.  

For all the criticisms you can level at XR, it is the actions by movements like this that are going to shape this new era of UK politics, so strap in, register to vote and do not, I repeat, DO NOT jump on top of a rush hour tube.