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Open Letter to LINKE negotiators in the Housing Coalition

Die LINKE should not be drawn into Franziska Giffey’s so-called “housing alliance” without guarantees of real change


12/06/2022

Dear comrades, dear negotiators for DIE LINKE in the Wohnungsbündnis [housing alliance],

After we declared the election to be a #Mietenwahl [rents election], the success of our participation in government will also have to be measured by whether we are able to substantially do something to counter the rent madness.

The SPD and the governing mayor Franziska Giffey have chosen the slogan“Cooperation instead of confrontation” as the basis of the new housing policy for Berlin and linked the work of the Bündnis für Wohnungsneubau und bezahlbares Wohnen [Alliance for New Housing and Affordable Homes] to it. The Green Party also saw the alliance as an opportunity to anchor their so-called “rent protection umbrella” and, among many other demands, to enforce a moratorium on rents.

Since January, representatives of the housing industry have been negotiating with associations and representatives of the government behind closed doors in the so-called Wohnungsbündnis. With this alliance. the private sector gains privileged access to political decisions, while parliament is kept out of the loop. Now we have to make clear: this has been no way of cooperatively agreeing on effective measures.

Time and again, the construction industry points to the fact that the increase in construction costs and the interest rate turnaround have changed the fundamentals of the housing industry. Private housing companies are terminating new construction projects and announcing further rent increases. At least since the real estate group Vonovia announced further rent increases at the beginning of June – despite all the social hardship for a great deal of people in view of inflation – the general conditions have quite obviously changed. Yes, Vonovia has broken the consensus in the alliance and is planning on confrontation!

As LINKE members and sympathisers we want to make clear:

The interim negotiation statuses that have become public so far will not fulfil the housing policy objectives that were agreed upon in the coalition agreement, especially with regard to the protection of tenants, while numerous concessions are to be clearly made to the housing industry. With this in mind, we call on the LINKE leadership and our negotiators to renegotiate the following points:

  • The guidelines of government action of 18.01.2022 shall be the basis of any agreement, and no agreement with the private sector should depart from this.
  • Instead of the intransparent and thoughtless proposal of somehow linking rents to income, there must be a rent freeze for the duration of the legislative period.
  • To counter democratic deficits, there must be a clear limitation of the responsibilities of the Housing Alliance: Sovereign tasks (e.g. the awarding of planning rights or the pre-determination of such rights) as well as guidelines for the state-owned housing companies must be excluded from the alliance.

As LINKE members and sympathisers we say:

In our view, the signing of the alliance is only possible if these points are successfully negotiated into the declaration to be signed. If the demands cannot be added, the alliance will not of any advantage in terms of housing policy and would cause more harm than good in the fight against rent madness. We need a broad, open-ended debate within the party about how we proceed.

Katalin Gennburg and Niklas Schenker

If you would like to sign this open letter, please send a mail to schenker@linksfraktion.berlin

Translation: Gerrit Peters. Reproduced with permission.

“Britain is particularly hostile towards trans people at the moment”

Interview with activist and author Laura Miles on Trans Rights in the UK


11/06/2022

Hello Laura, thanks for speaking to us. Could you tell us a little about who you are and your political background?

Hi. I’m a revolutionary socialist and a member of the Socialist Workers’ Party in the UK. I was a UCU (academic trade union) activist from the 1980s onwards, and on the UCU National Executive until 2015. Now I’m retired and I’m an activist for LGBT+ rights. I’m the author of several pamphlets and the book Transgender Resistance: Socialism and the Fight for Trans Liberation.

How do you think the awareness of Trans rights has changed in the past 30 years?

In the past, trans people were either invisible or treated as something exotic and salacious by the mass media. Being transgender was seen as completely different to sexuality. Now trans people are seen as part of the LGBT+ family. Trans people are more visible and talked about. Trans rights are discussed more in the mainstream media, there is a lot more public awareness. There are more trans role models now, partly due to social media. There are Trans Pride events. The experience of gay and trans people fighting Section 28 and the stigma of HIV/AIDS together has led to more unity within the community.

The British Tories have recently introduced a ban on conversion therapy which excludes trans people. Can you explain what is happening and why?

Yes. The Tories under David Cameron, and then Teresa May, promised to ban conversion therapy. Boris Johnson’s government delayed bringing in a ban, then backtracked on the promise. There was an outcry over this which led to the current bizarre position of bringing in a conversion therapy ban that applies to lesbian, gay and bisexual people, but excludes trans people. In reality, it is impossible to separate trans people from the ban. We will enter very confused legal, moral and political territory. A lot of homophobia is related to gender expression; trans rights and LGB rights are not mutually exclusive.

It is happening because the Tories have become more transphobic, even in the last year. A moral panic has been whipped up around trans rights in Britain. It is part of the wider right wing ‘culture war’, part of ramping up their ‘anti-woke agenda’. This can be seen in other policy areas such as immigration as well.

What has been the response of the Labour Party?

The Labour Party has been trying to ride two horses at once. It has been aiming to appear trans-friendly whilst also making concessions to the so-called ‘sex-based rights’ of women. Recently the Labour leader, Keir Starmer, made a hash of answering the tiresome ‘can a woman have a penis?’ question in a radio interview with LBC. Starmer refused to answer the question, and said it was ‘unhelpful’ to discuss the subject.

Rosie Duffield, a Labour MP, was a guest of honour at the first annual conference of the transphobic LGB Alliance. She remains a Labour MP. Another Labour MP, Stella Creasy, has recently been vocally supportive of trans rights, as has Shadow Attorney General Emily Thornberry. There have been big arguments over trans rights at the local constituency Labour Party level, which show no signs of abating. The Labour Party is divided on the issue and the leadership appears reluctant to take a firmly supportive position.

It seems that the British Left is divided on the trans issue, with some arguing that trans rights can only be won at the expense of women’s rights. How deep is this division?

It is important to note that it is a minority of the British Left that is arguing this. They argue that they are not allied with the transphobic Right on this, with the Right arguing that trans people are subversive, immoral, unnatural etc. The Leftists who take this position argue that there is a conflict between trans rights and women’s rights but deep down their arguments are based on sex-essentialism. The majority of the British Left do not argue this position, but those who hold this position have a vocal social media presence.

You recently decided to withdraw from an online meeting about trans rights organised by left wingers. What happened and why?

This was a meeting hosted by Red Line TV, Jackie Walker’s social media TV show. First, I was invited to go on the show as a guest, then it was suggested to me that there would be a debate about trans rights. I did suggest someone that I could possibly debate with, however it turned out that she had become very ‘gender critical’ since I had last been in contact with her. I felt it was wrong to debate her as on principle we shouldn’t be debating with transphobes. It gives them a legitimacy that they really want but shouldn’t have. Despite all their claims of being silenced, ‘gender critical’ voices have access to platforms in mainstream newspapers and media outlets. The Left does not have to give them a platform.

You’ve been accused of not wanting to discuss with anyone who doesn’t share your opinion. What do you say to that?

It’s not true. I am happy to discuss this issue with people who have genuine concerns. That is different to debating with people who want to roll back trans rights.

Do you feel that the discussion in Britain is different than in other countries?

The discussion in Britain is particularly hostile towards trans people at the moment. There was a furore after proposals were announced to introduce reforms to the Gender Recognition Act in 2004, especially around the proposal to introduce self-ID for trans people. This backlash has grown into a moral panic. Anti-trans rhetoric has become normalised in the mainstream media. Trans women are quite often portrayed as sexual predators.

Ireland has had Self-ID for years without a problem, but Self-ID has been portrayed as a huge threat to women’s rights in Britain. Of course, there are other countries where the discussion about trans rights is also hostile, such as South Korea, Spain, and the United States. In the United States we are currently seeing a wave of vicious anti-trans legislation. But in the United States, the hostility is driven by the religious and conservative right.

Finally, how do you think we can build an international movement for trans rights and what can people in Berlin do to support what you’re doing in the UK?

International links are really important. It is important to develop international solidarity between trans rights and LGBT+ rights activists within left parties and movements around the world. It is also important to develop the equality structures in our trade unions and link up with other unions and workers’ organisations. The fight for trans rights is a global one, we need to be vocally supportive of trans rights in our communities and internationally. We can all share experiences, raise awareness of attacks on trans rights, support each other’s initiatives and build trans pride internationally.

Solidarity is also vitally important for the revolutionary left internationally, as we fight for the socialist revolution that can transform the conditions we all live in. This is the only guarantee that trans rights, and the rights of all oppressed people, can flourish and be seen as ‘normal’ and not something ‘other’.

Commodity markets and the boiling point of societies

Will rising inflation lead to social upheaval?


09/06/2022

Sri Lanka is experiencing dramatic political upheavals that have seen the ruling Rajapaksa dynasty losing its grip on power. It is not difficult to notice what is bringing people to the streets: rising food prices, forcing people to skip meals; fuel and medicine shortages; high energy prices and power cuts. The price of rice and wheat has increased by over 50%. The increases began around September 2021 with protests flaring up in early April this year resulting in the resignation of Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa, while his brother, President Gotabaya Rajapaksa, refuses to step down.

Sri Lanka imports more than it exports. Domestic crop failures in 2021 have increased the dependency on imports and put Sri Lanka at the mercy of the global commodity market and with prices rising, the cost of imports is growing. This is not unexpected: the threat of Sri Lanka defaulting on its $7.3 Billion foreign debt in order to subsidise everyday essentials has been in the air for a while now and in May the country defaulted on its debt for the first time in its history.

The pattern of increasing food prices resulting in riots is well documented. In December 2010 Tunisians were on the streets demanding: “Water and bread, yes! Ben Ali, no!”. The then leader, President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, fled the country later that month to Saudi Arabia. One week later a restaurant owner in Cairo set himself on fire after being ineligible for state-subsidised bread.

Going even further back, there were many bread riots leading up to the French revolution, most famously the `Flour war’ of 1773-5. This complicates the narrative often sold of revolutions of `the people’ finally fed up with their corrupt leaders and taking to the streets. The reality is that there must be material causes that push a society above its boiling point.

There is one major difference between the spike in grain prices in 18th century France and the spike in food prices in the 2000s. In the years preceding the Flour War, unusually adverse climate patterns precipitated terrible harvests. There was no such cause to point to in 2008. There was no food and oil shortage -actually it was up on previous years- but the UN had declared a global food crisis and oil prices were soaring. At this point, standard economic ideas around supply and demand prove insufficient, and we might start to feel rather confused. What is the difference between now and then?

The role of Commodity Price Indexes

One facet of the answer to this question is financialisation, bringing with it convoluted markets, detached from the real world. Another is the context of a global economy run by people addicted to oil and with a delusional relationship to the consequences of neoliberal economic policy. Those with the greatest share of the wealth, encouraged and supported by politicians, interact with markets with their only goal being increasing their personal worth. They, enabled and spurred on by “too big to fail” banks, have created and invented a multitude of schemes and tricks to help them to this end.

A Commodity Price Index is an average of selected commodity prices. There are many Commodity Price Indexes, tracking different selections of commodities, with differing weights, focusing on specific countries or commodities. For example, the well-known the RF/CC CRB Index contains 19 commodities, among them: crude oil, gold, orange juice, aluminium. These indexes are intended to provide representations of broad trends in the commodities market. They are nothing new, the CRB Index was first calculated and published in the 50s, and it is not the oldest.

Commodity Index Funds track these indexes and are one way that investors can “choose to obtain passive exposure to these commodity price indexes” or speculate on the future movements. The upshot is that investors can buy these financial instruments, whose worth is calculated in order to track or speculate on a specific Commodity Price Index. Buying into one of these funds does not mean that one owns anything physical. You give your money to a bank who will then give you more money or take some away depending on the movement of a specific Index.

The trouble comes when large amounts of capital is parked in these funds. Then prices which have no material reason to be associated to one another start to move in unison. There is no natural connection between the price of nickel and the price of wheat, but as the market for CPI tracking became large, mass speculation on these indexes created a link between such commodities artificially.

“Without question increased fund flow into commodities has boosted prices” concluded Goldman Sachs’ own analysts. Predictably however, they do not blame the speculators and rather double down that in fact the speculators serve to help solve the problem. The exact mechanism through which this happens is complex. Trend following traders, algorithmic bot traders are all factors contributing to these speculative bubbles. Additionally, in an extremely egregious move, the banks who were selling these speculative contracts quickly moved into the commodity-storage trade [“Price Wars”, Russell, p65] to maximise their profits from the soaring prices.

After deregulation in the form of the Commodity Futures Modernisation Act, masterminded by Alan Greenspan and the Clinton administration at the turn of the century, these markets grew. In 2003, $13 Billion was spent on Commodity Index Funds, rising to $260 billion in 2006, as reported by Michael Masters, a hedge-fund manager, to a US House Committee. Increased demand for Commodity Index Funds were driving prices themselves up. Master’s testimony was met by attacks from the financial industry.

After the financial crash in 2008, investors and, pension and hedge fund managers found in commodities a safe place to place their investments after the mortgage and property market had shown itself not the safe haven it was once thought to be. This sudden demand for commodities caused prices to rise. Commodity prices across the board start to rise and speculative bubbles emerged. The standard logic that prices of wheat or rubber encode information about the availability is abandoned. The global south is then forced to suffer the consequences of this speculative game played in the global north.

How is this affected by the war in Ukraine?

The war in Ukraine is already having a serious impact on food security and global energy prices and these speculative schemes carried out by the financial industry are engineering a global catastrophe affecting billions of people. The financial institutions and the politicians they are in bed with will turn the finger of blame to the pandemic and a capital deficit; anywhere but themselves. This wilfully ignores the exacerbating role the unregulated speculative market plays. These people are either so blinded by their own self-interest or are too apathetic to see that the problem is not going to be solved from within.

Peering into the Wild West of Wall Street and understanding the devastating consequences its actions have, whilst those in charge profit from it is a very demoralising exercise. We are in need of a political class which is willing to challenge the hegemonic belief that we are in need of such a `healthy’ financial system and instead will prioritise the people they claim to represent.

We need to reign in these enormous speculative markets via robust regulation, preventing the amplification of small fluctuations in food markets to catastrophic spikes and crashes. It is a political failure that we can have record high food production in a year, and in that same year food prices soar.

France in 2022: the People’s Union, and Mélenchon

In the run-up to June’s parliamentary elections, the political atmosphere in France has been transformed by a new left alliance, the New Popular Union. How useful is it and what are its prospects?


01/06/2022

Just over a month ago, between the two rounds of the French presidential elections, the news was filled with depressing “debates” between conservatives and fascists about how best to defend the rich and mistreat Muslims. But after the second round, the radical Left managed to regain the initiative by forming an electoral alliance and launching an ambitious campaign for the legislative elections in June, elections that will decide which government will run France. The new alliance has provoked much enthusiasm, and considerable criticism. How useful will it be to working people?

Electoral politics is a distorted reflection of class struggle. For the last twenty years, France has been the stage for regular social explosions. Among them, there was the mass strike movement against François Hollande’s 2016 labour law, a law which worsened millions of people’s employment contracts; there was the (for the moment, successful) revolt against Macron’s attack on pension rights; and, of course, there was the impressive Yellow Vest rebellion.

These movements inspired and educated millions, also showing a high level of class consciousness (half of the strikers were acting to defend the pensions of future generations, not their own). They were generally defensive in nature, reacting against vicious government attacks, sometimes from right wing governments, sometimes from Socialist Party governments. It is the relatively high level of class consciousess and combativity which has allowed the rebirth of left reformism in a radical and insurgent form – the France Insoumise.

Of course, life would be easier for Marxists if people involved in these exciting and painful class struggles all realized at the same time the need to overthrow capitalism and eliminate forever the dictatorship of profit. But this is not the way of the world, and most were thinking “How can we get a government that doesn’t attack us?” “Surely we can get a government who are on our side for a change?” 

New Popular Union

Millions now feel the New Popular Union is the answer to this question. Formed by Jean-Luc Mélenchon and the France Insoumise, after his impressive score of 7.7 million votes at the presidentials, it involves other left parties roughly in proportion to their presidential scores: notably the Greens (who got 1.5 million votes), the French Communist Party (800,000) and (what is left of) the Socialist Party (600,000). These have formed the Nouvelle Union Populaire écologique et sociale (NUPES).

The aim is to win a parliamentary majority in June and apply radical reforms. As a result the TV discussions are now, to our delight, filled with questions about raising the minimum wage by more than 15%, increasing all public sector salaries by 10%,  allowing people to retire at 60, taxing the rich, and freezing prices on basic foods and on fuel. The NUPES has published a list of 650 proposals, adding up to (as Jean-Luc Mélenchon has termed it) “spectacular change”. Other key measures include ending nuclear power, 100,000 new hospital jobs, and “refounding the police” in response to frequent police violence against demonstrators and ethnic minorities.

The France Insoumise MPs elected in 2017 were already different from most MPs: a care worker, a librarian, a radical journalist, a leading fighter against Islamophobia: all rare sights elsewhere in the National Assembly. The New Popular Union is now presenting some new candidates who symbolize grassroots revolt: for example, Rachel Kéké, one of the Black leaders of a very long hotel cleaners’ strike, and Stéphane Ravacley, a baker who hit the news when he went on hunger strike to stop the expulsion from France of his young Black apprentice.

The coalition aims at winning a majority in parliament in the June elections. Arguing that Macron only won because people were voting against his fascist opponent, the NUPES leadership say it is the left which can win the legitimacy to govern the country. Mélenchon’s programme is popular, and a poll mid-May by major TV channel TF1 put NUPES top for first round voter intentions at 28%, as against 27% for Macron’s candidates and 22% for the far right. Winning a parliamentary majority is nevertheless an uphill struggle for the NUPES, since in the second round of a two round election, those who voted fascist in the first round will often support Macron’s party. Yet in the last parliamentary elections, in 2017, over 20 million people stayed at home on election day. If the radical left can mobilize those who usually abstain, everything is possible.

Enthusiasm

The most important effect of the launching of the new coalition has been a rise in enthusiasm among voters and activists, and the dynamic of the presidential campaign has continued, with neighbourhood meetings in every town and much door to door canvassing. It is a mass campaign of mobilization and education. Nevertheless there are points of tension. Many feel that, although the slate of candidates is less white and elite than usual, it should be considerably less white still, and include more grassroots activists.

In addition, the inclusion in the NUPES alliance of the Socialist Party as a junior partner (which will stand as NUPES in 70 constituencies of the 570 in total) has been controversial. Many NUPES supporters say that this inclusion has allowed NUPES to make the most of the real roots that the Socialist Party has in a few regions, and that the agreement, by which the PS has signed up to the key points of the NUPES programme, has accelerated the crisis in the PS, and may even see its right wing leave the party. They say that, in this way, the NUPES has no real opposition on the left, and that this unity can help build the mass dynamic needed to win. Others on the Left consider any agreement with the Socialist Party, even though the latter is weakened, is unacceptable, and may be the beginning of a drift rightwards.

Many Marxist activists are involved in the NUPES campaign, and three fairly small revolutionary groups work with it (two producing their own paper). But the biggest (though not very big) far-left group, the New Anticapitalist Party, is very much divided on the question, and it has been decided that each NPA branch will decide whether to support or not support NUPES locally.

Hope and danger

The objective of the New Popular Union is to use the state to limit the power of capital. It is not to break this power. And certainly there is no shortage of dangers. Let us summarize the main ones.

Firstly, well-funded media smear campaigns and right-wing movements could push NUPES backwards and help the right wing win. Secondly, in case of a victory by the NUPES alliance, the huge powers of international capital will move into action to stop the programme being put into practice by the new government. Finally, an intermediate result, in which NUPES was able to form a government only by allying with forces to its right, would put strong pressure on NUPES leaders to hugely water down the programme.

Many NUPES activists are aware that mass mobilization is key to limiting these dangers. Mélenchon himself insists that one of the main reasons for the relative failure of Mitterand’s radical left government in the 1980s was the lack of popular mobilization. Naturally, only Marxists go one step further and insist that such mobilization must eventually aim at a new kind of state which can definitively break the power of capital.

But for Marxists to persuade people of this, they need to be part of the present movement for spectacular change. The situation does not need guardians of the pure revolutionary flame without fuel, whose ambition is to say “I told you so” more poetically than other activists. In a situation where most workers do not have a clear idea what a socialist revolution is, or how to distinguish it from the “citizens’ revolution” called for by Mélenchon, it is essential to be able to defend our ideas while building the struggle for radical reforms alongside many thousands of others.

A terrified elite

The ruling class, in any case, are terrified. Media scare campaigns and smear campaigns are running at high temperature. The front page of the principal conservative weekly, Le Point,  says Mélenchon is “another Le Pen” “a charlatan” with “a taste for dictators”. Another right winger says “Mélenchon thinks he is the messiah”. On the television, Mélenchon is presented as “a dangerous man”, the NUPES as a “monstruous radicalism” which “submits to Islamic fundamentalism”, an alliance which is “outside of democratic rules” and is “an insult to democracy” .

One leading member of the right wing of the Socialist Party claimed Mélenchon would make France into North Korea, another complained that by joining the alliance, the Socialist Party was “selling its soul to the monster”.

Macron and the right, meanwhile…

Macron had promised that his second term “will not be a continuation of the term just finished” but a “réinvention”, a “complete renewal”. Still, after his cabinet reshuffle and change of Prime Minister in late May, Le Monde headlined “Macron chooses continuity”. Under pressure from his Left, he made two choices which he hoped would satisfy the less right wing of his supporters.

Firstly he appointed a woman Prime Minister, Elisabeth Borne. She claims to see herself as “a woman of the left”, but no one else appears to have noticed, and her past record includes organizing the partial privatization of French railways, and being a key player in Macron’s plan to smash the French pensions scheme.

Secondly, Macron appointed a Black historian as Minister of Education. Certainly not a left-wing man, Pap N’diaye has nevertheless spoken against the ridiculous Islamophobic campaigns led by the previous Minister, Jean-Marie Blanquer, who had claimed that French universities were dominated by scary “Islamoleftists”. This is a welcome step backwards for the Islamophobes, who are under much more pressure since Mélenchon’s party moved to defending muslims.

The Islamophobes are on the offensive elsewhere though. A huge row has blown up over the decision of the town council of Grenoble, who voted to authorize in council swimming pools the full-body swimsuits which Muslim women occasionally wear. Racist regional governments responded by announcing they would cut funding to any swimming pools who made this decision. The state took the question to the courts in emergency session, and the town council was ordered to suspend the authorization of this piece of clothing in the swimming pools. Although the subject may seem trivial, it has given rise to a major racist campaign presenting Islam as incompatible with women’s rights and democracy.

The reaction on the left is poor. Despite the important steps forward in recent years, which have led to Mélenchon now defending Muslims regularly and publicly against Islamophobia in general terms, the Left still has a long way to go. Almost all national leaderships of left organizations have avoided committing themselves on the issue, because their organizations are divided. Mélenchon declared he should not be expected “to comment on the rules of swimming pools”. The NPA newspaper avoided the issue, too.

A key fight

After the billions spent on the pandemic, and determined not to tax the rich, Macron, if he is re-elected, will turn the austerity programme up even higher. Recent polls show that for 46% of French people, poverty and wages (or, as the pollsters quaintly put it, “pouvoir d’achat” – “buying power”) make up the number one issue in the forthcoming elections, polling far ahead of any other question. The NUPES campaign for spectacular change is providing hope and education to huge numbers of people. It needs everyone’s support.

John Mullen is a Marxist activist in the Paris region, and a supporter of the Nouvelle Union Populaire.

Don’t let people tell you Liverpool Fans turned up late and attacked the police, they attacked us

Liverpool fan Phil Rowan was in Paris and saw an unprovoked police attack on football supporters. Here he tells his story – and the story of many other fans


31/05/2022

We spent the day walking to the ground stopping for refreshments. We left the last bar 90 minutes before and that was a 10 minute walk to the ground.

That’s where it all went wrong.

There was a police block and an outer cordon that was uncomfortable but nothing worse than usual European away matches in France and Spain.

We got through and I said that should be the worse bit over. How wrong I was.

There was now an hour until kick off but we were at the ground.

Gate A was directly in front and didn’t look to bad.

Gate Z to the right and then our gate, Y.

We walked that way and there was a huge crowd, and we seen the stairs inside the stadium were empty.

We tried to make our way to Y and there was a huge crush, the fence to our left with tv fans behind, the crowd and gates to the right.

We then were told the gates had been shut and had been for some time.

The police then started wading in from the direction of the turnstiles with shields and batons and it caused a panic and people were trying to escape in both directions but no one could move.

We lifted kids up over the fence to sit on the tv vehicles.

Eventually we went back the way we come through the panic stricken crowd and from the back the police were firing tear gas, we all got it.

This went on for an hour, gates locked and the police attacking people, eventually we got in through gate A. Just after kick off and hours since we arrived. There are empty seats here, don’t let people tell you the inside is over crowded it’s not.

Don’t let people tell you we turned up late and attacked the police, they attacked us.

Fuck you UEFA. I’m not even too interested in the match, it’s ruined.

Our group have been all around the world with LFC and World Cups. We know how to deal with aggressive police and get into football grounds. But the ground tonight was closed for hours. We were told that Real Madrid fans also had major issues.

I had a feeling people might end up dead

This short clip shows how dangerous it was yesterday and is the exact spot we were in. It doesn’t show the full context just a couple of feet so I’ll explain.

The fence is the barrier between the sort of outside outer cordon and the inside cordon. The vehicles belonged to the press. Behind that some had press on filming and they said don’t worry we are filming this to show what’s happening.

If you imagine the fence is on the left, gate Z is to the right, and gate Y (our gate) about 50 metres past that. Both gates had been locked since 18:30, kick off was meant to be 21:00. This was about 20:00.

The police were in front wading in with shields and batons so naturally people were trying to go backwards to get away. From behind police were firing tear gas so others were coming toward us. People were going in both directions to get away from danger but no one could move.

As you can see people had to lift kids and older people over the fence on to vehicles to make sure they were okay.

It was shortly after that we slowly made our way backwards and told people coming toward us that the gates were locked and the police were attacking people. Thankfully people then also turned around and went backward towards the police with tear gas, as it was safer than staying there or going forwards. People stayed remarkably calm and helped others.

It was in the middle of all that that I had a feeling people might end up dead. That’s when winning the European cup stops being the main concern.

The only thing I care about is that I am 99.9% confident no one died today because at one time I thought there would be and seen someone getting CPR. The police were firing CS gas like it’s going out of fashion. No one knows why. Both sets of fans were running away

I’ve been all over Eastern Europe watching football and never been treated like this. UEFA and the police need to be held accountable.