Analysis of Mr Weatherley MP’s Anti-squatting Vendetta
The MP Mike Weatherley’s
attack on squatting represents a Conservative Party “prejudice and
persecution cycle”, intended to divide and rule for corporate and
elites’ gain.
Parliamentary records
show that Mr Weatherley has been supported by political donations from
property tycoons, investors and multi-millionaires. This was detailed in
research
released on Monday, which explains too the landlord lobbyists standing
shoulder to shoulder with Weatherley, and the property tycoons they
represent.
Mr Weatherley is driving the campaign to criminalise squatting – despite the data that shows there are 710,000 empty houses in England, which connects directly with rising homelessness statistics. Reported in the Guardian these show the “largest increase for some time”. Mr Weatherley’s motivation seems the massive financial donations he has received from property tycoons, despite the housing crisis they are largely responsible for causing.
More broadly, Mr Weatherley’s attacks on squatters represent a trend within the British government. They firstly focus unfair attention on one group. Following this, they create a myth and stir up social distain and hate. This enables them to then persecute the group, which distracts attention from their corporate sponsors’ malpractices – frequently enabling the corporations to increase their stranglehold on the rest of society. Below is a mini article, which shows how similar tactics are used to persecute disabled people – which have killed tens of thousands due to the new assessment regime. It also draws parallels with Canada’s Harper government’s new persecution of First Nation peoples.
After raising the funds and getting the donations from property tycoons, Mike Weatherley first targeted squatters. With sentiments like the ones wrote in a letter to the Guardian in 2009, “The unlawful occupiers will have been damaging your home, using your electricity, drinking your wine and sleeping in your beds.” Anecdotes from his supposed personal experience seem unfounded, possibly one-offs. From real experiences in activism in real squats, I have never heard of a squatter breaking into someone’s home – what Weatherley is describing sounds more like burglary than squatting. The letter quoted above was in reaction to 160 lawyers who suggested Weatherley’s plans were “legally inaccurate”.
Defending the criminalisation of commercially designated premises to Al Jazeera in November 2012, Mike Weatherley said, “It’s a good law, and those who says it’s not are just anarchists.” Whilst on the Real News to advocate for the property lobbyists he said, “What I don’t want to see is vulnerable people, and these are often very vulnerable people, drug addicts, and alcohol and so on.” He continued, “Now some squatters have got nothing to do with homeless they are basically anarchist they’re well educated and web savvy… These buildings aren’t being wasted, they belong to someone… Anything they say about making the premises better or improving it is false… I’ve seen open fires in these. I’ve seen some of these buildings destroyed, and there is a lot of drug taking associated with these.”
These accusations are based on his opinions, misrepresentations combined with falsehoods. The positive effect of squatting – leaving premises in better states than they find it – is clearly shown by the saved Friern Barnet Library and Grow Heathrow. The latter is reported in the Guardian, which also tells how the government has not done any research on this since 1986. The paper also infers that squatting mainly occurs in long term abandoned buildings.
The crux of the problem with Weatherley’s argument is its complete lack of any sense of reality. Instead he is basing his argument on judgements and a few stories, or more accurately he is being paid cash for opinions – which is even worse than cash for questions.
Within Weatherley’s own rationale, Conservative MP Louise Mensch, who admitted to taking Class A’s, could be put forward to suggest that the Parlimentary Conservative Party is a chemical party. Of course this is not the case – their drug of choice is far more dangerous: neoliberal dominance re-branded as austerity.
Although Mr Weatherley is leading the charge, his efforts enjoy support from the right wing press – not a coincidence that their owners also own a lot of properties. Take Jonathan Harmsworth, 4th Viscount Rothermere owner of the Daily Mail and General Trust. Beyond owning the Daily Mail and Mail Online with other papers that demonise squatters, the Viscount adds property tycoon alongside his media mogul status. He is apparently worth £ 760million on last year’s Sunday Times Rich list.
It would also be unlikely that a politician could do anything that would conflict with the interests of their core supporters. Unsurprisingly, the Conservative Party is not averse to looking after the interests of millionaire property tycoons. Their donations are a further incentive for the Party to work in their interest including keeping the hundreds of thousands of properties empty to raise prices. In 2011, the Telegraph calculated that total donations from property developers to the party amounted to £3.3 million since 2008.
Conservative governments, mainstream media and corporations in Britain and Canada follow similar patterns: resulting in persecution in their pursuit of profits.
The corporate media enables these governments to inflame prejudice, and then the authorities persecute this group to the advantage of big business. This tactic is applied in a multifaceted approach, relying on inflaming hatred to cause division amongst their targets: divide and rule through deflecting public anger away from the persecution and corporate malpractices.
In Britain, the new assessment criterion for disabled people killed over 10,600 people enforced by the corporation Atos, according to the Department of Work and Pensions in 2011. This is representative of separate attacks on groups and minorities that then suffer from cuts and privatisation. Overall, these allow corporations and the banking industry to gain in different ways; the false myths and prejudice mean less people distract consideration for why we need the cuts. For instance, due to corporate tax avoidance or the bankers’ bailout, which are also supported financially by the same cuts.
In Canada, the new legislation – Bill C45 has been described as the final stage of extermination of indigenous people. It dissolves ecological regulations, opening their lands to further tar sand exploitation and nuclear dumping. Phenomenally destructive and described in detail on a recent ONN article, including evidence of the vast extent of tar sands before Bill C45. Likewise, the “winners” of this are corporations, who will make massive financial profits from this destruction.
There are sharp parallels in how they do this – depicted on the picture above.
British Conservative Iain Duncan Smith is pivotal in focusing unfair criticism on disabled people and other groups. In spring 2012, he described how 500,000 people were claiming fraudulently, without evidence to support these figures. He was reported widely, including by the Telegraph. As part of other stories, creating “scrounger myths”, this case is linked directly to a rise in hate-crime against people with disabilities, which grew alongside the Atos involvement.
Similar quotes that engender hate or rage can be found against: immigrants, the poor, Palestinian people, soldiers fighting against European forces in Africa, students, public sector workers, the unemployed,… One further example, again from Iain Duncan Smith, claims benefits need controls as they often feed alcohol and drug problems – again these claims were unsubstantiated.
First nation prejudice is prevalent within Canadian society: reflected in the commonly used derogative terms such as aboriginal and Indians. Nevertheless, prior to Bill C45, there seems a concerted effort not only to inflame these racist myths, but also attack advocates who resist and fight racism.
An example of this surrounded opposition Democratic Party leader Don Davies. For photographing an anti-racism rally, Conservative Immigration Minister Jason Kenney, described him as a “cheerleader for anarchists and anti-capitalist mobs”: defending “violent foreign criminals, war criminals and bogus asylum claimants.” Just before the rushing through of Bill C45, the majority owned right wing media also published a survey suggesting the Government was giving too much money to first nation peoples. The survey however, asks leading questions to generate these answers as analysis from Environics explains.
This mini article originally published @ Steve Rushton’s writing and research page
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