Category: Politicae Britannicae

The Counter-terrorism Bill and coroners

Posted on by David Landon Cole

Section 42 (4) (b) (ii) of the Counter-Terrorism Bill, as it seeks to extend detention without charge to forty-two days, has attracted some considerable criticism. Unfortunately, it is not the only part of the bill that is, at best, distinctly ill-considered and with considerable scope for abuse. Serious consideration must also be given to clauses 64 and 65, which can be found on page 50 of this PDF of the bill. Clause 64 allows the Home Secretary to issue a certificate requiring an inquest to be held without a jury or discharging a jury mid-inquest. Clause 65 allows the Home Secretary to discharge a coroner and appoint a coroner of their own choosing. The two powers can be exercised simultaneously; that is to say, the Home Secretary would have the power, if they thought the an inquest would embarrass the government, to discharge the jury and the coroner and have the inquest started again without a jury and with a coroner of the Home Secretary’s choosing.

Inquests are unusual in English law in that they are the only inquisitorial proceeding, as opposed to the adversarial form that every other legal proceeding takes.

It is worth remembering that there are two main objections to the provision for forty-two days’ detention provided for in S42 (4) (b) (ii). The first is deontological; the period of time that any entity or person acting under the law (ultimately dependent on Weber’s definition of the state) should detain anyone else should be kept to the absolute minimum as the potential exists that, before trial, the person is innocent and so their detention is unjust. It is the same logic that insists justice should be speedy; detention before charge should be speedy1.

The second is utilitarian. While I’m sure some people will disagree with me1, I do not think that the current government is an evil monster that wants to abolish all our civil liberties. However, I do not think that the current government should hand a carte blanche to every single, future government. The risks and potential harms of the 42 days’ detention, and the deeply unsatisfactory safeguards – that people could be taken off the street if they threatened a future government (say, 41 days before an election) and held incommunicado – far outweight any potential benefit. Liberty make that point very well in this briefing document (PDF).

I feel the same applies to S64 and S65. Firstly, the idea that someone in the executive should be able to wander into a judicial proceeding and change things is opening the process up to abuse. It is different from making provisions for national security – things can be heard in camera – and, in any case, it should not be possible to change things in the middle of the proceeding, but only a priori. Secondly, the risks are significant as they would allow interference, as I have said, and set a worrying precedent for expansion.

If nothing else, connections will be made between a stroppy Oxfordshire coroner, a move to Gloucestershire for repatriating the bodies of people who have died in Afghanistan and Iraq, a stroppy Gloucestershire coroner and then this bill; it does look as if the Government is trying to cover its tracks.

xD.

1 – the definition, not the blogger.

Nadine Dorries on abortion

Posted on by David Landon Cole

Nadine Dorries has posted another attack on an MP who supports abortion encouraging people to vote solely on that issue; this time, it is Barbara Follett.

In order to receive funding they have to support Labour party values, and be pro-abortion

This means that any potential candidate of faith, ie, Jewish, Christian, Sikh, Muslim or Hindu would not qualify, which makes the list discriminatory

Correct me if I’m wrong, but that says that every person of religious faith opposes abortion. Quite apart from the insult to every religion other than the five mentioned (id est is never the same as exempli gratia; they mean ‘that is to say’ and ‘for the sake of example’ respectively), it ignores the reality of the situation. It is quite remarkable that Ms Dorries has listed only five of the top ten religions in terms of adherents. There are (according to the Christian Science Monitor) 324 million Buddhists (about the population of the EU), along with 6.1 million members of the Baha’i faith, 5.3 million followers of Confucius, 4.9 million who identify with Jainism and 2.8 million people who go for Shinto.

Let’s look at the five religions that Ms Dorries mentions.

1. Judaism

It doesn’t take long to realise that to say that being pro-abortion is incompatible with Judaism is rather foolish. The Mishnah (Oholot 7:8) says

If a woman is in hard travail, one cuts up the offspring in her womb and brings it forth member by member, because her life comes before the life of her foetus. But if the greater part has proceeded forth, one may not set aside one person for the sake of saving another

There is debate about whether the second sentence prohibits abortion after half-term or until the baby is half-delivered; there is no debate about whether abortion can be permitted under Jewish law. More specifically, the Rabinincal Assembly’s Committee on Jewish Law and Standards< endorses the position of Rabbis Bokser and Abelson:

[A]n abortion is justifiable if a continuation of pregnancy might cause the mother severe physical or psychological harm, or where the fetus [sic] is judged by competent medical opinion as severely defective

The Union for Reform Judaism says that

any decision should be left up to the woman within whose body the fetus is growing

I have highlighted Judaism because it is the first on the list and it very neatly shows that within all religion and, indeed, all belief systems there is variation.

2. Christianity

Thomas Aquinas and Popes Innocent III and Gregory XIV said that until the mother could feel the baby kick and move, the baby had no soul and could be aborted; after the quickening, it could not. Current Roman Catholic teaching is mostly opposed to abortion. The Southern Baptist Convention only came out against abortion in the early eighties.

The Episcopal Church, Presbyterian Church (USA), United Church of Christ and United Methodist Church all have statements in favour of abortion.

3. Sikhism

Sikhism doesn’t directly deal with abortion – at least, the Guru Granth Sahib doesn’t – and the practice of abortion in parts of India, particularly if the foetus is female, suggest that there is no block there, either

4. Islam

The traditional Islamic view is that abortion is permitted up until 120 days, I believe; alternative views are 40 days or ‘quickening’. Depending on which date you choose, that is when the soul is given to the baby. Islam allows for abortion

5. Hinduism

I don’t know much about Hinduism, and therefore will merely provide this quote from Hinduism Today:

The Brahma Kumaris World Spiritual University does not take a formal unchanging political or religious stance on the issue of abortion. They advise that each case requires unique consideration. The final decision will be based on a long series of choices made by the woman on her lifestyle, morals and values. Usually, the choices that created the unwanted pregnancy in the first place have been irrational or emotional ones, not the mature commitment motherhood needs. The Brahma Kumaris counsel those facing an abortion decision, both man and woman, to understand that by abortion they do not escape responsibility for their actions. When both the parents have fully understood the seriousness of the choice, the University would support the right to make their own decision.

I am quite sure that Ms Dorries is aware of the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice. If not, it pretty much ‘does what it says on the tin’. Here’s their membership list:

Rabbinical Assembly; United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism; Women’s League for Conservative Judaism; The Episcopal Church; American Ethical Union National Service Conference; Society for Humanistic Judaism; Presbyterians Affirming Reproductive Options (PARO); Women’s Ministries; Washington Office; Reconstructionist Judaism; Jewish Reconstructionist Federation; Reconstructionist Rabbinical Association; Central Conference of American Rabbis; North American Federation of Temple Youth; Union for Reform Judaism; Women of Reform Judaism, The Federation of Temple Sisterhoods; Women’s Rabbinic Network of Central Conference of American Rabbis; Justice and Witness Ministries; General Board of Church and Society; General Board of Global Ministries, Women’s Division; Unitarian Universalist Association; Unitarian Universalist Women’s Federation; Young Religious Unitarian Universalists; Continental Unitarian Universalist Young Adult Network; American Jewish Committee; American Jewish Congress; Anti-Defamation League; Catholics for a Free Choice; Christian Lesbians Out (CLOUT); Church of the Brethren Women’s Caucus; Disciples for Choice; Episcopal Urban Caucus; Episcopal Women’s Caucus; Hadassah, WZOA; Jewish Women International; Lutheran Women’s Caucus; Methodist Federation for Social Action; NA’AMAT USA; National Council of Jewish Women; Women’s American ORT; YWCA of the USA

I think that shows, pretty effectively, that religious faith does not necessarily entail opposition to abortion. However, even if there was only one religious person in the entire world who honestly believed that abortion was acceptable, Ms Dorries would not be able to say that their faith was lesser or wrong. To do so would be, in her own words, discriminatory.

Moving on, Ms Dorries says of Ms Follett that

72% of her constituents want the upper limit reduced to 20 weeks

That’s interesting. On her previous post, Ms Dorries said that “as many as 72 per cent, wish to see the upper limit at which abortion takes place, reduced from 24 to 20 weeks”. Unless a survey was carried out that focused on the voters of Stevenage, it seems hard to say that 72% of Barbara Follett’s constituents want the upper limit reduced without making a statement that is statistically invalid.

Ms Dorries then asks

Will she represent their views at the next vote, or her own?

As I said on my previous post, an MP’s job is not to act as a proxy for the aggregate views of their constituents. As Edmund Burke said, “Your representative owes you, not his industry only, but his judgment; and he betrays, instead of serving you, if he sacrifices it to your opinion”.

One last thing:

“Barbara Follett is the founder of Emily’s list”

No, she isn’t. Emily’s List was founded by Ellen Malcolm in 1984 in the United States of America. Barbara Follett founded Emily’s List UK in 1993. A small issue, but worth flagging. Congratulations to Barbara Follett.

As I have said before, I respect Ms Dorries’ position, although I do not share it. I have been branded a religious fundamentalist in the past for saying, in my SU meeting, that there were legitimate objections to abortion. I still believe that. However, I find Ms Dorries’ way of presenting the argument to be based on flawed logic, assertion and obfuscation.

xD.

Update 2045: Unity at the Ministry of Truth has noticed Nadine’s post as well – I recommend it!

Edmund Burke on Nadine Dorries

Posted on by David Landon Cole

Nadine Dorries, the Conservative MP for Mid Beds and doyenne of the anti-abortion movement in Parliament, has been pressing for further restrictions on abortion for some time. I have no doubt that she sincerely holds those beliefs. However, it does seem that the strength with which she holds those beliefs is clouding her judgement. As various bloggers, including Tim Ireland of Bloggerheads, Ben Goldacre of Bad Science and the Guardian, Book Drunk, Devil’s Kitchen and Unity from the Ministry of Truth, have pointed out, Ms Dorries has played fast and loose with facts and statistics and seems – as I am a charitable sort – to be demonstrating confirmation bias over this issue.

On her website1, Ms Dorries says something that is not just wrong-headed, but dangerous:

As a result of a number of polls, we know that the majority of the public, as many as 72 per cent, wish to see the upper limit at which abortion takes place, reduced from 24 to 20 weeks. Many MPs, however, choose to use Parliament as a place to pander to their own preference, or ideology, rather than to represent the will of the people.

What Ms Dorries is saying there is that MPs should be proxies for referenda on every issue. Quite apart from the weaseling of ‘belief’ into ‘preference’ and ‘philosophy’ into’ ideology, this notion of ‘the will of the people’ or ‘the general will’ is a dangerous one indeed. It should be easy enough to see how Ms Dorries’ stance could be parlayed into ‘preference’ or ‘ideology’, quite apart from the problems in identifying this ‘will of the people’; certainly, it is not Ms Dorries alone who may choose the will of the people. She would do well to remember Edmund Burke’s words in his Speech to the Electors of Bristol:

Your representative owes you, not his industry only, but his judgment; and he betrays, instead of serving you, if he sacrifices it to your opinion.

MPs are elected to legislate and to scrutinise based not on the whim of the people, but based on easier access to more information, the time and will to process and use that information honestly, and to come to a reasoned decision. Equally, an MP should not encourage dog-whistle politics. No matter how important you might consider abortion to be, regardless of your position in the debate, you cannot say that it is more important than every other issue combined. That is, however, what Ms Dorries is encouraging people to do:

Each day, I am going to highlight MPs who may need to think very seriously when voting on the issue of reducing the upper limit to 20 weeks, because if they don’t, they may see their majorities wiped out at the next election.

Although the issue is serious, the manner of expression – this above and to the exclusion of all else – cheapens political discourse and will lead to ill-considered judgements if Ms Dorries’ is successful in her aim. It favours fanatic who obsesses over a single issue rather than someone who would take the broader view; it encourages people to vote with their hearts and not their heads. It is, in short, an abrogation of an elected representative’s duty to make an appeal to base instinct rather than reasoned judgement

The full text of Burke’s speech is available courtesy of the University of Chicago. It is short, at a little over six hundred words, but is well worth reading.

xD.

1 – it is not a blog. A blog allows comments; Dorries’ website, even the bit that’s updated regularly, does not allow comments. Interestingly, Burke says something about that too, after a fashion: “it ought to be the happiness and glory of a representative to live in the strictest union, the closest correspondence, and the most unreserved communication with his constituents”.

In response to Dave Hill

Posted on by David Landon Cole

Having been in the ‘set’ position for some time now, the starting pistol has fired and the candidates for Mayor are away. Unfortunately, Dave Hill – a blogger that I like and have a lot of time for – makes the mistake of thinking that Boris and Ken are somehow close on policies:

as a battleground of ideas it’s fairly small.

There is much more at stake here than emphasis, nuance and weighting.

Transport is a real issue that differentiates Ken and Boris.

The big divide so far has been over bus conductors; Boris wants them reintroduced, Ken thinks putting £100m on bus fares is not a good idea, particularly for those suffering from transport poverty. Ken has the vision and track record of pushing forward new, innovative transport policies – like the C-charge and London Overground – that will continue to improve London’s transport.

Affordable housing is a real issue that differentiates Ken and Boris.

The issue on housing is, essentially, how to deal with recalcitrant boroughs that don’t want to build affordable housing. Where Ken would compel, Boris wants to ask nicely and hope. That doesn’t mean riding rough-shod over local views, but accepting that the interests of the city as a whole have to before those of a given borough.

Carbon charging is a real issue that differentiates Ken and Boris.

Where Ken has made concrete improvements on London’s carbon output by promoting hybrid-drive and fuel-cell buses, the LEZ and congestion charging, Boris Johnson praised bush for “scrumpling up” the Kyoto protocol, has called ken’s low emission zone “punitive and draconian” and would scrap the western extenson zone of the C-charge itself.

Competence is a real issue that differentiates Ken and Boris.

The hole in Boris’ budget is important in how the mistake came about. He assumed that every bus route in London was similar to the two heritage routes that have conductors. They are not; it is fairly obviously a wrong assumption that shows a lack of understanding of London. Boris’ tendency towards gaffes could also damage London; a repeat of the Liverpool incident on a trade mission could do real damage to London plc.

What similarities there are between Ken and Boris are in no small part due to the manifest successes of Ken’s programme over the last eight years. The C-charge was met with howls of protests but, now, Boris cannot say that he will scrap it (although he would reduce its size, as I mentioned). It is completely wrong to think that a vote for Ken and a vote for Boris will make no difference four years down the line. There are concrete, policy differences that will make a big difference; equally, the tone of the Mayor can make a difference to London, both in terms of promoting cohesiveness within the city and promoting the city overseas as a place to visit, work and invest.

xD.

Interview with Ken Livingstone

Posted on by David Landon Cole

I was able to interview Ken Livingstone this morning following the launch of his transport manifesto. Unfortunately, announcements kept coming over the tannoy, hence the odd cutting and jumping.Dave Hill also spoke with Ken, and his interview is available here along with thoughts on the Mayor’s transport manifesto here. There is more on the manifesto from Ken’s own website.

More tomorrow.

xD.

Liberal criticism of the BBC

Posted on by David Landon Cole

As I have said before, I am fan of the BBC. That does not mean it receives my unqualified support.

I’m afraid I think that the arguments of the ‘Biased BBC’ et al. are rather mean-spirited. Although I disagree with it very strongly, there is a perfectly respectable argument against the BBC’s existence. You could, for instance, say that for a government to have its own broadcaster is dangerous or that it gives the state control over the EM spectrum that would be better dealt with as private property. Although I disagree with them, they are serious arguments that bear consideration.

There is also an argument to say that the BBC is biased. I know Labour activists who consider the BBC to be anti-Labour at the moment (having been anti-Tory during the Thatcher years). There are, as we know, people who feel the BBC is incorrigibly left-wing. These are both arguments for change or reform, but they do not address the rationale behind the BBC’s existence. Funnily enough, I know people in the Labour party who are convinced of its anti-Labour bias; Cameron’s comments are picked up more readily than Brown’s, Andrew Neil and Nick Robinson are there as commentators and the BBC really had it in for Blair over Iraq. Some of the criticisms of the pinko-liberal-Guardianista-limp wristed-vegetarian BBC as trying to force multiculturalism down our throat may be defused by the ‘White’ series that is about to start; we shall see, but you cannot say that the BBC does not grasp the nettle. To try to remove something you don’t like by running it down rather than honestly expressing your arguments is, if nothing else, profoundly undemocratic and expressive of a despair of convincing others of your opinions.

It also makes it harder to constructively criticise the BBC. There are some specific criticisms I would make.

One of the great things about the interweb in general and blogging in particular is that anyone can say what they want, run it up the flagpole and see if anyone else salutes it. It allows for personal, intellectual development, communication and entertainment. That doesn’t mean that everything, much or anything that’s said is worth saying. Much like the end of the film version of Fahrenheit 451, it is impossible to make out a single book because everyone is talking. On the internet, real estate is cheap or free, so it doesn’t matter. BBC News 24 has a grand total of twenty-four hours per day; broadcasting time is limited. Given that I can find out what Barry from Bognor thinks by looking on the internet or ‘pressing the red button’, I fail to see why newscasters feel the need to read out the blitherings of people trying to make a soundbite.

I have a particular complaint against newsreaders. The key there is reader; someone who reads from a prepared script and, if the VT fails, might have to apologise and come back to that story later. They are not there to interview; some of the questions they come out with are particularly uninformed. Why would they be anything else? I am happy to hear a correspondent’s opinions because they specialise in a subject. My concentration span is not so short that I need a thirty-second spot broken up into sub-bite-sized chunks.

Emotive words are another bugbear. Part of the BBC’s remit is to report the facts; describing something with a phrase like ‘terrible atrocity’ attaches an emotive content that the BBC has no right to do. I similarly object to the hand-waving tendency. Watch any news broadcast, BBC or not, and you will see an awful lot of gesticulation. I fear that the reason for this is much the same as the emoting and interviewing; journalists want to be the centre of attention. Someone else cannot be allowed to take the screen during their face time and not only must their story be the most important but we must know that it is their story and we are privileged to receive their opinion. A competent telling of the facts is not enough for them. The genesis of this trend is obvious enough – the emotional impact of certain exceptional stories, like Michael Buerk’s reporting of the famine in Ruritania and the rise of celebrity newscasters. It would be entirely fair to say that I want the BBC to talk about ‘a dying child in the same tones as one would talk about the parts of an internal combustion engine’. The BBC has a strict duty to neutrality that the leader of the Labour party simply does not.

This is part of a general dumbing-down of news. I think the phrase is a little unfortunate; it is rather a dumbing-down of us, the audience, in the opinions of the news broadcasters. This is, I think, due in no small part to the baleful influence of the market’s tendency towards replication of successful models. While Sky News may well make money, they are a commercial organization that makes profit in a manner that the BBC does not. I would also raise the issue of Rupert Murdoch. It is true that the BBC cannot be biased and it is true that interference by the state in broadcasting is, at the very best, seriously problematic and at worst dangerous. However, if all the media subscribes to a given view or set of views, it becomes increasingly difficult to generate and sustain a reasoned debate. Rebekah Wade’s recent appearance at Parliament notwithstanding, I do not believe that Rupert Murdoch exercises no editorial influence over his large stable of media.

As I mentioned above, some of the criticisms made of the BBC are not unreasonable. It would be wholly wrong of the BBC to come out and say that Gordon Brown is the second coming or that David Cameron is like mayonnaise1. There is an implicit bias whenever private, emotional qualifiers are attached to a bare-facts story. This doesn’t mean that investigative shows cannot go on or that Paxman can press people on Newsnight. It doesn’t mean that people and their actions cannot be criticised by the BBC. It does mean, though, that the separation needs to remain and to be clear.

Alex Deane, in what can only be a portent of the last days, has said that there is something positive on the BBC: the Larkin Tapes. I think he accepts that this is a “good thing” that would not be provided by the market. I disagree with Alex’s sentiment inasmuch as I don’t think the BBC should just be producing things that are high-quality but not likely to be produced by the market (or programming for the middle classes); it should be, in the same manner as its news programming, be providing a spur to improve the general level of programming by closing the option of producing endless, cheap programming to commercial broadcasters. Now, it’s easy to see how that happens with David Attenborough. I am unconvinced that ‘What Not to Wear’, ‘Changing Rooms’ or ‘Airport’ meet that test as good value for public money. The amount of money that some presenters – notably but not exclusively Jonathan Ross, who earns £4.5m a year – earn is out of proportion to what could be bought with that money given that the BBC doesn’t need to compete in the chat show market.

In short, I think that the BBC could fulfil its remit more effectively by having less programming but programming that forces other channels to avoid a race to the bottom.
There is a similar debate to be had around sports. This may just be because I don’t particularly like most sport, but I don’t know that chasing after the top sports is a good use of public money given that it’s available on satellite television in (what seems like) every public house in the land. Equally, there is precious little coverage of teams lower down the leagues. If I think of the town where I was born – Yeovil – the football team3 is a major part of the life of the area. It’s the only decent football team for some distance around. Promoting it on the television would do more for the area and the team than showing a Manchester derby, for instance, particularly as there seems to be no shortage of coverage of the top flight. I suspect the same is replicated across the country and for other sports. Under its new Charter, the BBC has to apply a public value assessment that I am not sure this meets. The counter-argument – that this is part of our culture and so needs to be available to all – doesn’t hold up to even the most cursory glance and, in any case, applies as much to the first and second divisions as the Premier League.

BBCi, the name for Auntie’s collective online offering, generally works pretty well it complements and isn’t trying to usurp the TV or radio. I hope that the revamp that will be happening soon goes well and isn’t too slavishly ‘Web 2.0’. My criticism of letting the passenger on the Clapham omnibus have their 160-letter text read out doesn’t apply as web real estate is very cheap and close to limitless. That having been said, I hope it remains a very minor part; most of the comments on the forums are, frankly, worthless. Moreover, I hope the BBC stays away from social media and similar

I am very supportive of the idea of the iPlayer and I hope it’s extended so that more of the classics from yesteryear are available. However, the Beeb has chosen to limit its iPlayer content to that you have to use Microsoft Internet Explorer on a computer with Microsoft Windows XP or Vista for full functionality. Anyone using an older version of Windows or any flavour of Mac or Linux is shut out. This is a reversal of its previous policy of platform agnosticism. DRM is controversial and, at best, deeply flawed. I will save rehearsing the arguments but will say that if the BBC insisted you used a (say) Panasonic TV to watch a programme in colour, we’d be up in arms. This is precisely what is happening with iPlayer. Quite aside from giving a commercial advantage to a single commercial company, it is a particularly bad company to have chosen. It has recently announced Service Pack 1 for its new operating system, Vista. There is nothing unusual in that, except that it might stop programmes working. An advantage of platform neutrality (and, but not necessarily, open source) is that it is much harder for a single actor to cause serious damage. Equally, Microsoft has courted controversy for its attitude towards free markets. Having just been fined €800m (yes, eight hundred million euro) for anticompetitive practices, Microsoft finds itself being hauled up by Neelie Kroes once again.

I hope that the basis on which I support the BBC is clear; it should not be a government-funded version of Sky News or CNN, ITV or UK Gold. It should be making things available that wouldn’t be otherwise and providing such things as might be available at a certain quality that provides a benchmark. The commercial networks don’t seem to achieve this. Channel Four’s unusual setup seems to work, but it does have a lot of misfires.

I have not addressed the World Service, which I think is wonderful; I wish that BBC News 24 were more like it. I hope the BBC continues; I just hope that it is not another source of dross.

xD.

1 – Rich, thick and oily2
2 – and smells faintly of eggs
3 – I declare an interest; my brother is a physio at Yeovil Town FC.

Stop the War Coalition and Channel Four

Posted on by David Landon Cole

A group has been set up on Facebook called (in capitals, so it must be important) ‘Vote Stop the War Coalition for Channel 4 News Award’. It reads rather like the headlines of spam emails and the content of the group is similarly inaccurate. The award in question is ‘most inspiring political personality of the last decade’ and the Stop the War Coalition are not (repeat: not) up for the award.

Stop the War Coalition logo‘Anti-Iraq war protestors’ are up there along with Tony Blair, Ian Paisley and Martin McGuiness, Ken Livingstone, Alex Salmond and the Countryside Alliance. Have a look on the Channel Four website. The fact that the award goes to a rather nebulous group of people rather than one of the organisations behind the protests is interesting. It suggests that the brand identification of the Stop the War Coalition (StWC) is negligible and Channel Four have to copy Time Magazine‘s ‘person of the year 2006’1 in going for a non-entity. This is rather surprising, given that the Stop the War Coalition’s logo is really rather good – easy to remember, easy to identify and easy to reproduce – and its message was supported on a grand scale.

Why, then, has the StWC declined from public view?

Part of the answer is in a previous post of mine:

If the Stop the War Coalition was going to continue as a meaningful force, it needed to attract and retain the soggy left of the ‘Various People Against Nasty Things’ variety. Providing placards that said ‘Victory to the Resistance’ was, at risk of being controversial, not the best way of building a broad coalition. It was a very good way of alienating the people who don’t consider the Socialist Worker newspaper to be some of Fleet Street’s finest editing and putting the few remainders a short step from carrying SWP banners.

although now I would add ‘We are all Hizbullah’ to ‘Victory to the Resistance’. In short, the aim was not to build a mass movement, but to increase the number of members of the SWP, StWC and RESPECT. If the hitrate for long term, useful members was (say) one in a thousand, that would still have yielded two thousand members from the Day X march alone. It made sense to the SWP; given that they believe we are in a permanent arms economy anyway, the war going ahead or not would have been largely immaterial.
Equally, the StWC didn’t represent all of the anti-war movement; it was one of three organisations, the others being CND and MAB, that called the protest. A lot of the people who opposed the war and marched under the StWC’s roundel never felt any particular attachment to it as the representations made by Lindsay German et al. never really resonated with the Chelsea tractor drivers. The messages were about imperialism, when what people felt was either that Britain was a client state or that it was just a wrong decision, badly taken. Imperialism – the desire to cow the Iraqi people – didn’t enter into most people’s opposition because they didn’t believe it to be so.

I am not sure of this point, so forgive me if sounds a bit strangled, but the StWC also sought to forge links with the Muslim communities in the UK. The questions there are which Muslim communities? and who’s linking to them?. Had the StWC really been about preventing a racist backlash in response to the Iraq war, it would have done a lot more to bring groups together. It didn’t, the evidence being the quite common anti-Muslim sentiment we see expressed in the press. I’m not blaming StWC for racism, but I am saying that they failed to do as much as they could have done because they were more interested in building a political movement that wasn’t there to be built.

There was never single set of ideas behind the brand; in essence, there never was a brand. The StWC had an organisational role that it could have used to advance political knowledge in the UK. It squandered the opportunity so that, a few years later, all people remember is that a lot of people were quite annoyed about …something.

There is, at the time of writing, no mention of the award nomination on the Stop the War Coalition website.

xD.

1 – I’m thinking of including ‘Time person of the year 2006’ on my CV.

Political party funding

Posted on by David Landon Cole

Over at Liberal Conspiracy, Sunny asks four questions.

1) Is Labour still the vehicle for liberal-left ideals?
2) Or is that only because it is in power?
3) What should be the future for party financing?
4) How can any grass-roots liberal-left movement have impact?

Here are my answers.

1. Is Labour still the vehicle for liberal-left ideals?

Yes. It has the history, the recognition and the systems in place. If we look at one of the alternatives that has been mooted on LC, the
Green Party, we see that it is only starting to make serious headway in electoral terms and that it continues to struggle with finding a
consolidated public voice.

Equally, the emotional attachment to Labour for many people is strong. Some people have the opposite emotion, and would quite happily go to a
Respect or SWP, while some would go for an Orange Book flavour of LibDem. There can be no doubt that trying to change vehicle would lead
to the liberal/left going in lots of different directions and giving the Tories almost free rein.

It does not mean that it cannot be the only body, but the single issue campaigns that I suspect many of us identify with stand a better chance of having effect with a single party to promote them at Parliament.

2. Or is that only because it is in power?

The Government is starting ? just starting ? to give the impression of being in Government but not in power. However, devolution to Wales,
Scotland, Northern Ireland and London, and to a lesser extent local councils, means there are other things for which to fight. I would say
that it is a lot easier to make changes when in power than when out of power. Even if Labour were out of power at Westminster, it would remain the best chance of regaining it.

3. What should be the future for party financing?

I am not an expert on the law, but I’ll give some thoughts; they largely follow on from Hayden Phillips’ report.

Firstly, there must be a hard cap on expenditure; donations are a trickier issue, but the arms race that drives the search for donations
could be limited and so make concentrating on a strategy of more, smaller donors more attractive. Labour would like to see less corporate donations to the Tories, and the Tories less to Labour from the Unions. As these are red lines that the parties won’t cross, it seems to me that the funding issue is only going to move slowly and with tinkering at the edges; expenditure is a different matter.

Secondly, if there is to be further state funding, it must be on a capped, donation-matched basis. I remain very dubious about the effect
that state funding has on preventing political parties dying out and being formed.

Thirdly, spending outside of elections must be included in a cap. It is too easy to saturate an area before a Parliament is dissolved.

Fourthly, the parties must realise that they are going to have to change their advertising strategies and see that they will not have
the financial wherewithal to run campaigns like a commercial organisation would. This means less money on billboards and more on
supporting local parties to go door-to-door.1

I was Treasurer of my CLP for two years and had to report certain donations if they fell above a given value. It is a time-consuming job
and one consideration must be for any changes to be practicably implementable by volunteers.

Ultimately, it must be connected to a cultural change in campaigning for it to have effect.

4. How can any grass-roots liberal-left movement have impact?

The grass-roots liberal-left movement should be the Labour Party. I think there is a degree of putting the cart before the horse on this
one. The question is one of engagement; how does the Labour Party get more people to give small amounts of money? I would say that
The Labour Party probably can’t, but that the Anytown Constituency Labour Party can. Achieving this requires members of the
Labour movement – the Party, the Co-Op movement, the Unions – to turn up to meetings, to take an interest in internal party democracy and to show that there is a ‘market’ for this. It also requires people nearer the top of the Labour Party (and here I’m thinking of the elder
statespeople of the PLP) to convey both the message and the weight behind the message.

A brief note; over at Liberal Conspiracy, there is mention of the McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform act. It has only a few lessons
for the UK because candidates rather than parties attract funding in the US; because of the winner-takes-most effect of the presidential
system; and because of the Supreme Court’s ability to overrule decisions made by the Congress. There is also greater public acceptance of large donations. The main thing to learn, as McCain said at the time, is that it is not possible to ever come up with a definitive set of laws as people are always looking for loopholes. Vigilance and adaptability are key.

xD.

1 – I think measures to reduce the distortion towards marginal seats would be useful, but that is a different kettle of sustainably-caught fish.

The Oxford Union, a Racist and a Holocaust Denier

Posted on by David Landon Cole

The Oxford Union is a private debating society; only members can attend its proceedings. Its appeal for speakers is in being able to influence some of the top minds in the UK and the world and, of course, being recognised as worthy of such an opportunity. It does not matter a hoot whether people outside the intelligentsia have heard of it, particularly as it is frequently confused with OUSU, the Students’ Union, and that its finances are secure thanks to the formation of the Oxford Literary and Debating Union Trust.

The invitation to Nick Griffin and David Irving were not ever about free speech; they were about raising publicity for the current administration of the society. There was no facility for Messrs Griffin and Irving’s comments to be disseminated; consideration was not given to those who would speak against this pair of pukes – viz. an email from Luke Tryl of October 15th – beforehand.

Equally, Griffin and Irving are the worst people to choose to argue for freedom of speech; not because of their repulsive politics, but because they are too easily open to arguments against the person rather than the arguments they propose. Furthermore, they well know that few people at the Oxford Union will give two hoots for anything that a thug of a politician and a poor historian will say; however, the boon to the BNP and its fellow travellers will, I think, be substantial. If the Oxford Union wanted to have an informative debate for its members on freedom of speech, I would have thought that John Gray, Inayat Bunglawala and Ayaan Hirsi Ali would have been better speakers; controversy for its own sake is a poor substitute for radical thought and honest learning.

I said at the beginning of this post that the invitation was about publicity, not free speech. Perhaps that is unfair, and I should attribute it to incompetence rather than malice. Either way, I hope that Mr Tryl, who appears to have a nascent political career, takes a step back to consider the effects that the actions he and his associates have undertaken will have. The message that will be taken away from this is that a bad politician and a bad historian are people who are worth listening to.

Oxford Councillor Antonia Bance has one take on it; Skuds has a rather different one.

xD.

Luke Pollard for South West Devon

Posted on by David Landon Cole

My friend Luke Pollard has been selected as Labour’s prospective Parliamentary candidate for South West Devon, standing against the Tory Gary Streeter. I’m delighted that Luke is standing in the county from where he hails. He’s a hard-working candidate with the experience, both professional and campaigning, to make a real difference to the area. His knowledge of all levels of political life will prove, I’m sure, invaluable.

His website is at lukepollard.net.

xD.