 10 years ago today, on the 4th of August 2011, a 29-year-old man from Tottenham was shot dead by police. Mark Duggan, a father of five, had been under surveillance by Operation Trident, a sub-unit of the Met, tasked with investigating gun crime in the Black community. Police stated that Duggan was in possession of a handgun at the time he was shot. Two days later, on the 6th of August, Duggan's friends and family led a peaceful march to Tottenham police station. They demanded a meeting with a senior police officer to discuss the circumstances of Duggan's death. When none was forthcoming, the Tottenham riots began. These saw extensive clashes with the police, alongside arson and looting, and over the following three days they would spread to the rest of London and then to towns and cities across England, including Manchester, Liverpool, Nottingham and Birmingham. An overwhelming police presence would ultimately put an end to the unrest, but by that point 200 million pounds worth of damage had been caused, and five people had lost their lives. To discuss the England riots and their legacy, I'm joined by Adam Elliot Cooper. Adam is a research associate in sociology at Greenwich University and the author of Black Resistance to British Policing, Racism Resistance and Social Change. Thank you so much for joining us this evening, Adam. Thanks for having me, Markle. Could we start by, I mean obviously we're going to talk about the context of this and the legacy, but could we start by talking about the circumstances that sparked these riots, which was the death of Mark Duggan. At the time there was lots of contradictory information put out about that death. There was claims that there was a bullet lodged in a police walkie-talkie, which meant that he'd shot at them, then that was retracted. We have since had a public inquest into the death, it ruled it was a lawful killing. I'm sure that hasn't been accepted by everyone. What do we know now about that death, about that killing that we wouldn't have known at the time? So I guess there are probably three things here. The first, I think, is the prelude to the killing of Mark Duggan. Of course it comes one or two years after the student protests and the tuition fee hike and the cuts to the educational maintenance allowance, but of course it's also under the looming threat of austerity. But crucially as well, what we also saw in the three years leading up to the riots was a massive increase in section 60 stop and searches for an operation called Operation Blunt II, which saw a massive increase in section 60s across London. And so like the Suss Laws, which were the prelude to the riots of 1981, we saw a rehashing of those Suss Laws in the prelude to 2011. I mean the second thing that's of course really important is the other circumstances in which Mark Duggan was actually killed. As you mentioned, the police and the IPCC reported to the press that there was a shootout between Mark Duggan and the police. This later turned out to be false as a police officer had been accidentally shot by one of his fellow officers and the bullets found in his radio was of course therefore a police issue bullet. And what we also found out I guess in their aftermath was that the police were not really interested in speaking to the family or the community about the circumstances in which Mark Duggan was killed and of course far more intent on writing their press releases and their witness statements very often in the same rooms as each other. And then I guess what we then learned of course, which you also touched upon was this inquest into Mark Duggan's death, which wasn't able to ascertain despite all of the evidence how it is that this gun, the gun that was recovered from the scene could be Mark Duggan's since there is no way it could he could have been holding it when he was shot. He doesn't have any of his fingerprints on or DNA on and no one, nor the police nor the prosecution could explain how it is that it could have been found on the other side of a friend's 12 to 15 meters away from his dead body. And so not only are there problems that continue with policing and austerity that led up to this particular protest, there are also of course a litany of unanswered questions as to what the exact circumstances were of Mark Duggan's death and how it is the police can seriously consider their reaction to his killing to be something which is in any way respectable to his family or the wider community. I think you've summarized really well why people might not be happy with that result from that inquest. I want to move to a different element of this related to the criminal justice system, which is probably the most direct result of the riots, which was the pipeline it created from people who found themselves involved, finding themselves in prison. And I want to start by showing David Cameron speaking on the 9th of August in 2011 of course, and so this is three days or on day three of the riots. I am determined, the government is determined that justice will be done and these people will see the consequences of their actions. And I have this very clear message to those people who are responsible for this wrongdoing and criminality. You will feel the full force of the law and if you are old enough to commit these crimes, you are old enough to face the punishments. Now David Cameron obviously is not known for his honesty, but when he said people would be facing punishments, he was right. Over 3000 people were arrested in relation to the riots and over 2000 convicted of riot related crimes. What's probably most significant here is that when sentencing those arrested during the riots, Britain's courts were especially punitive. So according to the Ministry of Justice, this is the government themselves, the average custodial sentence for offences committed during the riots were double the length of sentences laid down for similar crimes in 2010. So people got extra long sentences because the crimes they had committed occurred during the riots. It was the opposite of saying, oh, let's give people allowances because they got caught up and it was no because you got caught up in this, we're going to punish you even more than we would have done otherwise. Adam, could I get you to talk a bit about the long term effects of it? I mean, we must have an idea now what it has meant that 2000 people were convicted of riot related offenses and lots of people went to jail. Presumably some people still are in prison. What kind of legacy has that left? So I'm sure most people watching this will be aware that entering prison has a huge effect on your life, whether it be through the kind of negative externalities of making it more difficult to find employment or housing or access further or higher education when you come out of prison. But also the way in which we saw the governments really being quite explicit about how they were going to be punishing people in addition to those custodial sentences. So proposals to have council housing taking away from families for whom people in those families have been convicted of riot related offenses. The wholesale regeneration of areas like Tottenham which saw the cleansing of working class communities from those council houses. We see huge knock-on effects, particularly for younger people who are incarcerated. So young people incarcerated in what are called youth detention centres or youth prisons have a two-thirds reoffending rate. So the vast majority of them coming back into contact with the criminal justice system very often the prison system. So there's a whole litany of knock-on effects for the people who are arrested in the disturbances of 2011. Many of whom this was the first time they'd been arrested and certainly the first time they had been charged with a serious offense. And so it was tunneling a huge number of people into an already bloated and expanding prison system in this country. And I mean we saw obviously there was famous situations of people going or getting custodial sentences for stealing a bottle of water and we also had those 24-hour courts functioning didn't we? Obviously Keir Starmer was in charge of the CPS at the time. I mean how are people looking back at those events now? You know within the legal community or within academia the idea that there was this move to have 24-hour courts because I said this is such an exceptional situation we need to take exceptional measures. So there have been I suppose any regret about the way that that was all carried out. So I think one of the things that's really crucial about the riots was that there were quite clear political interventions into our judicial system. We had people like David Cameron and others making quite clear statements and directives towards the court system which is really against the kind of political conventions that we have in this country where at least conventionally there should be some kind of separation between the judiciary and our politicians. But I think the other thing that we really saw coming out of those riots wasn't any kind of critical reflection upon policing and the effects that it has as we saw in 1981 for instance under the Thatcher government and the Scarman reports which reflected on police racism and other forms of inequality in relation to those riots. We instead saw the government's doubling down on its expansion on police and prison power. We saw the government doubling down on its commitment to austerity and all of the inequalities that it exacerbates. And I think people watching this familiar with the new policing crime and sentencing bill and as well as the whole wave of other forms of legislation that have been introduced over the course of the last decade will be unsurprised that this current government has probably become even more authoritarian and more punitive in its approach to law and order. When people talk about the political consequences of riots and especially in social science when you're trying to say what kind of policies do riots lead to? There's obviously one track which is sort of punitive responses which is mainly what we've been talking about so far. There is another idea which it can serve as a wake-up call to the political class and to the establishment and they realise if we don't want to see this kind of unrest again we're going to have to provide young people with opportunities, we're going to have to invest in these places, we're going to have to deal with racism or discrimination on the part of the police. Have you seen anything in that second category over the past 11 years or sorry 10 years? Certainly not. So in 2011 when those riots took place I was working at the time as a youth worker in Hackney and the youth projects that I was working for was actually established in the aftermath of the 1981 riots. It was a race equality educational youth project particularly targeting Black and Asian young people and it was one of the ways in which the government sought to ameliorate the issues which had led to those riots. Similar kinds of social investments have not emerged following 2011 and in fact as I mentioned we saw a continuation of austerity following those riots and a total dismissal from the government that it could be anything more than in their words sheer criminality and gangs and gang culture that could be held responsible for what we saw in those four days in August. I mean it's interesting to bring up that 1981 example because obviously you know the explanation for why there wasn't this compassionate response to say okay we need to provide more opportunities is because we had a very ideological Tory government. They also had a very ideological Tory government in the 1980s. So how would you explain that difference? Do you have a sort of a favoured explanation as to why these riots didn't lead to the same sort of inner city investments that those ones in the 1980s at times did? So the Thatcher government was quite explicit with what their approach was going to be. One of the first things they did was they went to the United States and said how have you dealt with urban rebellions? How have you dealt with black rebellions in the late 1960s early 1970s in the US and how have you tried to prevent them from happening? And the key thing that the United States said needed to happen was the creation of a black middle class. A creation of a black middle class could effectively be a buffer between the working class particularly black young people and the kinds of rebellions that could arise if they couldn't see or envisage any kind of social mobility or social progress. And that's exactly what the Thatcher government set out to do. Developing a black middle class that they could co-opt ideally into their own structures of power and therefore serves a buffer. And maybe we've seen some of the legacies of that in not only today's very ethnically diverse cabinet but also of course the commission for racial and ethnic disparity as well. And finally could we talk about what would change or what would be different if something like this did happen now? Because as you've said, I mean from your perspective I'm not in a position to disagree. You're saying most of those grievances that led to these riots they still exist and if anything they're worse. At the same time the political environment does seem quite different now. Obviously back in 2011 we didn't have the Black Lives Matter movement. The media at least and you know some politicians do seem more awake to the ideas of racial inequality and structural racism. For example these are all concepts which weren't mainstream back in 2011. Do you think that we would respond as a society differently to a similar uprising now as we did in 2011? I think that it's important for us to not necessarily always draw clear lines of distinction between so-called rioters and protesters. And I think what's taken place in the US over the last few years I think is a really good way of illustrating that. It's why you see rioting and protest as being a kind of continuum rather than two kind of separate and distinct events. And I think that if a similar spark arose today then I think we would perhaps have more of this kind of continuum. We'd see people taking to the streets in protest that we saw but potentially alongside the kind of civil unrest that we saw in 2011. And I think in 2011 we saw a great deal of civil unrest and only a relatively small amount of protest. And I think the protest and more organized and less spontaneous elements of those rebellions are likely to be more robust and more apparent if we saw something similar arising in 2021. Dahlia I want to bring you in at this point because I'm sure you're going to have a lot to say in terms of a retrospective on this a decade later. And I know this felt at the time I know like a really earth-shattering event and it does seem in a way that it seems surprising how little impact one can point to. What do you make of that Dahlia? Well I think first of all there is no Black Lives Matter movement in the UK without the legacy of organizing that happened in the wake of Mark Duggan's in the killing of Mark Duggan at every protest you know Mark Duggan's name is mentioned. This was a key flashpoint of political consciousness as Adam mentioned in a similar context with you know the student protest, student riots and you know Occupy movement and this kind of particularly around 2010 and 2011 global unrest essentially. So this was a key flashpoint but as well as that legacy of political consciousness raising that legacy of organizing the scars of Mark Duggan's killing and the scars of the fact that the cops who did it got away with it and you know the man who was a leader of public prosecutions is now the leader of the Labour Party that's really deep I think on our on our society and it's deep in multiple ways you know obviously the the use of British policing to harass and manage and discipline Black people both here and abroad has existed since colonialism as as Adam's book points out really really amazingly. But Mark Duggan's death and and and like I said the fact that the people who were responsible for it got away with it is in many ways part of that was was a key flashpoint in the legitimization of what is called intelligence led policing predictive policing algorithmic policing where policing doesn't operate on the basis of what's actually happened but rather on what is predicted to happen. So various proxies like like race like where you live how old you are your educational history are used to mark out people as you know likely to commit what is called gang violence and you know those those those people are then marked out for surveillance for monitoring for excessive policing and it's crucial to note that the actual design and the data that is used to inform those processes are not transparent so we don't know how they they work we don't know what factors into them we don't know what data sets are being used we don't know the process. So you know the whole thing is not available for public scrutiny and yet it's given this veneer of objectivity or neutrality because it's data driven because it's done algorithmically and we can see that manifesting in something like the gang's matrix database and you can imagine how that's going to end right you know when you have algorithmic production of identities being central to policing like you know that's going to be incredibly problematic and like most problematic systems it always starts with the most marginalized it always starts with people who can be brushed off as as disposable and the reason I connect this to Mark Duggan is not only because of the the use of intelligence that is you know concealed from public scrutiny as a motivation or as a justification for the killing but also because I think it really shows us you know the killing of Mark Duggan and the press response to it showed us about the work that a term like gang or gangster does you know despite the fact that we have as Adam pointed out ample evidence that Duggan represented no threat to the police that there were you know indeed holes in the police account of what happened which you know let's let's be frank that's not new or unprecedented when it comes to the metropolitan police you know despite this the scrutiny of those who are given extreme amounts of power i.e. you know able to walk with a gun and you know use that gun without with with a reasonable with who can and can reasonably expect to not have that scrutinized very much the fact that that scrutiny was absent from so much of our press in the days following and yet instead what we saw was oh you know it's possible that that Mark Duggan was in a gang or you know he had connections to a gang or you know things like these kind of weight descriptors and these euphemisms does that mean that his life even if that was true does that mean that his life is literally meaningless does it mean that he deserves to be shot dead in the street that he deserves to be shot dead in the street by the state and not be given the dignity of a proper decent inquiry like i think this this phenomenon of what we call gang violence you know it is the outcome as Adam mentioned it is the outcome of very deep social political and economic issues and instead of addressing those we are systemically ignoring those core issues and focusing instead on the idea that society just has these irrationally and irredeemably evil people in it who happen to be largely black men who deserve to be you know neglected and brutalized at will and i think once the state is successful in being able to strip some people's humanity away on the basis of a label like that that can be given we need to understand that those labels and that remit only gets bigger and bigger and bigger and that is why under the guise of tackling gang gang violence we have a situation where young people of color often men are being routinely subject to a range of humiliations and threats to their life and to their liberty from those who are stopped in search so frequently that they consider it to be part of their daily routine to those who are monitored and surveilled and flagged on databases that has impacts on their lives that they don't even know about to kids who are excluded from school to people who are imprisoned and in the case of Mark Duggan who are who are killed the fact that we allow the state to designate some people's lives and some people's deaths as part of the course it's a dangerous violation of rights it implicates us all and so we should all be putting up a fight against the mechanisms that enable that but unfortunately that fight is being left largely to those who have already either faced the consequences or already faced the burdens of that or you know the bereaved the bereaved families and friends and loved ones of those who have died as a result of that system so we need to do a lot better and you know I consider and Mark Duggan's the killing of Mark Duggan is a key flashpoint in the recent political history of this country both in terms of the political consciousness and the movement that it has legacy in but also in the nature of the state as it as it exists today. Adam before we let you go I'm not sure if there's you know anything you want to respond to there to what Dali has said but also if I could ask something that I've just been I suppose pondering and while you've been speaking is we've talked about how you know the legacy of these rights in terms of policy in terms of media discussions about these issues do you have any idea of how they are remembered by people who were participating I mean I know you've written a book on Black Resistance to British Police I'm wondering if you've sort of spoken to people who were involved and how they look back on what must have been you know I mean a performative moment I don't I don't even know really how to describe it I wonder if you could speak to that. Sure so I think lots of people and I think what was quite complicated but also important about the rights is that a lot of people participated in it for very very different reasons and therefore had very very different experiences some so for some people clearly it was an opportunity for direct confrontation with the police if you go to somewhere like look at somewhere like Nottingham over six police stations were attacked in one night in Nottingham including with petrol bombs and it was clear that the young people involved in that confrontation had long and serious grievances with the police that they wanted to have out during those nights of rioting. In other contexts of course we see higher value goods being appropriated and for lots of people in the I guess the shadow of the 2007-08 2008 crisis it was an opportunity for that kind of material gain that we often see during the riots but I think for a lot of people it really speaks to a kind of moment of release and of rebellion and a lot of people particularly who are interviewed in the immediate aftermath talks about revenge as being one of the a really powerful impetus for them being involved in that unrest and to speak personally for a little bit for me it was really a moment in which I saw the mask slip from the idea that Britain is a country that polices buy concepts the massive escalation in stops in searches of arrests in raids on people's homes in people being invited to come to the station for a friendly chat and then saying something which incriminates them and that leading to an arrest the amount of cases of police brutality that we had to deal with the amount of cases of overt racism in which young people were being called the n-word as they were brutalized by the police in the aftermath on the unrest was really for me it was it should be intellectually unsurprising but it could never not be shocking but the one thing I really wanted to respond to in relation to what Dali was saying though was about the press and the other and the policing of gangs in relation to the 2011 riots because the police released a number of press statements in the weeks and months after the riots which describes Mark Duggan as one of the 48 most dangerous gangsters in Europe despite the despite the fact that his criminal record I think only had two things on possession of a small amount of cannabis and handling stolen goods hardly the CV of a top European international gangster but I think what was also really crucial is that this narrative played a really powerful role in shaping public opinion during the inquiry into Mark Duggan's death you saw in the same week as the inquiry opened the London Evening Standard starting a campaign called Gangs of London where they went into the dark heart of London's inner cities but we also of course as Dali mentioned saw the expansion of things like the gang's database where the police where Amnesty International has written reports which have identified how the police call up people who have been put call up the FE colleges or the housing associations of people who have been put onto the gang's database further preventing them from accessing the kind of housing or education necessary to live lives which make them less likely to come into contact with the criminal justice system and this is this expansion of policing into other areas of social public and civic life which I think also tells us about how much policing has expanded in the 10 years since the riots of 2000 then Adam Elliot Cooper thank you so much for speaking to us this evening we really do appreciate it insightful as ever thank you we are going to go straight on to our next story after the withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan the Afghan government is struggling to fight off an onslaught from the Taliban even before the US withdrawal the Taliban who governed the country from the late 1990s until 2001 already controlled much of Afghanistan's countryside they are now making a bid for its cities for an idea of the state of play in the country we can look at a map provided by the BBC Afghan service you can see on this image that around a third of the country is highlighted in red that's representing Taliban control one third of the country is highlighted in blue representing government control and a third is yellow showing areas which are currently contested what's crucial to note this doesn't mean that essentially it's it's all completely even in terms of who has control because the government control the places which are densely populated they control the cities that's what the Taliban are now trying to change they're currently mounting offences in Herat Lashkar Ghar and Kandahar these are big cities Kandahar and Herat Arafgan second and third largest cities respectively yet throughout the nation's cities despite this threat defiance against the Taliban is on display in this clip you can hear residents of Herat chant God is great in support of the security forces and against the Taliban you'll then see a statement from Afghan president Ashraf Ghani to find out more about the current state of play in Afghanistan earlier today I spoke to Ali M Latifi a journalist based in Kabul I began by asking Ali how close the Taliban are to gaining control of cities such as Herat Lashkar Ghar and Kandahar in all three cities what they've been able to do is to take the surrounding districts so that the cities feel much more constricted and they feel as if they are literally surrounded or under siege but what's been difficult is actually entering the city staying in the city and being able to keep the city you know in in Herat a week ago they were within 10 kilometers of the city they were able to reach you know the area around the airport but they weren't able to maintain a presence within the city they had made inroads they had gotten into parts of it but they weren't able to come to the center and officially take control so that is their aim right now and if you look at it you know Herat Kandahar Lashkar Ghar these are three of the biggest cities in the country they're very important in terms of their geography in terms of their economic impact in terms of their cultural and historical value so they're really trying to make a statement with these cities but so far they haven't been able to actually breach and get into the city centers themselves which is to them it's the ultimate prize at this point. What is it that's been stopping them obviously the big fear was that as soon as the US took troops out then it would be you know free for all for the Taliban to take over parts of the country that they see as valuable to themselves why have they been able to be held back up to this point you say that they still haven't managed to get any of these cities or hold them why is that? They're obviously facing a resistance from the security forces but we also have much more of these public uprising forces which is essentially just volunteers from the areas who either had guns at home or who were given guns by the Ministry of Defense or by other officials and MPs and things like that and told to go out and defend their city and their area and what they've done for instance in Herat is they've set up checkpoints in the districts near the city and the areas you know that are much much more closer to the city to try and hold them back. Now the issue is that when they try and attack these cities the security forces the uprising forces they can mobilize you know towards for instance in Herat right all of the uprising forces went directly towards the airport they helped the security forces the government ended up sending more military and special forces and commandos and things like that and they did the same in Khandar and Lashkar Gaw but that's not necessarily sustainable how long can you do that but it's also difficult for the Taliban because as I said these are major major cities right they're they're home to millions of people and they're also big cities so for them on both sides it's a matter of forces you know it's a matter of how many forces can you dedicate to how many places at the same time and I think this is sort of what's keeping it from getting to the point where the Taliban can fully take over a city because you know the government knows to concentrate its efforts sometimes a little late but they they know how to do that and then they send in reinforcements and they send in the uprising forces and at the same time the Taliban is trying to attack you know two other major cities at the same time and then there has been air support also which is the DLUS air support and Afghan air support which has also helped so right now they're both testing each other's limits you know how many places at once can both try and maintain that's really been the difficulty for both sides that's why you see these districts and villages and things like that trading hands all the time between the government and the Taliban the afghan government is often dismissed as as corrupt or or ineffective but it seems that at this moment in time people are really rallying behind it we've seen people chanting aloo akbar as a sort of anti-taliban chant and a pro-government forces chant are you surprised by the rallying around the the afghan government that's being seen now I think you will we have to remember about these uprisings and about these demonstrations is that they're not necessarily supporting the government especially not the current iteration of the government they're supporting first of all their anti-taliban their anti this war and this violence and also they're supporting the security forces they're supporting the uprising forces and they're really it's it's a message of anti-talibanism and if they are supporting the republic it's more the idea of the republic of having you know some kind of a democratic system with some kind of place for freedom of speech and some level of elections and things like that but it's really it's not necessarily supporting the government in the sense that it's the president or the vice president or the the head of the national reconciliation or anything like that it's more the idea of it's kind of like remember after the attempted coup in Turkey where millions of people turned up to support the state right they they didn't necessarily support Erdogan or the acape but they just didn't want a military dictatorship and in Afghanistan it's sort of the same they don't want the Taliban and and they they want some kind of a republic more than anything does the Taliban have any support and I mean if it does from what parts of society does does that come I mean in these big cities is it almost universal that people don't want the Taliban to come and take control or their their large parts of or a significant minority who do no the Taliban definitely has support you know but unfortunately for them what what they're doing is they're they're losing that support day by day in terms of the actions that they've taken if you if you hear the reports that came out of Kandah when they were trying to make headway into the province you know there were reports of people being rounded up of people being killed of them going to door to door we couldn't necessarily verify all of these but we had spoken to individuals who had said for instance you know that that a member of their family was in the police and they were given assurances that as long as he came forward and and basically reported himself to the Taliban leadership nothing would happen to him he came back he did that within four days he went missing we had other families tell us that in a residential area only maybe about 20 kilometers from the city in Kandah they saw Taliban fighters lying laying out IEDs and and materials for IEDs or they saw that their family members were shot at for essentially just crossing the street there have been video of them abusing people of killing a famous comedian things like that that's really working against them more more than anything and you know obviously every every group enjoys some level of support but unfortunately for instance the bombing last night you know it happened last night around 8 p.m. and it was an hour before as you said earlier everyone was already you know in the media they were saying everybody go out at 9 p.m. and chant alohu akbar and support of your nation support of your security forces and so it was seen as a way to shut people up you know and it ended up backfiring because in Kabul in Jalalabad and in Khorst and Konad in Bamiyan people came out and in Kabul they stayed out until 11 30 midnight even though you could still hear fire gunfire you could still hear explosions you could still see smoke people still went out and did all of this so unfortunately their actions aren't helping them in terms of their support and finally what would you like to see from the international community at this point I should put that in square in scare quotes really as far as I understand it the Americans are providing some air cover for the Afghan forces does that seem like the right balance to you the international community for one needs to really look back on this war and figure out how it went so wrong what they did wrong what their role is because the fact that they have to evacuate um linguists and translators the fact that they're saying they want to give visas to women and human rights workers and and and journalists and things like that that really should should make people question what did their 20 years here accomplish you know the fact that the Taliban were still able to target the acting minister of defense in the middle of the night or in the evening in in Kabul um in the middle of the city you know that should really raise questions and I think also they have to think about it's very clear now that Afghanistan's neighbors Iran Pakistan they both you know have supported the Taliban in the past they seem to continue to be supporting them and you know the question is how is how are these countries you know 40 countries NATO the EU the US the UN they were all here which one of them is going to step forward to really put pressure on these countries and say you know if you're killing our soldiers and as well as you're killing the Afghan people if they don't care about the Afghan people their own soldiers are being killed so I think you know the international community really has to question what it did here and what it's going to do to try and resolve the situation going forward that was Ali and Latifi speaking to me from Kabul before we go on to our next story I want to say a big thank you which is because as you'll know if you're regular viewers we've had a recent fundraising campaign we're trying to raise our monthly subs by eight grand so that we continue to expand as an organization so we can put ourselves on a sustainable footing and we have reached our target so we are incredibly grateful for all of you who helped us in this campaign and all of you who are who are regular donors whenever you started donating to us we really do appreciate it this organization this show is only possible because of your kind support next story the European Union is introducing a new registration system for travelers to the block the European travel information and authorization system or ETIAS will require incoming travelers to answer security questions and provide personal data passengers names will be cross-checked against police databases and the results sent by email ETIAS authorization will cost seven euros which will be a one-off fee and will be valid for three years and for multiple entries for anyone who's recently traveled to the US it's basically the same as their ESTA system it doesn't strike me as a huge deal the fact that Brexiteers will have to pay seven euros to go abroad has got some of them really riled up that anger was evident in this debate between Owen Jones and Carol Malone on the Jeremy Bynes show look we've got Brexite Brexite's now permanent we're going to be having Brexite now probably forever we've left the European Union I think almost all of us have agreed that's got to be respected that's going to be that's going to happen but I think people have got to stop pretending it's a cost-free exercise where all the things people who wanted to leave happen and there are no costs so all the reasons say Carol voted for Brexite and there are lots of legitimate reasons why people did vote to leave the EU I'm not a big fan of the EU I voted for a remain on balance but this is what people said would happen we're not a member of the European Union anymore why do they need to do it now when they didn't do it before yes I know we were part of it I know we were part of it because we were a member of the European Union yes but why is it necessary to impose a six-pound charger this is you know Owen and you're being very you're being very calm about leaving you thought it was one of the most hideous things on the planet no I didn't no I didn't that's not true I even debated supporting leaving the EU actually this is spite and divisiveness on the part of the EU I mean yeah and it's a very odd move considering that they're they're quite a lot of the countries within the EU are very dependent on UK traffic for holiday they're very they're very dependent on tourism hang on this is part of something called the ETF scheme which applies to all non-EU countries so it's it's everyone who's not in the EU so now the question is is it right Owen when Tory MP Peter Bone says this is anti-Britishness in the wake of Brexit no look freedom of movement has ended one of the main reasons people voted to leave the European Union was to end freedom of movement freedom of movement is now ending and the quid pro quo of that is we're not members of the European Union and we are now subject to visa charges if you're not members if it's the same with other countries there's several other countries on the planet where in order to enter you have to pay a visa charge if we were still members of the European Union there would be freedom of movement and we wouldn't be subject to this quite a big story this carol isn't it because it's going to increase cost for people going on you know relatively cheap sunny holidays I think but I think it also reaffirms a lot of people's minds that they were quite right to though to leave this this controlling organisation I thought that was actually a very good bit of television my favourite line there darlia was I said why are they doing it now when they didn't do it before you know this must be incredibly spiteful I mean it's exactly the same why aren't we paying the European Union millions of pounds a week when we did it before it's because we left the European Union why why can't people from Romania and Poland come and work here without a visa like they could before it's because we left the European Union it's so bizarre isn't it I mean it's like fully absurd right and I think that you know I'm sure many hard line remainers are going to be looking at this as kind of a moment of shard and Freud but obviously it's it's sad and it's also not the headline story of what happens when you put restrictions on freedom of movement that is you know the casualties of that are much more serious than like a seven euro charge on something but it's you know it's just it's sad to watch I think I also think and not to get too kind of like I don't know academic about it but I think the the reason we find it so amusing is because what's happening here is that is that the extent to which freedom of movement has always been seen as a racialised right right is is coming through but it's coming through through an unlikely vessel and that unlikely vessel is Carol Malone who comes from a political tradition where you know the nation state or like a collection of nation states and you know the right of nation states to sometimes violently assert its borders is not only an unquestionable right but it's a right that supersedes all other rights you know nothing is nothing is is is more important in the face of it and you know we're told that's common sense it's you know the natural order of things and yet the idea that it would be imposed upon British people and specifically white British people like her is you know now is being seen as a it has her clutching her pearls and you know the idea that what was once the inalienable right of a nation state to control its borders or whatever is now you know it's shocking it's unfair it's driven by by vengeance it's driven by emotion and irrationality and hatred and it's a thing that you know it's the pathology of a controlling institution which I found hilarious because I'm like that's the nation state no you know like the gag is that you know all borders are kind of driven by emotion and you know a desire to control and it seems obvious to point out but it's because like whiteness and specifically white Britishness has always been defined in part by its mobility and the fact that it has mobility in comparison to others and it's defined by its ability to move freely and in and around and through any space that it desires and not only move through it but transform that space according to its desires you know that that's kind of what colonialism is so what's being exposed in this video is that you know what we were told was unavoidable and natural and common sense only has those properties when it's being used to sort of protect and preserve existing power but it also is just funny to watch Karen Malone sort of lose her shit on on air especially when it's over something that you know she couple of years ago was fighting vociferously for. What I like about clips like this is you know we were never big Romaniacs and one of the weakest arguments of of the Romaniacs was sort of to take something that is actually quite insignificant on the grand scheme of things and make it seem like it would be the absolute end of the world if this were to stop being the case of roaming charges or something like that we can't possibly leave the European Union because it will cost you more in roaming charges we'll have to pay some money when we download a meme in Italy I don't know I don't know how these things work and the argument to that from you know the Brexiteers was reasonably you know we think sovereignty is more important than this maybe secretly they were thinking we think you know reducing immigration is more important than this but the idea that there are more important things in roaming charges is a fine political argument. What's happened now is we've gone full circle where it's the Brexiteers who are saying that these really minor small benefits of being in the EU like you don't have to pay seven euros to go on holiday that these are now like the end of the world so like I can't believe we're possibly having to pay seven euros you don't have to do it once every three years by the way to to go to France or Portugal they now think that's a huge political issue when the whole point of the referendum campaign is them saying well these things don't actually really matter it doesn't matter about roaming fees it doesn't matter if you're going to have to queue slightly longer at the airport and and not have the you know checkpoint free travel because what really matters is sovereignty and democracy now we've got sovereignty and democracy well you know I'm not necessarily buying into the argument that we have more sovereignty and democracy now we probably have a little bit more now we've got that they're like oh actually these minor inconveniences they really matter and they matter so much I'm going to go on TV to rant about it in front of the nation completely ridiculous any final brief thoughts on this one Dalia before we go on to our final story yeah I think that's such a good point because it's also I mean I think that that if I was Carol Malone and I was trying to kind of cover my back and trying to seem like you know I'm consistent and I'm knowledgeable and I'm reasonable which I'm not sure if that is what Carol Malone tries to do every time she goes on TV but I would be like okay I'm going to take this story I'm going to say you know if this is what liberty costs then seven euros I'm happy to pay it every three years but it's the entitlement and the kind of the the racialized entitlement it's too strong and it's too much the core of her politics that she just can't help herself even though it would be far more politically astute to kind of flip this on its head I totally agree with that and I do you know I think that is partly where there's an expectation that you can go anywhere and that border control shouldn't apply to you I don't think that's that's a reach to say that's what's going on there let's go on to our final story I think we can get an image up for this before I start speaking a fit and healthy 42 year old man has died of COVID after refusing to be vaccinated John Ayers was a father of one from Southport Merseyside who worked in construction Ayers enjoyed weightlifting and mountain climbing in fact he had been climbing in the Welsh mountains just four weeks before his death Ayers passing leaves behind his mother and twin sister who have been warning others not to think that they are invulnerable to the virus since Ayers death his sister has tweeted the only pre-existing health condition he had was the belief in his own immortality he thought if he contracted COVID-19 he would be okay he thought he would have a mild illness he didn't want to put a vaccine in his body she also said that before he was ventilated he told his consultant that he wished he had been vaccinated that he wished he had listened his death is a tragedy it shouldn't have happened he leaves a mum a dad and sister and a 19 year old daughter she goes on to say my two children have lost their fun uncle the uncle who would always play with them the uncle that dressed up as father Christmas on Christmas day my mum has lost her baby boy my niece her much loved and needed dad now occasionally you see sort of stories like this shared on on twitter as a sort of ha ha which is obviously you know an horrible reaction to anyone's passing and we're not intending to do that but i think the reason why people do raise cases such as this and clearly why his family are happy to to raise cases such as this is to encourage other people to get vaccinated thankfully in in britain we you know vaccine skepticism is is is a real minority sport not not many people are skeptical of the vaccines we've got almost 90 of people who have their first dose but clearly even 10 percent of people not getting vaccinated because they have some wrongheaded ideas about it that's tragic if it then leads to to their deaths and you know rips families apart darly i want to go to you on on this particular case i mean goes about saying this is obviously a tragedy but how how effective do you think it is i've seen it loads on social media more in america for obvious reasons because vaccine skepticism is a much bigger deal to have sort of the family members of people who refuse to get vaccinated coming out and sort of speaking about how this is a clear example of why you should go and get jabbed i mean this is this is really really devastating of course i think that it is really crucial that families who have experienced this come out with these with these messages not because i think that it's going to sway you know the most most ardent anti-vaxxers who you know exist in the kind of who in a whirlpool of conspiracy theories but you know i think more that that middle ground kind of the unsure people i think particularly younger people who might think this isn't going to affect me i'm going to be fine i'd rather not i think those are the constituency which i think probably makes up the more people who aren't being vaccinated than the people who are sort of ideologically immovable hard line hopefully putting a human face to these stories will help to shift that that kind of more uncertain group you know we do know from the data you know i mean anecdotal evidence from the NHS suggests that of course you know as we would expect the proportion of vaccinated people who are now dying of covid is very small compared to unvaccinated people we don't have the exact data from the uk but we do know in the us that you know of the more than 18 000 covid related deaths that happened in may just 150 of those were fully vaccinated so this means that there are so many deaths that are avoidable through through vaccination it's also why you know you kind of have to bring it up it's also why the fact that for many big pharmaceutical companies the fact that it's devastating that the the vaccination program is being seen as a money-making exercise rather rather than and you know using intellectual property laws in order to prevent the vaccine from being reproduced cheaply and en masse rather than seeing it as you know a program that needs to get as many people in the world vaccinated as possible it's being seen as you know a money-making exercise and so we have vast parts of the world where because of corporate profiteering people who desperately want the vaccine can't get it and so are at similar risks to the one that we the story that we've just heard but i also think you know of course anti-vaccine propaganda is a huge part of this actually made me think of how when i was going to get my second vaccine there were people outside picketing trying to give me a leaflet telling me that the vaccine was more likely to kill me than coven i was like sorry guys like it's already way up in my bloodstream so too late but but it's also i think a consequence of consistent messaging both in the media across mainstream media and at times even from our own government that this is somehow an illness that you only need to worry about if you're older or if you have underlying conditions now of course you know even if that were true even if this were an illness that exclusively impacted older people or people with underlying conditions we still would all have an urgent collective duty to wear masks to get vaccinated to protect those people those people but it's actually not even true you know we know that of course COVID does cause deaths amongst you know younger healthy people but also that you know more commonly we know that it has unpredictable and as of yet incurable uh long-term impacts on the health of young people i know three separate people one of whom has had diabetes triggered by getting COVID one of whom has permanent lung scarring as a result of COVID and people who have you know are still months and months later experiencing debilitating fatigue and breathlessness that stops them from going about their everyday life all of whom are under 30 lead an active lifestyle the healthy lifestyle we still don't know why those impacts manifested in the way that they did and yet how many times have you and I sat on this show and you know pulled our hair out at people like Julia Harley Brewer who talks so nonchalantly about the idea that there's no reason why young people should get vaccinated because you know it's a it's a young person it's an old person illness or you know saying that you know oh so few people who are under 60 die from this so why are we all having to restrict now I'm not sure if Julia Harley Brewer has specifically spoken about vaccines I know that she uh has a kind of wants to drop the mask mandate for this very reason saying you know it only affects people who are over 60 so that is a message and we know from the from the leaked texts uh the Dominic Cummings uh leaked that Boris Johnson where Boris Johnson was sort of talking about again oh this doesn't matter because it only affects older people that message it's not only unethical because it sends this message that older people aren't worth protecting but it also sends this really wrong message that young people have nothing to worry about and that's also legible in policies that have sent the largely younger workforce back to these high-risk jobs in hospitality in bar jobs without them necessarily being vaccinated and also dropping things like the mask mandate in sectors where a lot of young people are working and not to mention the fact that many young people who work in these kinds of high-risk jobs don't have access to sick pay so at these multiple levels this this myth that you know young people don't have anything to worry about if you're young and healthy you have nothing to worry about which we also heard from Joe Rogan it's actually not just in the confines of conspiratorial internet corners it actually is also a myth that is commonly perpetrated across mainstream outlets as well despite scientists and you know doctors trying to communicate the exact opposite message that we all have to be concerned and we all have to take measures to protect ourselves and other people. I should emphasize Julie Hartley Brewer as we discussed on this show does share a lot of disinformation when it comes to COVID-19 she thankfully is not an anti-vaxxer even among our sort of right-wing pundit punditocracy a difference between here and the United States vaccine skepticism among you know it is very rare it's just people like Lawrence Fox very few people in the establishment media are willing to take a similar line to that one thing I want to show you with this story is about you know who is and who isn't an anti-vaxxer one worry I had when we started planning this story was I don't want to assume this guy was an anti-vaxxer because there are lots of people who haven't had a vaccine yet which could be for a number of different reasons maybe they're a little bit hesitant maybe you know they're they're worried about having a day off work if they feel a little bit sick for a day I mean I think that's going to be very few people who make that judgment because getting it is much more disruptive but in any case you don't have to be an anti-vaxxer to have not had the the vaccine it does seem like this guy was though at the time of his hospitalization Jenny McCann revealed that her brother had been a staunch anti-vaxxer so she tweeted to all anti-vaxxers my staunch anti-vaxxer non-mass wearing 40 year old twin is now in hospital with COVID and pneumonia rushed in an ambulance as he struggled to breathe quite simply if he'd had the vaccine he wouldn't be get the vaccine so he clearly was someone who had bought these false arguments telling people not to take the vaccine and also you know to give us an idea of what these anti-vaxxers are about the Daily Mail also reported that in a further tragic twist the devastated Mrs McCann has now been targeted by anti-vaxxers on social media with some accusing her of being paid by the government while others said they were not buying the story all quite despicable stuff let's wrap up there Dalia Gebrell it's been an absolute pleasure speaking to you this evening pleasure to speak to you too thanks for saving me from a lawsuit there I got my mask my anti-maskers and my anti-vaxxers confused but you know at some to some extent there's a continual message there but thank you yeah no I'm happy to to make that clear Julia Hartley Brewer spreads enough disinformation without us having to add anything to the pile thank you so much for watching the show if you haven't already do hit the subscribe button if you would like to become a donor and you haven't already please do go to navaramedia.com forward slash support thank you so much if you have already we'll be back on Friday at 7 p.m. you've been watching Tiske Sauer on navaramedia good night