| Ed Miliband shadow cabinet: pen portraits of key players Ed Miliband, the new Labour leader, has chosen Alan Johnson as shadow chancellor as part of a surprise cabinet selection. Below are short profiles on the key appointments. telegraph.co.uk |
Deportee 'asked for help before dying' Questions over how quickly Jimmy Mubenga received medical help after collapsing under three security guards on BA flightAn asylum seeker who was being deported on a flight from Heathrow begged passengers to help him moments before he collapsed and died beneath three security guards, according to a new witness who has spoken to the Guardian.The witness – the third to come forward in the last 24 hours – raised questions over how quickly Jimmy Mubenga was given medical assistance after he lost consciousness on the flight to Angola.He said he was haunted by Mubenga's pleas for help."For the rest of the my life I'm always going to have that at the back of my mind – could I have done something? That is going to bother me every time I go to sleep," the witness, an oil worker who gave his name as Michael, said."I didn't get involved because I was scared I would get kicked off the flight and lose my job. But that man paid a higher price than I would have."The 51-year-old US citizen contacted a Guardian reporter via Twitter today after reading what he believed to be misleading accounts of Mubenga's death released by the Home Office and G4S, a private security firm the government has contracted to escort deportees.Police are investigating the death of Mubenga, a 46-year-old Angolan who lost consciousness when three G4S guards attempted to restrain him on British Airways Flight 77 flight on Tuesday night. He was later taken to hospital where he was pronounced dead. No arrests have been made.On Thursday two passengers told the Guardian that guards placed Mubenga in handcuffs and heavily restrained him while the aircraft was still on the runway. One said Mubenga complained of breathing problems before passing out.Michael said he heard Mubenga complain he was unable to breathe."I'm pretty sure it will turn out to be asphyxiation," he said. "The last thing we heard the man say was he couldn't breathe. We had three security guards and each one of them looked like they weighed 100kg plus, bearing down and holding him down – from what I could see below the seats."Michael described as "completely false" the official accounts of Mubenga's death, released by the Home Office and G4S on Wednesday.The Home Office said a deportee had been "taken ill" while on the flight. G4S used similar wording, saying Mubenga "became unwell", forcing the flight to return to Heathrow. "Sadly, the detainee passed away upon arrival at the hospital," the statement said.Michael said he became aware that a man was in distress as soon as he boarded the plane."The first thing I saw was the stewardesses running forward. One of them was almost in spasms she was shaking that bad … I saw three men trying to pull [Mubenga] down below the seats. All I could see was his head sticking up above the seats and he was hollering out: 'Help me'."He just kept saying 'Help me, help me'. Then he disappeared below the seats. You could see the three security guards sitting on top of him from there. And then it went kind of quiet."There are differing accounts as to how long Mubenga was restrained. The two previous witnesses estimated he was restrained for 10 minutes and 45 minutes respectively.Michael, who said he was sitting less than six metres (20ft) from Mubenga, said he watched the security guards on top of him for around five minutes, but then looked away as the plane taxied on to the runway. The flight was later aborted."What I am trying to understand is: if the man was putting up such a fuss and a fight that it took three burly security guards to hold him down, why didn't they take him off the plane?" Michael said."Obviously if I was putting a commotion up and I wasn't a deportee they would take me off the plane, because they would call me a threat to the flight."He criticised BA for not giving passengers the choice over whether they wanted to fly on a deportation flight. Airlines in the UK are required by law to carry deportees."I'm not sure [Mubenga] even got any medical attention until he got back to the terminal," Michael said. "I didn't hear anything over the PA: 'Is there a doctor on board, is there a medic on board?'"I'm not sure he got any attention from anybody until the medics got there and that was 15, 20 minutes after everything went quiet. Maybe somebody could have revived him if they had been asked. I can give CPR – I've been trained in it."An engineer who works Angola's rich oilfields alongside other western expatriates, Michael said Mubenga's death spoke to hypocrisy in global border control. "You have got a man deported from over there. Did you ever stop to think how many British are over here, making £400 or £500 a day in Angola?"Immigration and asylumG4SHuman rightsAngolaForeign policyJimmy MubengaPaul LewisMatthew Taylorguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds guardian.co.uk |
Gazza arrested over drug offence Troubled former football star Paul Gascoigne has arrested in connection with an alleged drugs offence. bbc.co.uk |
The new age of student protest Students have been staging sit-ins at campuses across the UK in protest against education cuts. Patrick Kingsley visited three and discovered a powerful coalitionLonghaired and big-booted, revolutionary socialist Luke stands up in front of a meeting at the Leeds university occupation, and prepares to speak."Comrades . . ." Luke begins – and, from the back of this lecture theatre filled with 200 undergraduates, school students, trade unionists and parents, comes an instant, shouted response."DON'T CALL ME COMRADE."It's a familiar exchange. All afternoon at this meeting of the Leeds general assembly against education cuts, activists of all ages, backgrounds and political stripes have been needling each other. They've gathered here with one goal – to decide how they will escalate their protest against the rise in tuition fees and the scrapping of the Education Maintenance Allowance (a campaign that continues with tomorrow's national day of action) – but sometimes they're sidetracked by ideological difference."We can't afford to alienate people with different theoretical backgrounds," says one speaker. "We can run this country by ourselves – we don't need capitalism to do it for us," says the next. The trade union movement stands shoulder to shoulder with the students, argues a local unionist. The trade unions are a spent force, counters a member of Socialist Equality. And while the Greek who opens with "Hello everybody, I'm from Greece" gets a cheer from a doctrinaire section of the crowd, the postgraduate who responds with "I don't have a political allegiance" wins applause from another.It would be easy to view this bickering as disheartening. But what I think I'm witnessing at Leeds – one of three occupations I visited last week – is not a fragmentation, but an embryonic coagulation of disparate groups, in a grassroots social movement the breadth of which some feel we have not seen since the late 1960s. Leeds is but one of 34 universities and colleges which over the past seven days have been occupied by students, schoolchildren, lecturers and union members in protest at the rise in tuition fees and scrapping of EMA. Some occupations have since ended – Oxford's takeover of the Bodleian library was curtailed when police used a battering ram to smash an inner wall of the building – but 15 continued yesterday.Two years ago, there were comparable sit-ins at several universities – in protest at the Israeli bombing of Gaza. But these were smaller affairs, carried out almost exclusively by university students from the organised left. By contrast, today's incarnations constitute a rallying point for a raw, emergent movement of school and sixth-form students directly concerned about two key issues – EMA and tuition fee hikes; an established left movement of university students and union organisers, who view these cuts as part of a tapestry of wider political concerns; and a growing band of previously disengaged university students who perhaps lack the urgency of the former and the perspective of the latter groups, but who nevertheless find themselves in growing solidarity with those teenagers of Britain who will be most affected. As a result, today's university occupations have morphed from being islands of isolated protest to focal areas of community activism.What I find most inspiring is the involvement of school and college students. Before I set out, I half-expected them to defer to the leadership of their elders at the university – but, if anything, the opposite holds true.Cambridge is one such example. "These sixth-form students are impressing me because they're incredibly independent and self-organised and they call their own days of action," postgraduate Jessica tells me as we sit in a swirl of snow outside the occupied Senate House. She continues: "We're almost taking the lead from them sometimes. It's amazing, we had 11-year-olds who walked out of Parkside School [last Wednesday]. A hundred of them came running down the street, really angry. They can't vote, and they don't have political channels. We talk about university students in occupations not using the right channels to protest – but these guys don't even have any channels."In Newcastle, university students spent the weekend chairing meetings of pupils from nine local schools. "It was the young people who decided what action to take," says Saskia Neivig, 16, who studies at Heaton Manor school by day and sleeps at the occupation by night, and who spoke to me by phone. "The students said: 'The second day of action is for young people to decide what to do. We'll help you out in whatever way, but the schoolchildren – it's their generation that'll be affected.'"However, relations between Leeds university students and local teenagers seem more complex. Teenagers from four schools attend planning meetings organised by the occupation, and the one I'm at runs smoothly. I meet Alex Claxton-Mayer, Liam Murphy and Seyamak Shaghouei, three year 11 pupils from Allerton Grange school. They're only 16, or thereabouts, but they are some of the most eloquent speakers at the occupation – and last Wednesday, they encouraged 800 of their schoolmates to walk out of school in protest at the cuts. They laugh at the idea that they might be doing this to get a day off school. "I think just by being here at five o'clock on a Saturday afternoon shows how committed we are," says Shaghouei.However, it's clear that a separate meeting for college students has ended rancorously. Three students from Notre Dame sixth form are fed up with attempts by the more leftwing members of the group to locate the campaign within a socialist framework. "Stop talking about overthrowing the government – what's that going to achieve? This is about what we're going to do on Tuesday," says one.But in other occupations the lack of defined leadership is a strength. When I arrive at the University College London (UCL) occupation on Sunday morning, one of the first people I see is Aaron Porter, president of the National Union of Students. Porter, however, has not been leading the sit-in – he has only just arrived, and he's sitting sheepishly among a crowd of occupiers.In fact, Porter is about to apologise for his lack of support for the UCL occupation – indeed for student occupations in general. Porter had been criticised for not attending the national day of action last Wednesday, where school and university students were "kettled" in Whitehall for several hours by police, and for taking several days to issue public support for university occupations. He's only here because UCL's twitter guru, Jess Riches, called for a vote of no confidence in his presidency."For too long," he says to the assembled group, "the NUS has perhaps been too cautious and too spineless about being committed to supporting student protest. Perhaps I spent too long over the last few days doing the same." He adds: "I just want to apologise for my dithering in the last few days."It's a staggering U-turn, and one that occupiers feel demonstrates the power of the protest. "Rather than Aaron Porter waking up with a change of heart," says Sofie Buckland, 24, one of UCL's media team, "this is a direct result of the pressure we put on him as a grassroots movement. If we're in a position where groups of ordinary students are occupying universities and becoming so popular and attracting so much coverage that NUS has to swing round behind them – then it's clearly the students who are directing NUS, and not the other way around."During my visit, singer-songwriter Emmy the Great turns up with a guitar and plays a 45-minute set. Appropriately for this leaderless room, Emmy rejects my suggestion that she is some sort of Bob Dylan or Joan Baez figure – "their songs were political, mine aren't . . . I'm just here to entertain". But Emmy does play a cover of Cheryl Cole's Fight For This Love – adapting the lyrics to: "We gotta fight, fight, fight, fight, fight . . . these cuts" – and she later suggests the occupiers coin the term "Clegging out", which, she says, means to renege on all your principles.A striking aspect of the UCL occupation is how newly politicised many of the occupiers seem. Alessandro Furlotti, 19, says he's actually a member of the Conservative party. "I'm not leftwing but I firmly believe these cuts on education are unjust," he says.Two years ago, Hugo Rifkind in the Times wrote about the precursor to these occupations – the Gaza protests – and concluded that there was "something out there on our campuses, brooding, and it's spoiling for a fight." It's still not clear what that something is, or what it will become. But it's stopped brooding now, and it's no longer just spoiling for a fight. It's right in the middle of the melee.Tuition feesStudent politicsProtestHigher educationUniversity fundingPatrick Kingsleyguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds guardian.co.uk |
US pension funds sue BP directors over the falling share price Fifteen directors of BP, including Tony Hayward, the chief executive, and Carl-Henric Svanberg, the chairman, are being sued personally by two US pension funds for their role in the Deepwater Horizon oil disaster. timesonline.co.uk |