I guess this is how traditions are established: one is a one-off, two is a repeat, but more than three is a tradition. So, welcome to my fourth annual New Year post. I think it was at the start of 2008 that I first noted the financial turmoil, which makes it nice to see that as 2010 looms over us, the coming year might end in a rosier state than it starts. I thought it might be interesting to note down some economic and not-so-economic stats just now, and see how things stand the next time I sit down to write this post.

Still, there is more to hope for next year than simply the alleviation of economic problems. Something that marked 2009 with a great big grimy smudge was the success had by the far-right, especially the British National Party in the North West and Yorkshire, where the good Lancastrians and Yorkshire-folk are now represented in the European Parliament by fascist MEPs. The problem though, is not that people are thinking horrible things about anyone who is a little bit different, but that they have little alternative but to think that. I firmly hold the opinion that the vast majority of the BNP’s voters are not nasty people, but simply forgotten people. Every major political party has neglected these constituents, and every major political party has been on the back foot in the debates on the far-right’s core issues.

I’m not just talking about immigration and racism, the BNP, with its new, clean image (laugh if you want, but not everyone is a liberal lefty with a built-in disgust of the BNP), champions a distortion of traditional values and morals that are just similar enough in image, though little else, to the traditional values that used to form part of British society in the ‘50s. Guess where the political mainstream is (and I include the green movement in this)? Nowhere is the answer; Mr Cameron might make some inconsequential moves to offer financial incentives to getting married, and Mr Brown and Lord Mandelson might talk about Britishness in a few speeches, but the debate on values, morality, and the question of what it means to be from Britain has been firmly grasped by the likes of Mr Griffin.

Morality has, of course, traditionally been the realm of the Church. I think the best way to describe my attitude to religion would be “actively agnostic”: I don’t currently believe in any particular god or religious structure, and I don’t think it is really possible to prove the existence of God, or even of gods, but I would never say for definite that these things cannot exist; I might one day be struck with a spiritual revelation, leading to a belief of the religious kind, so it would be foolish to keep a closed mind. The advantage of this convenient fudge is that I can do stuff that atheist can’t do, while not feeling guilty for being half-hearted as an apathetic agnostic might: in short, I can go to the Watchnight Service at St Giles Kirk on Christmas Eve, and pay attention to the sermon, without a Dawkinsian complex of any kind. In this particular sermon, the Minister took the time to praise Atheists and decry agnosticism: to paraphrase him, atheists present worthy opponents in debate, whereas agnostics are responsible for the downfall of society. I’m sure he didn’t mean to present such a sharp message, but I think it goes back to what I wrote about the far-right’s grasp on debates. For a debate to be had properly, all sides must be confident enough to make pronouncements on all ideas. Bad ideas must be exposed for what they are, and good ideas must be brought forth on sturdy legs.

In the Green Party, and indeed, in all major political parties, we need to grasp the debate and say what we think about Britishness, morality, and all the other issues which are held so tightly in the fists of fascists. We need to truly talk with all of the electorate, and we need to realise that the way that we can prevail in our political ambitions is through honest and fair discourse, not through aggressive confrontation with English Defence League, or by sneeringly mocking the BNP.

For all the apparent futility in the campaign to push Rage Against The Machine’s Killing in the Name to the Christmas number one spot (sure, the profits from sales of the song went to the same musical multinational that McFabricated’s profits would have gone to, but did anyone notice that the Facebook group used to orchestrate it also managed to raise over £90,000 for Shelter?), it did raise my hopes for 2010, simply because it demonstrated a desire for a more honest and less fake way of doing things. If we can keep that spark of dissatisfaction with plastic society, then I’ll be a lot more confident that debate can be had, and perhaps even the statistics presented below might have nudged towards improvement in the next edition of this special post.

Here’s to 2010, an honest, argumentative, real, and better year!

Click here for an archive of past new year posts.

Ok, so imagine it’s economic “good times”, the credit flows freely, and people can basically afford lots of consumer goods to keep themselves happy. In that scenario people are fairly docile, and not too interested in protesting. Simply, enough people feel satisfied with the state of their lives. Obviously, there are the dedicated protesters, and the single issue campaigns still going, but widespread unrest doesn’t really happen.

Now lets look at where we are today: unofficial strikes in the energy industry across the UK, caused by fear of (or experience of) unemployment. Recent widespread strikes in France over the government’s handling of the economic turmoil, and anti-government protests throughout Russia – something which would have been unthinkable until very recently.

The British strikes are the ones which worry me the most just now. There is an alarming degree of what looks like xenophobia in a lot of the protests. I wouldn’t for one moment accuse all strikers of that, and there are certainly real concerns and issues to be tackled in employment here, but I just can’t help but feel this is partly a symptom of the shift towards the acceptability of the far-right in European politics again. The Netherlands have slowly been moving away from their renowned toleration and liberal attitude; Austria’s far-right is growing stronger; and domestically, the British National Party is collecting increasing numbers of local council seats.

Simultaneously, Russia seems to be having what might be a shift to the left. The protests there seem to be primarily led by the Communist party. I doubt that Putin or Medvedev will be pushed out of office by a little dissent, but the political colour of these demonstrations illustrates another facet of the problem in Europe: things are becoming more extreme. No-one really knows how long the recession will last, but I would venture a guess that if it goes on for long enough, the more extreme elements of the political spectrum (both ends of it) will gain a foothold. People seem more open to the soothing lies of the far-right, and the prospect of the alternative economy of the far-left, when their livelihoods are threatened in the way that they are now.

The problem for the “alternative centre” (that is, those towards the centre of politics, but not tied to the traditional centre parties), and for Greens in these times is to assert positive alternatives to the business as usual approach at the heart of the traditional centre, and get those sensible ideas heard over the emotional arguments shouted out by the extreme movements.

The Green New Deal is a great tool to use in achieving this, but we also need to properly address the issue of free movement of labour throughout the Union. Ordinary people aren’t EU policy experts, and if they see workers brought in en masse from abroad, when there is increasing domestic unemployment, then they will quite naturally be unhappy. I don’t yet know what the answer to this one is. My gut feeling (once described as being a “European nationalist” viewpoint) tells me that the free movement of labour must be preserved, but how can this be achieved without prolonging the unrest, or causing future strikes? Every government in the Union should be looking at this issue. It’s one which could easily harm the EU and Britain’s place in it.

WNYC’s ‘The Takeaway’ radio show used their Friday episode to ask listeners for alternative terms to “economic turmoil”. Well, I’m getting fed up of hearing “credit crunch” in almost every news broadcast. My choice up to now has been “financial turmoil”, but I particularly liked one callers suggestion of “huuuui!”, though it sounds better on the audio.

Anyone have any better suggestions?

When, on Tuesday, I wrote a twitter update saying: “I hope my bank can make it to the end of the week.“, I was joking! Well the Royal Bank of Scotland has made it to the end of the week, but only just. On Monday, the UK government is going to take a majority stake in it.

By the way, I think this is possibly the first post I have written on the financial turmoil (I can’t stand the term “credit crunch”). Don’t know how I managed to last this long.