A 'short, sharp, shock' about police brutality in the 1970s

Picture the scene: it’s election night in a police interview room in East London, and the Conservatives are about to sweep to power. The pregnant wife of a young black man, Leon Delroy, has been found dead in a pool of blood and Delroy is brought in as the chief suspect.

Sus was written by the acclaimed dramatist Barrie Keefe (best known for writing the film The Long Good Friday) and first staged just after Margaret Thatcher’s election victory in 1979. It ran at the Young Vic theatre in London, appropriately at a time when controversy over stop and search laws is still very much at the centre of public debate, and with some political parallels too.

The storyline revolves around the interrogation of Delroy under ‘sus’, an informal name for a stop and search law that permitted a police officer to act on suspicion alone. The law was eventually abolished in 1980, it being seen as a contributing factor to the Brixton riots that year.

The audience sits very much in the interrogation room, complete with the dull glare of strip lighting and the crucial dramatic device of a telephone, used to set the context of what is happening outside. The actors even smoke real cigarettes on stage, adding to the sense of suffocation for Delroy throughout his plight.

The two protagonists in this story, white police officers Karn and Wilby (who, as the Camden New Journal put it, “make Gene Hunt look like a character from Heartbeat”), portray the type of police officer we hope has long disappeared.

Sardonic, racist and odiously officious, the actors in this production deliver a performance in this play which, in the space of the play’s single act, turns darkly humourous, laddish banter to an increasingly cold, thuggish brutality.

Sus ran at the Young Vic from 8-26 June 2010, was also recently released as a film, also written by Barrie Keefe, starring Ralph Brown and Rafe Spall.

Election 2.0?

If it wasn’t quite the Sun ‘wot won it’, it certainly wasn’t Facebook or Twitter in 2010. The General Election proved that social media did some novel and exciting things to encourage young voters out of their perceived apathy, but put simply, there was no Obama-like mechanism to galvanise the part of the electorate with most recent gift of suffrage.

Whereas the 2008 US Presidential election relied on micro-donations through sites such as Twitter, the UK election showed that the mainstream media were still capable of pulling off more campaign coups than many observers might have predicted. As early as 26 April, the BBC’s Rory Cellan-Jones argued that “the bloggers hoped they would boss this campaign, breaking stories, setting the mood, and leaving the flat-footed old media types trailing in their wake…but the newspapers, and in particular the broadcasters have proved far more influential, with the TV debates dwarfing every other aspect of the campaign.”

In the run up to polling day, a convincing argument could have been made that social media would have an almost magnetic effect on the 18-24 age group. There were some political soap operas played out on Twitter, but nothing that turned changed the debate that the three main party leaders couldn’t manage by themselves. Stuart MacLennan found himself rapidly deposed as the Labour’s candidate in Moray after some not particularly probing digging into his Twitter history, but the moments of drama were undoubtedly the preserve of the big broadcasters.

In a more prominent way, the infamous vandalised Conservative billboards maybe signalled a more telling analysis of the way the internet influenced the election, or not. This episode of web anarchy, played out on Facebook, had such a humiliating impact on the Tories’ campaigning strategy that when faced with several hundred digitally manipulated spoofs they were forced to rethink their entire approach to posters - and soon got their own back with their unexpectedly positive approval of Labour’s depiction of David Cameron as 1980s misogynist cop Gene Hunt. It was party political poster wars which caught the popular imagination far more than any web based ‘get out and vote’ campaign - and a great many younger members of the electorate took part in the fun - but no-one yet knows whether these sideshows reflected a genuine interest in the campaign.

In an effort to prove its worth to the national debate, Facebook’s Democracy UK site appeared just weeks before polling day, a belated effort launched with the claim that “social networks will prove to be as central to political debate and the general election as the post, the phone and television have been in the past.” Although political parties have for several years had a presence on the site, amassed through online armies of ‘supporters’ groups, there was never a concerted effort by Facebook to engage its 23 million UK users in anything other than a running commentary on politics. On 10 March however, it linked up with the Electoral Commission to offer every single user the opportunity to download a personalised voter registration form, and has since attempted to track whether those who took part made the leap from clicking ‘I like this’ to marking a cross on a ballot paper.

There’s plenty of evidence to suggest that Twitter was the place to be during the TV debates, particularly for younger, educated and liberal minded voters - making real time observations on the leaders personalities, policy statements and tie choices. From the insightful and serious, to the sharp and witty, Tweeters upheld a very British tradition of holding their potential leaders to account with a dose of healthy satire.

The evidence infers that younger voters were more discerning in their information preferences though. In Ipswich, a marginal seat that swung from Labour to the Tories at the election, two sisters give their verdict on whether the online campaign affected their vote:

Sarah Clark, 23, said: “Initially, I wasn’t going to vote because I knew nothing about the candidates. But I did watch the summaries of the leaders’ debates each morning before I went to work”

Sarah plumped for the Conservatives in the end, and specifically mentioned the Sun’s ‘dumb guide to the election’ which was published during the campaign - with no access to social networking sites at work, traditional channels of media were her primary source of information.

”I’m on Facebook but I didn’t use it to help me decide my vote during the election” she added.

Online communication, and social media in particular, made more of a difference to Sarah’s 18 year old sister, Angie, a first time voter who says she watched one of the TV debates, but wasn’t sure that newspapers helped her make up her mind in choosing which party to vote for:

“I found there was more information on Facebook groups which I’m a member of, and I went on a lot of the party websites to help me make up my mind”.

Research published in the days immediately following the election appears to reflect the mix of information sources young people preferred. A YouGov survey undertaken between 12-14 May suggests that 36% of 18-24 year olds used Facebook as a source of information during the campaign, with 34% visiting a political party or candidate’s own website - suggesting that social media was a crucial signpost in directing younger users towards more traditional web content. Most significantly, 31% of younger voters said that online information influenced the way they voted ‘not very much’ and 16% chose not to consume election content online at all.

This research, and others surveys since, hints that social media just wasn’t the game changer that it was expected to be. Until we have been presented with the overwhelming evidence that social media paves a direct route to the polling station for the younger electorate, well-established traditional channels may still prove to be what counts during those crucial four weeks.

No surprises there, thankfully!

Well, thankfully I've come out for Labour yet again! Love this site:

Read between the lines - Tory education policy proposals

I've been at best ambivalent towards Labour's notion of academy schools over the past thirteen years. I never felt the need to join the ranks of old-school socialists who outrightly opposed these key tenets of Blair's education policies as, having long left the state education system, I neither experienced it first hand as a teacher or a pupil and was far more interested in higher education policy when these places were first set up. I also strongly felt that academies hadn't yet been fully proven. Only now will the first batch of pupils be starting to emerge from Labour's academy schools into universities and the world of work.

So I was particularly struck by the vagaries of Tory education policy today, the day the General Election was finally called. We were reminded during Cameron's somewhat over-confident speech this morning that the Conservatives would let people "with a passion for education" start a school.

Well, that's nice of them - they're clearly thinking of people like me. I'm absolutely passionate about education too, but I also firmly believe that education should be firmly in the hands of professionals, and not a mysterious, and as yet-unnamed collection of 'charities, parent and teacher groups,trusts, voluntary groups and co-operatives' which their draft education manifesto refers to. I also happen to be absolutely passionate about our railways, and I really do believe in their power to enable people to make sustainable transport choices, but at the same time I've never been a train driver, or worked for a railway company or ever had any academic qualification in transport operations. I think I'd probably be a bit of a liability left in charge of our railways.

So Dave, what makes those people who are passionate about education really good education providers - a really efficient yet untested way of providing public services? What tests will they be subject to? How do we even know that they will provide this service at better value than the state currently provides, in an arguably untested system of academies and specialist schools? It seems like change for change's sake, and an easy way of promoting new found Tory co-operative principles.

Dave is right - there's a big choice when it comes to the future of our public services, but even with the unknowns of Labour's academy experiment, I'm prepared to give New Labour the benefit of the doubt for trying out an idea that at least had the support of education professionals.

Ask The Chancellors - a personal view

If Channel 4's Ask the Chancellors debate tonight was the template for the long-awaited leaders' debates during the General Election campaign, then the real thing may be well worth watching. Maybe it was the focus on specific economic issues rather than general platitudes and populist issues which made it more interesting than the usual 'panel' style of debate, or the skillful chairing by Krishnan Guru-Murthy - I don't know - but it was a good bit of telly – an intelligent alternative to the the usual bloodbath you normally get on Question Time.

Even though I’m admittedly biased towards Labour, putting those prejudices aside for one moment I still thought Darling and Cable both came across exceptionally well – Darling very confident and with good arguments. Cable absolutely right on a lot of things and you could sense a genuine interest in the things he was saying from his views on public spending to bankers’ bonuses. Some people might write off the election campaign as a two-horse race but in a possible and likely hung parliament this guy has a higher chance of becoming Chancellor of the Exchequer than any Liberal/Liberal Democrat since the government of David Lloyd George.

George Osborne, on the other hand, just sounded like he’d been spending far too much time with Andy Coulson, the Tories’ director of communications. There was a time in British politics where you could get away with those sort of vacuous soundbites, but even if (as we are led to believe) Osborne is a very clever guy with a firm grasp of economics, he didn’t display these qualities this evening. I felt Darling and Cable had the right balance of sound figures, a record of making the right judgements and the right sort of political acumen in a studio environment. Osborne tells us it is essential to "learn the lessons" of the banking crisis and calls for stronger regulation, but to me this is a belated conversion. You might have expected that if he'd really believed in reform of the banking system, Osborne would have fought back when Darling pointed out the Tory position on the response to the crisis was completely at odds with 20 of the world's largest economies.

It'll be interesting to see how the Tory high command judge Osborne's performance tonight - if I were Dave I'd be deeply worried at this point. If anything, tonight's debate was a complete vindication of the 'do-nothing' response to the turbulent economic times of the last few years.

Voting with a conscience

I am voting Labour in the European parliamentary elections tomorrow, because I know that the party is standing some excellent candidates who will make great MEPs for London. And I am casting a Labour vote because it is a vote against the BNP and UKIP - which alone is reason enough to vote.

I'm voting Labour with some difficulty however. It's not because I don't agree with the values of the party - I've been a member for so long that cancelling my membership would be like divorcing a member of my family - but the party in government, in its present form has stopped inspiring me. I haven't done any campaigning for the party in months - but then again I haven't felt like defending the record of politicians in general - let alone Labour politicians.

Like the rest of the British public, I'm furious with MPs who have abused the expenses system. A lot of it isn't a massive surprise to me - I used to work in an MP's Parliamentary office and many people I know who work in politics would have been witness to some of these extravagant claims - Labour and Tory alike. But it's the arrogance and the inability to recognise where serious changes need to be made which really makes me angry.

At times like this, we need real leadership - and in this situation, our Prime Minister hasn't led, but followed, and cautiously suggested half-hearted attempts at reforming the expenses system. When our entire constitutional settlement is in question, Gordon Brown hasn't met the political challenges posed by other MPs and the public at large - at a time when we should be going back to the drawing board and sketching out ideas for real changes in the way we do politics. Much as though I admire his command of economic policy and leadership during a time of global recession, there is a distinct lack of communication over what's going on in the PM's head. Does he have any answers to the current crisis of democracy? Or is he happy to struggle on with a big question mark over how MPs should reconnect with their constituents who are spitting feathers over ludicrous and excessive claims? I don't know, and I'm not prepared to give him the benefit of the doubt.

The Guardian's editorial had it spot on today - and when the most credible Labour-supporting newspaper of the chattering classes starts to seriously question Gordon Brown's authority. Good luck to the rebels who are, as I speak, attempting to gather enough support to challenge the leadership. I hope we can have a General Election soon because if Labour is proud of its record (and I think it really should be) then it won't be frightened of a test at the polls.

I don't know whether the party can turn itself around in the next year, the next five years, or the next ten years in its quest to become credible with the electorate again. It will need someone articulate, open to new ideas, probably much younger, and less tainted by the battles of the past to succeed. But - and my boyfriend will probably disagree with me on this one - I do believe in voting according to the values you are brought up with and for me, that's about the belief in collective action and the idea that we can achieve more in unity than we achieve alone.

Vote Labour tomorrow if you genuinely believe that Britain should be represented by a broadly progressive force in Europe - but don't feel that by voting Labour tomorrow that you're voting for the current incumbent of No. 10 Downing Street.

Cycling for a good cause

The other day, I woke up feeling like I could take on anything and win. This doesn't happen very often, and certainly not at 7:15am in the morning. But, the day dawned bright and sunny, and I felt the overwhelming urge to take on a new challenge.

Over the course of one weekend in the summer I will be cycling from London to Paris, to raise money for the London Lesbian and Gay Switchboard, for which I volunteer. It will take several days, but it will be worth it. Andy and I have already planned a post-ride party in Paris - which will hopefully be warm, serene and relaxing after several days manic pedalling across the English and French countryside.

POTENTIAL STICKING POINTS:

1. I don't have a bike. I realise I must rectify this in order to complete the ride - and I need to start training soon. But I'm already planning trips into and across town, to Brighton, and the countryside.
2. I am tremendously unfit - so will probably have to take it more slowly at first. But part of the point of all this is to increase my general fitness levels. I've joined several gyms in the past - and get bored quickly - so hopefully this will be a form of fitness which I can really enjoy.

I will be setting up ways in which you can sponsor me soon. Watch this space!