Tuesday, September 01, 2009 

The Maltese double cross part 4.

It would be tempting to dismiss the continuing posturing and political point-scoring over the release of Abdelbaset al-Megrahi as a late silly season skirmish between parties with nothing else to argue about. Yet this whole dispiriting farce in fact seems to be where politics in this country is going - away from actual policy to focusing on unprovable conspiracies, and also interfering directly with decisions that should be made not on ideological background but on the facts available before the person at the time.

Incredible though it might seem, nothing has actually changed since al-Megrahi was released on the 20th of August. Al-Megrahi is still terminally ill, although some have called into question the prognosis that he has only 3 months or less to live; the decision was still made wholly by the Scottish government, which the documents released today don't even begin to alter; and lastly, the decision was the right one, taken by Kenny MacAskill, and also one which was supported by the prison service and parole board. It remains a nonsense and half gesture that al-Megrahi should have been released to a hospice, as some have suggested, regardless of the probably exaggerated security costs mentioned by MacAskill. The best solution remains that al-Megrahi should have been granted compassionate release, but allowed to continue with his appeal against his conviction in the interests of justice.

Al-Megrahi's dropping of his appeal, which he didn't need to, remains the only real properly unanswered question surrounding the case, and should be the main bone of contention, along with MacAskill's visit to him, which many have deemed unnecessary. Whether al-Megrahi was told that he had to drop his appeal otherwise it would cause major problems with his release is unclear, but it seems likely that it was intimated to him or his lawyers in some way. Likewise, why MacAskill felt that he needed to meet the man convicted of the Lockerbie bombing when he could have made his decision without doing so is also currently impenetrable, and is only likely to lead to conspiracy theories.

Instead we're being lead on a wild goose chase, where everyone seems to think that something isn't right, yet no one has found any definitive evidence to prove it. It's quite obvious that since Libya emerged from its pariah status that the UK state and the companies which are only at arms length from it have been salivating at the opportunities which the country promises, and it's equally obvious that Libya, as proven by the documents released today, was intent on getting al-Megrahi back at the earliest opportunity, with the likes of Jack Straw scrabbling around looking for a way for al-Megrahi to be eligible for return under the prisoner transfer agreement. Who knows quite why Jack Straw suddenly came round to the idea that despite previously saying al-Megrahi had to be excluded from the agreement that he could in fact be included in it, although we can probably guess. The government was never going to release anything that directly implicated it; you only have to look at the tenacity with which it is refusing to hand over documentation on Binyam Mohamed's treatment to see that. Instead Straw and the government will doubtless be mildly embarrassed at how easily his mind could be turned, as will Brown and Miliband at how they agreed that they didn't want to see al-Megrahi die in jail, a fairly benign thought to make clear, considering how it's distasteful in the extreme for anyone to die from cancer while in prison, even a mass-murderer, and also knowing how outraged Libya would be.

Yet if anything the documentation makes the Scottish parliament and the SNP look far better than they did originally. They clearly wanted al-Megrahi excluded from the prisoner transfer agreement (PDF), unless they were just going through the motions, something which the UK government decided wasn't going to happen. The machinations of Downing Street look shady; Salmond and MacAskill look pure.

Even if the dealings do look shady, David Cameron is calling for a public inquiry on the grounds of a hypothetical, and demanding to know what the prime minister thinks about a decision which he couldn't make and which is none of his business to interfere with. Cameron isn't the only one playing politics though, as we saw previously: every major party both in Scotland and Westminster with the exception of the SNP has disagreed with the decision, almost certainly in some instances purely because they can, rather than what they would have done were they to make the decision. Somewhere in all of this there is a dying man, denied the opportunity to clear his name, and over 280 families in similar circumstances, some equally uncertain of how their loved ones came to die, others outraged by the decision to release the man in anything other than a box. All are being ignored for as ever, short term political gain. This isn't going to win any elections, it isn't even going to make a difference in opinion polls; it's either, according to your view, bringing a good, humane decision into disrepute, or even further distracting attention from someone who has escaped justice. Politics is as usual struggling to pull itself out of the sewer.

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9/01/2009 08:09:00 PM | | | links to this post

Thursday, August 06, 2009 

Jack Straw, also synonymous with heartless bastard.

It seems that we have Ronnie Biggs to thank for two things: firstly, for demonstrating just what condition you have to be released from prison on "compassionate" grounds, and secondly for highlighting what a charmless, inhumane bastard Jack Straw is.

On the 1st day of last month Straw ruled that Biggs couldn't be released because he was "wholly unrepentant". This was despite the fact that Biggs can't talk, walk, eat or drink. A few days before Straw's ruling he had fell and broken his hip; the parole board without apparently being sardonic, said the risk he posed "was manageable under the proposed risk management plan". The risk from a man who has to be fed through a tube and who can barely walk must rank up there with the risk posed by eating Pop Rocks and then drinking Coke, or the risk of being mauled to death by a band of marauding gerbils. Straw didn't bother to explain how keeping such a man in prison at a cost doubtless far in excess of that if he was in a nursing home was justifiable except in terms of pure vindictiveness. If the aim was to please the authoritarian populists in the tabloids, he failed: even they blanched at a man close to death being kept inside for no real reason except the establishment getting its own back for being played a fool for years.

37 days later and Biggs' condition has now deteriorated so significantly that Straw has granted parole on "compassionate" grounds. This in effect means that Biggs is about to die, with his son hoping that he survives long enough to see out his birthday on Saturday. If Straw had granted Biggs parole back on the 1st of July, he might just have been able to enjoy a few days of something approaching freedom; now he's likely to just slip away, having gone down with pneumonia. Politicians such as Straw justify the likes of Iraq war on the basis that even if hundreds of thousands of people died, the ends justified the means; in any event, rarely do they see the consequences of their actions close up, and even then they can take the abstract view, that they weren't personally responsible even if in the chain of command. Yet Straw can hardly deny in this instance that he may well have directly contributed to Biggs' suffering further than he needed to. Straw's shamelessness though seems unlikely to even slightly twinge his conscience, even when others would have been deeply troubled by just that thought.

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8/06/2009 09:33:00 PM | | | links to this post

Wednesday, July 01, 2009 

Basic inhumanity.

What possible purpose is served by the refusal to grant parole to Ronnie Biggs? The only conclusion that can be reached is that this is pure political grandstanding by Jack Straw, designed to win favour with the more punitive tabloids. It's also an insight into the similarly ridiculous way in which the prison system works. While Biggs was clearly guilty of his part in the Great Train Robbery, those convicted of murder who reject their guilt cannot be considered for parole and so are destined to spend their entire life behind bars until they do so, as Sean Hodgson almost did, until finally proved innocent by newly discovered forensic evidence.

As Biggs has apparently refused to show repentance for his crime and has not taken part in the courses which those looking to be released usually have to pass before their parole is granted, he looks set to languish in a cell until he dies, which might not be that far in the future. According to his family, Biggs can no longer speak, cannot walk and at the weekend broke his hip after a fall. Keeping a man in prison in such circumstances is the heighth of stupidity, as not only can he not receive the help that he obviously needs, but he also doubtless takes up extra resources which could be better used elsewhere. The prison system is overcrowded enough as it is, without also having invalids who now only seem to be inside because of the perniciousness of a government minister. It would be different if Biggs' crime was similar in proportion to that of say, Ian Brady's, still refusing after all these years to reveal where his final victim was buried, but despite the huge amount seized in the robbery, no one suffered to anywhere near the extent to which it would be appropriate to inflict a similar amount of suffering on those guilty. Jack Straw seems to be just playing to the gallery yet again.

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7/01/2009 08:00:00 PM | | | links to this post

Monday, March 23, 2009 

Rights and responsibilities in a policy vacuum.

2009 is turning out to be an incredibly strange year as far as politics is concerned. By any measure, Labour ought to be doing far far worse in the polls than it currently is - most showing a Conservative lead of around 12 points, which if repeated at the ballot box would give Cameron's Tories either a very slim majority or result in a hung parliament. Labour would suffer major casualties, but still not have been wiped out to anything like the extent to which the Tories were in 1997. It's uncertain why despite the recession that Labour's support is holding up, even if reports claiming that if the recession bottoms out before polling day that Labour could still pull it back seem optimistic at best. Brown's constant repetition of two points, firstly that the economic crisis is global, which is true, but doesn't acquit him especially as far as banking regulation goes, and secondly that the Conservatives are the "do nothing" party, which is far less accurate, might be having some effect, but it also seems to be as others constantly witter, that voters like Cameron but don't like his party or trust them.

At the same time, there seems to be an almost complete deficit of policy discussion coming from all the main parties. This is to be expected when all thoughts turn towards the economy, and should it ought to be remembered what so many of us bemoaned for long periods - that when the differences over how to run economy went the major differences between the political parties also went. This doesn't excuse however the almost complete lack of discussion about anything other than taxes, havens and bail-outs, which has become increasingly glaring, entertaining as the Tories bickering internally over tax is. After years of discussing Iraq, we seem to want to blot all talk of Afghanistan out, a war which has never been explained in anywhere near the detail that Iraq was and continues to be. Everyone knows the supposed reasons why we went into Iraq, yet if you asked the same question about what we're doing in Afghanistan shoulders would be shrugged uniformly. We've gone from politicians wanting the troops to leave without firing a single shot to an average of around one body a week returning home, all without anything approaching a reason from a minister as to why such blood and treasure is being spent on such an apparently endless conflict.

As well as the recession, this is also partially down to the election being probably only just over a year away, and we're either at the beginning of the phony war or fast approaching it. Labour's legislating instinct has also somewhat fallen away under Brown, with the resulting dullness of Westminster except over the continuing fallout over expenses not helping. Into all this greyness, Jack Straw seems to want to inject a bit of colour, by finally getting round to publishing the green paper on "rights and responsibilities", much delayed having being trumpeted since Brown's ascension to the throne, as it were, as part of his agenda for constitutional reform. It soon becomes clear why it has been repeatedly kicked into the long grass - even by New Labour's standards, this is a document of such woe and potential pitfalls that it's quite something that it has finally come to light at all.

Fundamentally, you have to approach this knowing two things: firstly, that Labour quite rightly finally got round to introducing the European Convention on Human Rights, largely drafted by us, into our own common law, negating the need for claimants to have to go to Europe to gain recompense. Secondly, that despite its British origins, the tabloids and others have long regarded the ECHR and the HRA as foreign entities, enshrining rights that are beyond the pale, such as the right to life, right to a private family life, right against inhuman and degrading treatment etc, making the HRA appear to be a charter only for terrorists and criminals, and also one which very sadly might well threaten the tabloids' business model, bringing hated ideas of European privacy to our media and stopping the scandal sheets from splashing on the latest strumpet to shag a star. Since then Labour has always deeply regretted introducing it, and has at best put up a shallow defence of it, although Jack Straw, having introduced it, has put in a better one than others. Also to be noted is that the HRA has done very little to prevent the same government from drastically reducing actual civil liberties, given the lengths of time it takes for appellants to go all the way to Strasbourg and challenge things such as the DNA database, our own courts having not seen things the same way as the European one eventually does.

Straw's cherished bill of rights and responsibilities is then at best an attempt to make up for the unpleasantness surrounding the HRA. Straw has tried to cover this up by noting the "interesting times" in which we are living, suggesting that turmoil has often led to constitutional reform, and at the same time somewhat insultingly given the proposals bracketing the "R 'n' R" he has developed with the likes of the American declaration of independence, the subsequent constitution and the French 1789 declaration of the rights of man and the citizen. This might have worked if Straw's bill was a relatively recent idea, but it dates back to before the start of the credit crunch, if we have to call it that. It hence takes on a very different tone, one far more associated with that of New Labour - one of control.

The obvious point to make is that rights protect us, whether from the state or from other individuals or corporations. Responsibilities, on the other hand are the unwritten rules, or indeed, actual written laws which we already know we have to abide by, and which we don't need informing about. Straw actually seems to want to take it even further than this though: he seems to want to extend responsibilities into the territory of norms and values, into outright conformity with the state. The argument that the green paper makes is that some of these existing responsibilities are "arguably so central to our functioning as a society that they deserve an elevated constitutional status...". This argument might be more convincing if the responsibilities which Straw is thinking of were either breaking down and being ignored or if they weren't already being treated with respect. Yet it's a list of essential banalities which Straw wants to enshrine: treating NHS staff with respect, caring properly for children, "participating in civic society through voting and jury service", assisting the police, paying taxes, obeying the law. Yes, seriously, Straw wants potentially to enshrine obeying the law as a responsibility. While these are banalities, there's also something far more sinister lurking underneath them, especially when it comes to voting and assisting the police: neither are legally required, although you can be charged with perverting the course of justice for deliberately obstructing the police in the course of their investigations. This seems to be New Labour setting down on an elevated constitutional status at least two things which should always be personal decisions: the right not to vote especially should be as important as the right to vote.

Before we get too carried away, we ought to note that the chances of this becoming law still seem pretty slim, and the green paper itself acknowledges that the rights in the ECHR and HRA "cannot be legally contingent on the exercise of responsibilities". In others words, even if we do this, we know full well that we cannot in any way enforce them. All they're destined to be is pretty words, a sop to authoritarian opinion whilst also underlining our own far from libertarian attitudes. Even with this in mind, it bears comparison to the great aforementioned documents - nowhere in the American constitution does it outline how those in society are expected to behave whilst wielding their right to bear arms and arm bears and everything in-between, elevating them above normal status because of their utmost importance in ordering society. It smacks of a government that has become so mad with power that it no longer knows how or where to wield it; it just has to do it, and even something as important to the state as the constitution is not out of bounds to the wackiest thinking when it comes to trying to win favour with some of the nation's media. If this is the stuff to fill the policy vacuum, perhaps we want things to remain lifeless for as long as possible.

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3/23/2009 11:49:00 PM | | | links to this post

Friday, February 27, 2009 

Jacqui Smith's contempt for the rule of law.

Keeping with Jack Straw, he's got an article in the Graun today protesting bitterly at those of us daring to suggest that we might be sleepwalking towards a police state. He naturally brings up Labour's introduction of the Human Rights Act, which does indeed deserve some form of recognition; problem is that it hasn't stopped the government itself from repeatedly breaching it.

Pertinently, Andy Worthington provides an example of the state power which New Labour wields when it thinks no one will notice or care. Following last week's Lords ruling that Abu Qatada and two unnamed Algerians can be deported, the Home Office attempted to take advantage by claiming that this meant it could revoke the bail of the two men, as well as three others also accused of involvement with terrorism. They decided however not to inform their lawyers of this, and when they did they were gagged until yesterday, when they launched a challenge before the Special Immigration Appeals Commission. SIAC ruled that no further action should be taken against the men until next week, with a full hearing scheduled for Thursday.

This wasn't however good enough for the Home Office. The two Algerians, rather than being driven home as ordered were instead taken straight to Belmarsh - in direct defiance of SIAC's ruling. The other three men were picked up in raids on their homes. Presumably this was what the Home Office had planned to do - and went through with it regardless of the ruling.

Thankfully, in a subsequent ruling today SIAC decided that all of the men with the exception of one of the Algerians should be released under the prior decided conditions, although whether this has actually happened or not is unclear. It does however show just how Jacqui Smith views the opinion of the courts when they rule against her - with utter contempt, as also exemplified by the attempt to wriggle out of the ECHR ruling on the DNA database. As Worthington points out, the Magna Carta established that the king could not on his say-so imprison someone without his peers or the law agreeing; New Labour just cannot help repeatedly ripping the rule book to shreds.

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2/27/2009 11:03:00 PM | | | links to this post

 

Rendition flashback.

Thanks must go to Mr Eugenides for reminding me of a post from 3 years ago which directly accused Jack Straw of lying:

Q 23. Unless we all start to believe in conspiracy theories and that the officials are lying, that I am lying, that behind this there is some kind of secret state which is in league with some dark forces in the United States, and also let me say, we believe that Secretary Rice is lying, there simply is no truth in the claims that the United Kingdom has been involved in rendition full stop, because we have not been, and so what on earth a judicial inquiry would start to do I have no idea.

This was part of his evidence to the Foreign Affairs committee on the 13th of December 2005, six days after a memo had been circulated, subsequently leaked to the New Statesman, that suggested "moving the debate" on about our involvement with rendition. Since then, it's subsequently turned out that we've been fully complicit in both rendition and torture, but it's well worth reminding yourself of just what a bunch of lying cunts some of our leading politicians are.

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2/27/2009 10:08:00 PM | | | links to this post

Tuesday, February 24, 2009 

A veto to protect himself.

The decision not to release the minutes of the meetings of the cabinet on the 13th and 17th of March 2003 is both unsurprising and wholly reflective of the entire New Labour approach to so-called open government. Ever since the request was put in under the Freedom of Information act in late December 2006 the government never had any intention of releasing the discussions and had throughout opposed doing so, yet it continued to go along with the pretence of there being a possibility that they would nonetheless be released if the continual appeals were granted. This illusion of accountability has long been held out, whether it be through the introduction of the FoI itself, the Human Rights Act or through continual promised inquiries on various things, yet at each time it has been thwarted. Nothing could be more indicative than this than to repeatedly hold out hopes only then to dash them at the latest possible opportunity.

All this said, it's never been exactly clear what was hoped to be gained from the release of these exact cabinet discussions, mainly because we already know reasonably well that there is little of any great interest in them, which is also why it's so perplexing that the government has refused to do so. We already have for instance Robin Cook's book on his resignation and its wider issues, where he went into some detail on the cabinet discussions leading up to the war, and the major disagreements and challenging of the policy all happened long before March 03. By then it was only Cook and Clare Short who were dissenting, and this is further backed up by the similar accounts in Alastair Campbell's diaries, flecked by his loathing and venom against Short. Short herself has said much the same thing, that there was little if any actual discussion of the legality of the war and the change in position by Lord Goldsmith. The real interest is what went on behind the scenes, with many alleging that Goldsmith was extensively lent on to change his opinion, even begged to do so. That he was malleable in his legal opinion was illustrated by his role in the BAE-Serious Fraud Office slush fund inquiry, which makes it even less unbelievable that he relented in the face of such pressure.

Instead the real reason for withholding the minutes might well be embarrassment, as others have also pointed out, regarding Blair's casual form of "sofa government", as it became known, where little was discussed and all the major decisions were left with Tony himself and his inner circle. Cabinet meetings instead became like a perverse version of "show and tell", individual ministers invited to inform the rest of the class of what they'd got up to since the last meeting, with little analysis or debate about the major issues. This is disputed in some quarters, but is certainly the picture that again leaps out from Campbell's diaries, only on rare occasions there being any dissent.

The arguments made by both Straw and the Tories, as well as the Blairite apologist Martin Kettle that the release of cabinet minutes would undermine the smooth running of government by making the confidential discussions which go on a matter of the public record are all false ones. The tribunal itself declared that this was an exceptional case, which is what it was. There is nothing more serious than the agreement to go to war and the discussion of the legal basis for that is of fundamental importance, even if it turns out that very little of consequence was actually said. The fear is that this would somehow lead to a free for all, with Kettle suggesting people would want to know the same about the discussions over the third runway for Heathrow, or that as a result they would say what people thought they wanted to hear rather than what they actually thought, putting all the real decisions completely behind closed doors and not where it will eventually come out. The former is a logical fallacy because the tribunal would obviously not subsequently go back on its word on lesser issues, and furthermore, the claim that the more important the discussion the more important the confidentiality is one that is designed to keep the public in the dark. Secondly, the idea that decisions and the real important discussions do not already occur behind closed doors and in the margins and corridors is laughable: Labour's first ten years in power was characterised by just that. One of Brown's few improvements has been that more decisions and debates do seem to have occurred in cabinet, or at least more of them have been leaked to the press, including the bust-ups and almost violent disagreements which have occurred. That this release would exacerbate the desire for complete secrecy is little more than a deflective measure.

With all this in mind, the decision not to publish is baffling. When there is little chance of there being anything in embarrassing or revelatory in the minutes, why are they should apparently scared of the consequences? The anger about the Iraq war has now long dissipated except amongst a distinct minority, directly correlated to the decline in the number of bodies in bags returning to Brize Norton. It's with a piece with the refusal to hold a full independent inquiry until every single British item is back home, when again the chief perpetrator has now left the building. Brown of course financed the war, and didn't speak out against it, and is therefore complicit, but few are going to throw the book at him on this rather than on other more pressing issues which he was and is at the direct centre of. Instead perhaps this is something to do with Straw himself: he is almost the last relic of the old regime left at the top directly associated with the war. The person who did his master's bidding then, and also instituted the FoI itself, is now very conveniently the person to slam shut the door of openness. They have never been held to account for Iraq, and now they want to ensure that at least while in power itself they never are. The old adage in journalism was to publish and be damned. This government is too cowardly to do the former and determined not to be the latter.

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2/24/2009 10:16:00 PM | | | links to this post

Wednesday, January 14, 2009 

Just another assault on civil liberties.

One of the things about New Labour and its insistent, constant apparent dedication to the slow sapping of our civil liberties is that it never knows when to stop. It's forced to back down one month, then the plans are reintroduced the next, or ever so slightly modified to make them slightly more palatable. Exactly this has occurred over the plans to hold inquests in private without a jury:

Jack Straw, the justice secretary, will today revive his plan to hold inquests that involve aspects of national security in private without a jury when the coroners and justice bill is published.

The controversial measure, which could be invoked in cases like those of British servicemen killed by American forces in Iraq and the shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes on the London tube, was shelved last month when it faced severe criticism during the passage of the Counter-Terrorism Act.


Like so much else it has proposed in the past, it hasn't even began to make a case or explain why holding inquests in private might be necessary, and indeed, as embarrassing as the inquests into the death of Jean Charles de Menezes was, and as annoying as it is to be constantly reprimanded by upstart coroners over the deaths of troops, it still doesn't seem to merit holding them in private.

The question then has to be, does New Labour know something we don't? Is something even more damaging on the horizon which it needs to pre-empt? Or is this purely just in case, should the police shoot dead another foreigner while chasing suicide bombers, or the deaths in Afghanistan further ramp up in another futile war where troops are dying because of poor equipment?

That's the other thing with Labour. You simply can't work them out, even 11 years after coming to office. You can't fathom why they would put themselves through such ignominy and attacks from their own supporters, not to mention judges and opposition MPs, purely for something they might never have to use. Unlike with detention without charge, no one's going to blame them for not diluting the right to an open inquest, so what do they possibly gain except perhaps kudos from the security services or self-assurance? Perhaps they are just simply determined to cautiously but inexorably turn the country into an authoritarian state. Perhaps they're just utter bastards. Both are as reasonable explanations as the ones they're openly giving.

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1/14/2009 11:59:00 PM | | | links to this post

Friday, October 31, 2008 

Analysing the ashes.


After four days of moral panic, the BBC's actions in suspending Ross, with the Radio 2 director resigning does seem to have managed to bring the curtain down for the time being on the Brand-Ross-Sachs affair. What then, if anything, have we learned or have those involved learned?

For Andrew Sachs himself, if he had any illusions about what his granddaughter does with her life, he can't have any now. As always happens to those who choose to sell their stories, the rivals have digged up the not quite frankly very difficult to find "dirt" on her. The Daily Sport splashed on the finding of a lesbian hardcore video in which Baillie has a leading role, the Daily Mirror discovered that she was operating as a £110 an hour dominatrix, and even the Daily Mail, which this morning declared that their witch-hunt had led to a "victory for decency", has decided that the young woman they were so avid in defending the dignity of earlier in the week has a "sordid secret life". The Sun meanwhile, having paid Ms Baillie a princely sum for her story, has what looks like an exclusive video featuring Baillie alongside her fellow "Satanic Sluts". For what Baillie decried as an invasion of the privacy of her grandfather and herself, she has been amply rewarded, seems destined to feature in the lads' mags and on reality TV, and is doubtless thrilled with what has occurred. While impossible to know for sure how much Sachs knew about what his granddaughter got up to, it's hard not to think that he might be somewhat more humiliated by what has followed than by the initial insult from a show that he apparently said could be broadcast as long as it was toned down slightly.

For Lesley Douglas, it seems hardly likely that she'll be out of work for long. Just read the Sun's editorial defence of her, and try to dispel the feeling that there will be shortly be an offer coming her way from News Corporation or BSkyB:

POPULAR Radio 2 boss Lesley Douglas is the first person at the BBC to emerge with any dignity from the Russell Brand-Jonathan Ross debacle. But her head should not have rolled.

It was down to the production staff who let the filth be broadcast to fall on their swords or for Mark Thompson to fire them.

Instead, a talented senior executive whose only fault was that it happened “on her watch” felt compelled to take the blame for the whole sorry bunch of them.

A brilliant 23-year career at the BBC was thus ended by the disgusting stupidity of two highly-paid stars, only one of whom also chose to do the decent thing.

...

But many will question whether he was right to accept Ms Douglas’ resignation.

...

One thing is certain. Ross owes Ms Douglas an enormous debt for deflecting rather greater flak.

Either that or she already has friends in high places in Wapping.

Ross himself meanwhile has stood down from the British Comedy Awards, perhaps more out of the fact that he would be the joke of the evening rather than out of respect for his hiatus from the BBC. Still, the reporters are outside his home, watching the preparations for a Halloween party. Perhaps Paul Dacre might go along as himself?

As for the "self-appointed, self-obsessed metropolitan narcissists who control so much of our public life", they still must be wondering where this will all end. When year old comedy shows are being dredged for offensive jokes, and not just by the Mail but the Guardian as well, then the possibility for the neutering of Auntie can't be that far away. The Mail has even more examples of "smutty and degrading obscenities" that have recently been broadcast. It apologises to those who might be offended, but quite clearly these things must be repeated, such is the way our tax money is being spent. That there is a Facebook group urging the reinstatement of Ross and Brand which already has 23,549 members, getting close to the total number of complaints made about the Brand show is neither here nor there.

Perhaps though for everybody else this week will show just where the real power really does lie in this land, and it certainly isn't with the politicians. They're just useful when there's a bandwagon already running. No, it's quite clear that for all the advancements of the last decade, even with the rise of blogging and diversification of the media, what really still has the most ability to shape our lives and decide what is and isn't obscene and also potentially what we can and can't watch is the tabloid media. That these people are quite possibly the most unaccountable but powerful individuals in the land has been shown in extraordinary detail. We can at least attempt to get politicians voted out at the next election, but there is no similar way of telling newspaper editors and proprietors with conflicting commercial interests and hypocrisy in spades to take a running jump. Dacre especially, but all the others also will be sitting there tonight absolutely delighted with what they've achieved, and who could blame them? They're meant to be getting weaker, their circulations inexorably dropping, the internet and with it the young and urban now in control, but they've emerged victorious. Who could possibly have known last Saturday evening that two not very funny comedians could have led to such a turn-around over just the course of a week?

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10/31/2008 11:25:00 PM | | | links to this post

Thursday, October 30, 2008 

Spinelessness beyond belief.

Yesterday I wrote that this mind-blowing farce was beyond our finest satirists. You can actually probably go far further: this is now even beyond the most absurdist brainstorms of cartoonists, such is the ridiculousness not just of the entire situation, but the sight, yet again, of the BBC donning the sackcloth and ashes, down on its knees pleading for forgiveness whilst, as Aaron so vividly describes it, the "collective tabloid media buggers it silly with its enormous cock of hypocrisy".

It's really difficult to even begin to get your head around the cant we are talking about going on here. The young woman at the heart of this, the one so deeply offended and betrayed by Russell Brand's bringing up of the fact that he had a sexual relationship with her, has not just sold her story to the Sun for what is reportedly a six figure sum, via the auspices of Max Clifford, but gone even further into exactly what she did with Brand. There I was imagining that this was partially about a grandfather being humiliated by two overgrown teenagers with tales of sexual shenanigans involving a dear relative, something that very few would want to be informed of. Well, unless Mr Sachs is now staying in bed with the covers over his head to escape from this outbreak of hysteria, he's been informed via the front page of the nation's biggest selling newspaper that whilst pounding his granddaughter Brand shouted out a few of his most well known character's famous lines. Or, at least that's if you believe it, which I certainly don't. Still, at least Brand, according to Ms Georgina Baillie, is a crap lover. So crap in fact that she had sex with him three times just to make sure, as she also regales the positively salivating Sun hacks. This self-same newspaper, and I use that word in the loosest possible sense, then in its leader column attacks the BBC for daring to allow such filth to be broadcast.

Nothing though can exonerate the sheer supineness of the BBC's response. It's being criticised for reacting slowly, for not nipping it in the bud immediately as soon as the issue came apparent, but why on earth should the BBC act within moments of a newspaper deciding that something it has broadcasted simply isn't acceptable? It's really difficult to remember that not so long back the organisation stood up defiantly and in the face of really quite bitter pressure, went ahead and showed Jerry Springer: The Opera. The comparison with that majestic piece of theatre is partly why it's so difficult to defend the absolute opposite this time round, but the persecutors then are more or less the exact same ones as now. You can it seems thoroughly satirise religion and trash culture and get away with it, but instead play a prank call on a man who was due to appear on a radio show, who then gave the OK to the show going out as long as some of it was toned down, and the blood and contrition simply don't cease to flow.

Lesley Douglas, the head of Radio 2 has then resigned, but it seems impossible to imagine she would have gone if she hadn't been about to be either severely criticised or pushed out after today's BBC Trust meeting, or as it might as well have been, a kangaroo court upon which the full glare of the tabloid media was on. Brand's resignation was nowhere near enough they had decreed. These self-same moral arbiters, the ones that every single day authorise the effective stalking of celebrities via the paparazzi, who invade the privacy of others for their own short-term gain, who routinely find themselves having to apologise to completely blameless individuals whose grief they have either mocked or interfered with, as the records of the Press Complaints Commission routinely show, who just this year have had to apologise to Robert Murat for accusing him of being involved in the abduction of Madeleine McCann (and let's not even begin on the Express's payouts to the McCanns themselves and the Tapas seven) suddenly found themselves as judge, jury and executioner, with the supposed moral outrage of the public firmly behind them as cover, and they wanted the heads to roll, with them duly handed them.

The real one they wanted though was Ross's, and that's the one that they have as yet not got. Judging by tomorrow morning's front pages, their lust for blood may well have been sated, as they do not seem to be, on the first appearances, calling for his complete banishment. The suspension for twelve weeks though is no real solution, and Ross himself really ought to simply resign, with his apparent so far decision not to do so perhaps suggesting a deal has been made. He has been left high and dry by a management unwilling to throw back a single of the brickbats directed at it, and whilst it is very very difficult to feel sympathy for such a man, it's his salary that has been the scapegoat, and it was the management that decided he was worth £18m, when both ITV and Channel 4 had made clear they were prepared to pay £15m or more over three years for his signature. He will be left by this bizarre sudden disregard for perspective as an emasculated figure, no longer able to do the things that his contract says he is supposed to. What therefore is the point of him?

The real fire though deserves to be aimed at the politicians who decided that this was a bandwagon worth jumping on. The sheer lunacy of the Tories demanding a debate on the subject, just as the news emerges that this year's parliamentary session will amount to just 128-days is indicative of the lack of reality which currently afflicts both the main parties, not just the Conservatives. The bile in my throat had not really risen however until I noticed that Jack Straw's ghost-writer had felt that Ross and Brand were a suitable topic for his regular Lancashire Telegraph column. Here is a man at the heart of our current government's decision to go to war in Iraq, who has spent our collective blood and treasure decimating a country which is only now beginning to get back on its feet, a man that has lied about our country's role in the abduction and torture of "terrorist suspects", and a man that thinks we ought to completely ignore penal reformers in preference to the opinions of our nation's finest tabloid newspapers, and now here he is, asking completely without any apparent irony or self-awareness whether we agree with him that Jonathan Ross has "underwhelming skills". Yes Jack, he does; that however doesn't affect the fact that compared to you he's an absolute fucking renaissance man. Ross and Brand insulted someone; you pissed on our heads and had the audacity to tell us that it was only raining.

This invented scandal has in fact been a real boon for both politicians and the media. There we were last weekend still talking over the fact that both our main parties were looking as sleazy as usual, the economy going down the tubes, oil supplies likely to peak between either 2011 and 2013, with no contingency plan whatsoever for that occurring, a new US president to be elected who will almost certainly be someone who puts our equivalents to absolute shame, questions being asked about Rupert Murdoch's involvement with them again, and up pops something completely irrelevant which for the last three days has been the only story in town, and what's more, one which they can jump on and grab plaudits for from the other press. It is of course directly in this government's interests for the BBC to be as weak, forlorn and unquestioning as possible, and this will directly affect that as well as on general decency standards. For those who haven't forgotten Hutton and still have a grudge to settle, what a fantastic opportunity when everyone else is already aiming the kicks at the corporation's stricken body! For those who want to be able to object to the slightest thing that might offend them or someone else, when better then to strike out for censorship than now, with the BBC itself more or less asking for it?

After all, just how many friends does the corporation now have left? Only the Independent tomorrow has a sympathetic front page, and the Guardian seems to have completely abandoned anything even resembling a kind word, with Peter Tatchell about the only person to have mounted something approaching a defence, and a poor one at that. The Mail's is so vile, so hypocritical, so completely beyond parody that it literally must have emerged from out of Paul Dacre's steaming arsehole. THE BBC WAKES UP TO DECENCY it screams, when the immoral paper wouldn't know decency if it came up and happy-slapped it. Above that, Richard Littlejohn calls it a "stunning victory over self-appointed, self-obsessed metropolitan narcissists who control so much of our public life." You really couldn't make it up. These are the people declaring victory, looking forward to be able to point out every single slightest thing that they don't like, comfortable in the knowledge that for a long time they are going to have a free ride to attack, attack and attack. Already on Newsnight Mark Thompson was asked by Emily Maitlis about a joke involving the Queen which was made on Mock the Week; you can only imagine the mileage that will be got out of everything similar.

What then should the BBC have done? Simple: by yesterday they should have said that the phone calls were out of line, apologised to everyone involved, immediately declared that there will not be a recurrence and that much stricter rules will be put in place before such content is authorised for broadcast. Both Ross and Brand would be reprimanded, told that they were on their last chance, and that their salaries would likely fall as a result. It also though would have additionally made clear that they would not give in to a witch-hunt conducted by a sickeningly unaccountable media, that standards in general would not be changing just because of two men going over the line, and that its commitment to pushing the boundaries, producing challenging programming and confronting those who need to be would undiminished, and that it would be saying no more on the matter. The press may have continued to scream until it was sick, but it would have tired of it eventually. Instead what we have is an organisation once again conducting an act of self-harm in front of the nation as a baying mob looks on, delighted by what it's achieved. It knows full well that self-harm comes before suicide, and they will be looking for every opportunity to provide the noose. And yet again, the BBC can blame no one but itself.

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10/30/2008 11:04:00 PM | | | links to this post

Monday, October 27, 2008 

That insidious criminal justice lobby...

I have very little to add to what both Justin and Dave Osler have already said about Jack Straw's latest exercise in attempting to placate the tabloids, although the idea that there's even a "criminal justice lobby" is incredibly humourous, as is the idea that it has any real influence whatsoever over government policy. If groups such as the Howard League for Penal Reform or the Prison Reform Trust did, then we wouldn't currently have the largest prison population we have ever had, nor would the government be intending to even further extend prison capacity, or to build those self-same prisons with overcrowding built-in.

The parts of the speech released smack of "Unspeak". Straw it seems wants to reintroduce old-fashioned words like "punishment" and "reform", as if they had ever went away. The real reason why they might have become deprecated is because we no longer see prison purely as punishment or purely as reform; we've realised that pure punishment does not reform, just as without punishment there is no incentive to reform. This though is far too touch-feely for the tabloids, or for the victims' families that the Sun especially keeps inflicting upon us: what they want is little more than an eye for an eye, which the system can never provide. Equally disingenuous is his highlighting of terms such as "criminogenic needs of offenders"; a Google search turns up just 32,400 results, most of them American in origin or from psychological academic tomes.

It's not even as if Straw is being anything approaching original. Almost all the previous home secretaries under Labour, including Straw himself, and now the justice secretary since the changes in the Home Office have said they'll be ever tougher on crime, criminals and increasingly cater for victims. Each has also subsequently, after doing so and having failed to provide the punitive measures which they apparently favoured, been ridiculed and pilloried by those they attempted to woo. John Reid was depicted as brainless and Charles Clarke was sacrificed over the foreign prisoners affair; only Blunkett prospered, being given pride of place by the Sun in its columns for his "straight-talk". Straw must surely be aware of the dangers of his approach, but has gone ahead anyway.

And how has the Sun, for example, responded? In the way only it can:

But Helen Newlove, widow of Garry, who was kicked to death by thugs in Warrington, Cheshire, last year, said: “This is too little too late.

“Labour brought in the barmy Human Rights Act in the first place and employed many of these do-gooders themselves on huge salaries.”


Would Newlove like to name on single do-gooder that has been employed on a huge salary? It would be a challenge, as they number next to none.

As for the editorial:

Of course this is all true. Of course prison reformers get their way too often.

*snort*

You talk a good game, Jack. If you really mean business, though, give us those new prisons.

And end the early-release scheme that last year alone saw 31,000 inmates — yes, 31,000 — freed before their time.


All released a whole two weeks' before their sentence would have ended normally and that without which the prisons would be completely full, partially as a result of the Scum's own demands for incessant harsher sentences. Straw can't possibly win, but you almost have to give him credit for trying. The countdown to Straw being depicted as a crazed lunatic setting free criminals to murder your relatives begins now.

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10/27/2008 10:06:00 PM | | | links to this post

Thursday, July 03, 2008 

Anonymity or bust.

Somewhat related to the previous post, as Unity notes on Lib Con the government has published its "solution" to the law lords' ruling on anonymity. His conclusion could have been predicted:

In short, its just what we’ve come to expect from emergency legislation - a badly conceived and prejudicial mess in which political expediency takes precedence over civil liberties.

You can understand why the government has rushed to legislate - the prospect of various unsavoury individuals, to put it lightly, being freed, including potentially the gang "killers" of Charlene and Letisha Shakespeare on what will be described as a "technicality" is enough to get a party of government scared at the potential consequences. Some of the blame has to be however levelled at the police, who unlike the government greatly encouraged the expansion of anonymous witnesses while knowing full well that it had not been properly defined in the legislation which introduced it in the first place. Rather than making clear that it could only be considered as a last resort in cases where otherwise the guilty would go free, it was instead starting to be offered as a first resort, as evidenced by them making clear that the law lords ruling would not affect anyone who was frightened of giving evidence in the Ben Kinsella case, where three individuals have now been charged with his murder anyway.

It isn't just the police though - Louise Casey proposed it for the disabled and elderly who had been victims of anti-social behaviour in her criminal justice system review. The bill does at least contain the clause that a judge will have to consider the possibility of a witnesses' potential to be dishonest before granting an anonymity order, but it still can't be challenged by the defence. While, as with almost everything else at the moment, there isn't a simple solution, witness protection programmes, while expensive, could potentially stop this problem in its tracks. Failing that, as Michael Clarke suggests in the comments, a potential compromise could be allowing the defence to know who the witness is - but restricting them on pain of being expelled from the Bar Council and also being held in contempt of court of revealing the identity to the defendant themselves. The right to a fair trial needs to be paramount - and bad legislation brought in to fix a a temporary problem threatens that.

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7/03/2008 10:43:00 PM | | | links to this post

Saturday, March 29, 2008 

Storm in a rucksack.

And so we come to yet another storm in a teacup:

Jack Straw, the justice secretary, banned the early release of convicted terrorists last night after it emerged that two prisoners had been let out early as part of the government's efforts to ease overcrowding in jails.

Quite apart from the fact the two men are convicted "terrorists" (one had a explosives manual but the judge said he was not a politicised or radical Islamist, the other had a blueprint for a Qassam rocket, which he was presumably going to build out of everyday household items like cornflake boxes, along with other more incriminating jihadist material, but was also linked to the group from Bradford university that recently had their convictions quashed), the only reason this has made the news is because they were released a whopping 18 or 17 days before they would have err, been otherwise released.

Still, at least the man of Straw has now closed the stable door after the two horses have bolted. The next "terrorists" to be released will just have to wait a couple of weeks longer than they otherwise would have done. Job's a good 'un.

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3/29/2008 10:09:00 PM | | | links to this post

Thursday, March 20, 2008 

Scum-watch: The paedo is coming!

A classic Sun front page today:



AND THEN HE'S GOING TO FUCK YOUR KIDS!


As usual, it's a case of reality imitating satire:


The Sun though is naturally conflicted. Outraged as it is by this disgusting paedophile being deported to Britain, it's fully in favour of "foreign" criminals in similar circumstances here being sent back to their home nation. All the Australians are actually doing is throwing their problem on to us rather than dealing with it themselves. If Raymond Horne had gone out to Australia and committed his crimes when an adult, then his deportation would have been fully justified. As it is, he went to Australia as a five-year-old. He is a product of Australian society, and therefore their responsibility, regardless of his nationality. This is the same reason why Learco Chindamo shouldn't have been deported back to Italy whenever his sentence ends; a decision which incidentally wasn't a result of the Human Rights Act, as the Sun today alleged again in its leader, which has since disappeared into the ether.

The Sun article does carry some very pertinent points from Paul Roffey, director of the UK-based RWA Child Protection Service:

accused the Queensland Police and Corrective Services Minister Judy Spence of simply “shifting the problem offshore”.

He said: “Let’s make it English children instead of Australian children — that seems to be her attitude. It’s outrageous.

“These sort of committed paedophiles often live isolated lives by the very nature of their offending. They do not integrate well into society and that often leads to the formation of paedophile rings of like-minded people.

“Horne, who has lived most of his life in Australia, will have no network in the UK. He will feel even more isolated — increasing his risk of him reoffending.”


All very true. The Sun response to this? To directly ask its readers to inform them if they either knew Horne or where he's going to live, therefore ensuring that he will forever be isolated, moving from place to place and as a result even more dangerous than he already his. The Sun has betrayed children themselves before in its apoplexy; it's more than happy to do exactly the same now.

I was also going to take on the Scum's delusional "Hope for Iraq" leader, but as said, it's since gone like all their leaders now do, apparently unarchived. Elsewhere we do have the "mothers in arms" meeting both Jack Straw and David Cameron, carrying their copies of the Sun along with them. Neither seems to have demurred from their demands, or dared to directly criticise "their" campaign, and Jack Straw even says the following about their demand for a universal DNA database:

He vowed to raise with police the expansion of the DNA database, saying: “I don’t understand people who are not happy to give DNA samples.”

It couldn't possibly be because they're concerned about potential mistakes, or indeed that nostrum which the Sun so endorses, if you've got nothing hide, you've got nothing to fear, could it? Therefore if I've nothing to hide, why should the police have my DNA profile? The three mothers' proposals would make every single individual guilty until proved innocent, and the more questionable responses, that their proposals would be a step towards a police state, if not establishing one, aren't that far from hitting home.

She told Mr Straw: “Ninety-nine per cent of Sun readers want it back. You have to listen to the people and what they want.”

Quite right, because 99% of the population are Sun readers, aren't they? And there's more pleasantries about how they want their tormentors extinguished:

“I do not like the thought of Steve Wright just sitting in jail watching TV. I want him dead."

Doubtless Straw and/or Cameron just stared meekly back and didn't say anything, unable to respond to a demand that they can simply never deliver or appease.

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3/20/2008 10:46:00 PM | | | links to this post

Thursday, February 21, 2008 

Rendition: the truth begins to seep out.

Unless we all start to believe in conspiracy theories and that the officials are lying, that I am lying, that behind this there is some kind of secret state which is in league with some dark forces in the United States, and also let me say, we believe that Secretary Rice is lying, there simply is no truth in the claims that the United Kingdom has been involved in rendition full stop, because we have not been, and so what on earth a judicial inquiry would start to do I have no idea. I do not think it would be justified.
Oral evidence given by Jack Straw to the Foreign Affairs committee on 13th of December 2005.

To those who lived there, it was a paradise. Living purely off the land, the islanders, despite having no modern amenities, had an incredibly tranquil existence. That was until their island was considered as the prime location to be leased to the US military for a naval base, as another island was considered unsuitable because it was home to the rare Aldabra tortoise. The deal was signed, and the Americans requested that the island be "depopulated" for security reasons. The 2,000 inhabitants of Diego Garcia had their island invaded, their dogs shot and then they themselves were finally rounded up and taken to Mauritius, where they were subsequently dumped. The compensation they were given, which amounted to £400 each, was paid directly to the Mauritius government for them to be re-settled. They instead pocketed the money and denied that they had any right to do so. Most still live in hovels and the most severe poverty as a result.

All of this occurred under a Labour government, and it is undoubtedly one of the most despicable and shameful scandals in British history. Even now, despite numerous court rulings, the government refuses to allow them to return to their home, which has been taken over by a monolithic American base from which planes bombed Iraq. They seem to be hoping that those originally displaced that didn't commit suicide in the first place will die, and then be able to claim their children have no right whatsoever to return.

It almost seems fitting that a second scandal, also involving a Labour government, has now also come along concerning Diego Garcia. In a pathetic statement to the House of Commons, David Miliband today admitted that despite all their furious denials, despite the abundant evidence that flights linked to the US rendition program had landed here to at the least refuel, despite MI6 being involved in the rendition of Bisher al-Rawi and Jamil el-Banna to Guantanamo Bay, that evidence has now emerged that rendition flights had indeed landed on UK territory without the US asking for prior permission. Two flights in 2002 refuelled on Diego Garcia, carrying two unfortunates who according to the CIA, who have not told the truth once about the rendition program without being forced to, were not part of the "CIA's high-value terrorist interrogation program" but who nonetheless were taken to Guantanamo Bay and to Morocco respectively. Presumably the one lucky enough to be taken to Morocco was flown there so he could sample the local culture and high quality hashish, and not so he could be tortured like Binyam Mohammed was in the luxury of Moroccan custody. (Newsnight alleges that the plane used to transfer the detainee to Morocco was N397P, a CIA jet that has landed at UK airports on numerous occasions.)

The CIA has denied that Diego Garcia has served as one of the "black sites" where those in the rendition program were taken to be tortured so that the CIA didn't personally get its hands dirty. This is despite Barry McCaffrey, a former four-star US general on a number of occasions stating that prisoners are being held on Diego Garcia, as well as in other five-star US hotels such as Bagram airbase and numerous sites in Iraq, not to mention Gitmo itself.

The Guardian reported last October that the foreign affairs committee was to investigate claims that Garcia had a black site prison, but the revelation today seems to have come about because of the dogged attempts by the all party parliamentary group on extraordinary rendition, led by the tenacious Tory MP Andrew Tyrie, who had used the freedom of information act to request the minutes of political military talks between the US and UK in September last, a claim denied by the government who said that to release such information "would prejudice the defence" of territory by "exposing plans to counter possible terrorist attacks". Instead, they and the US seem to have decided to try and buy the committee off by admitting that rendition flights did use Diego Garcia, but that the island itself is not being used to hold any detainees themselves.

All those involved then are either "sorry" or "regret" this "unfortunate" happening. Never mind that from the very beginning this government has either directly lied, misled or tried to move the debate on when questioned about rendition flights. Jack Straw tried to tell us it was all a conspiracy theory, and from then on they've feigned ignorance at every turn. Andrew Tyrie has described it as "obfuscation and cover-up", and that seems bang on. They've done the very bare minimum from the very beginning in trying to placate critics, refusing to hold anything approaching a proper inquiry, failing to engage with EU-led efforts to investigate the rendition program and not asking of the US even the slightest of searching questions about what the planes linked to the rendition program were doing stopping over at our airports. Miliband now states that he'll compile a list of all said flights concerns have been expressed over and ask the US whether they too have been conveniently forgotten about. It screams of a government being desperate to wait until the initial disquiet and questioning was over before releasing the unsavoury reality. The real question is why they didn't do that as soon as the allegations were raised, with there being no evidence whatsoever that the government even asked the US whether the flights were anything other than kosher. They simply accepted that the US would have asked first before doing so, something now proved to be of the greatest gullibility and naivete. It of course helps that today most of the media are going to be more interested in the conviction of Steve Wright, and then there's also the other whitewash of the day, the inquiry into the bugging of Sadiq Khan.

This is of course from a government that has repeatedly condemned Guantanamo in various terms, most memorably as "an affront to justice". This same government has been complicit in that affront to justice, complicit in the torture of the various individuals caught up in the rendition program, many of whom have never been found guilty of any offence, let alone the "terrorism" which they are accused of being involved in. Indeed, one of those who was rendered through Diego Garcia has now been released, presumably without any compensation and most likely scarred irrevocably by their experience, living in constant fear of their life and without the slightest idea whether they will ever be released, or even put before the "military tribunals" now being set-up to try the most notorious of those held as "enemy combatants". This, as I've written before, ought to be a front-page scandal. Ministers should have resigned. A full judicial inquiry ought to have been set-up to examine not just ministerial complicity, but also security service involvement. Instead we had the whitewash provided by the Intelligence and Security committee. How deeply sad that the Chaggosians, who were treated as more expendable than animals, now know that they were not the only ones to abused in such a way on their paradise home.

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2/21/2008 08:45:00 PM | | | links to this post

Thursday, October 25, 2007 

An (almost) turning point on civil liberties.

After weeks of dispiriting convergence between the three main political parties, variously swapping and stealing ideas on inheritance tax, the environment and benefit reform, all without any uniting vision to tie them all together, it's to be welcomed that Brown, after promising so much change and so far delivering next to none has set out how he intends to be different to Blair on constitutional issues, civil liberties and further empowering parliament. To go with a cliche, you wait ages for a decent speech on policy and then two come along at once, as while Brown was talking at the University of Westminster on liberty, Jack Straw was in Cambridge delivering the Mackenzie Stuart Lecture on a prospective bill of rights.

Martin Kettle on CiF has already suggested that these were speeches aimed directly at Guardian/Independent readers and those who've been disgusted by the contempt that Labour over the last ten years has shown for civil liberties in general, and he's almost certainly correct. Straw opens his speech with

If you read certain newspapers you might be forgiven for thinking that human rights were an alien imposition foisted upon us by 'the other'. It is a misconception that has regrettably taken root.

and goes on from there. Straw sketches out how the European Convention of Human Rights came into existence, and it makes for grim reading for David Cameron and his ignorant, ahistorical call for a "British" bill of rights, making clear how it's both a legacy of the second world war and also of Churchill himself. Churchill is at times lionised without any regard for his own character flaws, his incipient warmongering and bellicose, first reaction attitude, but his horror at what "total war" inflicted upon Europe led to the protections we now so take for granted and which some want to destroy without any regard for why they were first introduced. It is undoubtedly his second greatest gift to this nation, and Cameron's populist, almost xenophobic policy of scrapping the Human Rights Act is an affront to his memory.

The tabloid press, especially the Sun, is unlikely to take kindly to Straw's speech, especially because it so effortlessly destroys so many of their paper-thin arguments. At times he invites valid ridicule - he talks of how the government would be damned if they "wilfully and knowingly" deported someone to gross ill-treatment and death, without any apparent knowledge that this government is continuing to do just that, whether it's sending "terrorist suspects" back to Algeria, or wanting to deport them to Jordan and other states known to practice torture on the basis of pieces of paper ("memorandums of understanding") from the respective government solemnly promising they won't touch a hair on their heads, or sending "failed" asylum seekers back to states as diverse as Sudan, the Congo, Zimbabwe and Iraq - but his overall message, especially his sneering at the "media uproar around human rights being a terrorists charter" is refreshing compared to what we were used to from Blair, Reid and Clarke, all of whom went out of their way to appease the most basest and baseless of tabloid accusations over human rights. He'll probably be ridiculed as being a soft idiot tomorrow, but it's clear that the corner has been turned. The rules of the game haven't changed after all, remember.

It's a shame then that the remainder of Straw's speech only repeats the nostrums which we've become used to: that there are rights, and with rights come responsbilities. This is the compromise which politicians have been forced into by the tabloid onslaught, the false dichotomy that somehow because we all know our rights we somehow at the same time don't realise that responsibilities come with them. Our rights, whether we're British citizens or not, are indivisible, and the promotion of the belief that somehow when we lose our freedom we also lose those rights is an incredibly dangerous one. Despite spending half of the speech outlining why Cameron's British bill of rights and repealing of the Human Rights Act would never bring justice closer to home or help get rid of current "undesirables", Straw himself believes that there may well be a need for a bill of rights and responsbilities, but he doesn't explain why one is necessary when the HRA is already almost fully comprehensive and the closest we've came to such a charter so far. If we wanted to expand it further, we could have signed up to the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights, an excellent document which updates and takes the ECHR further, yet that was one of Brown's red lines, again thanks to tabloid pressure. There is possibly a case for a document, set down in law, which does outline what is expected of us all as citizens, but to connect it directly to a bill of rights is an awful sop to those who would have just one rather than both. Such a document would have to be incredibly carefully drafted so as not to be openly patronising as so much of the discussion on responsibilities has been, all horribly reminiscent of those school behaviour contracts which you were ordered to sign and which were ignored afterwards.

Rather than a bill of rights, what we really need is an actual written constitution, yet that seems to be one of the few things that neither Brown or Straw are proposing, although Brown says this is meant to be a "move" towards just that. Dumping the bill of rights and getting on with that instead would be a better idea.

Brown's speech on liberty then is one of the best he's delivered in a long time, although with his recent pedigree that wasn't that much of a challenge. The first half is an excellent historical narrative, from Magna Carta to the HRA, with quotes from Bolingbroke, Voltaire, de Tocqueville, Orwell, Himmelfarb, Stuart Mill, T. H. Green and Hobson; all of it striking in its difference to the former prime minister, who despite his mendacity was undoubtedly a powerful speaker, but one whose speeches sounded good rather than read good. The inevitable disappointment is that so many of the proposals he's putting forward are either tame or subject to drawn-out consultation. The idea that there needs to be any further consultation on whether to lift the ban on demonstrations within a mile of parliament is a joke: the prohibition makes a mockery of our democratic credentials, and all those men he quoted would have been disgusted by it.

Similarly, like with Straw, Brown has to make concessions to the tabloids, in his case appointing his friend Dacre of the Beast to a committee examining whether to lift the "30-year-rule" on access to government documents. Dacre's loyalty and err, brown-nosing has been rewarded remarkably quickly. The farthest he really goes is in rightly abandoning the Blairite plans to further limit the Freedom of Information Act, which he announces are to be dropped immediately, with a view to actually expanding the act further, with private companies bidding for public contracts also being potentially being brought within its scope, which is incredibly welcome and surprising considering Brown's reliance on the hugely wasteful private finance initiative. Whether words will be converted into actuality will be key. He also opens the possibility of the roughly 250 provisions which give access to private homes, increasingly exploited by entirely unaccountable bailiffs, being brought into a single code.

He is however wholly unconvincing on the need for ID cards, on which the objection is not really to the cards themselves but to the database behind them, while the fact that biometrics are being used by companies already is completely irrelevant; just because they are doesn't mean that the government should be. Out of the window at least has gone the argument for ID cards on the basis of preventing terrorism, but the need for them because of identity fraud is just as flimsy, with Brown's claims of parliament having put the relevant safeguards and accountability needed into the legislation simply untrue. He also says how he "is in no doubt about the desirability of a debate over pre-charge detention", yet there's little point in having a debate when both Brown himself and Jacqui Smith have time and again made clear that they favour an increase from 28 days, and when Smith has hinted that the legislation for an increase could come before parliament before Christmas. They don't seem to realise that an increase from 28 days has become the defining issue, the summation of all that has been wrong about Labour's approach to civil liberties. When we potentially have a longer "pre-charge" period than some dictatorships, something is clearly rotten, and no amount of spurious claims from the police or intelligence chiefs that longer "may" be needed are going to convince us otherwise.

The CiF comment thread on Kettle's piece is a good guide to how much further Brown and Straw could have gone. The "dangerous pictures" bill deserves to be withdrawn immediately; control orders are both illiberal and ineffective; those not convicted of any crime subject to removal to countries which are known to practice torture on the grounds that they are "not conducive to the public good" should be tried rather than simply got rid of; and the tightening of the prevention from harassment act to ensure that those engaged in legitimate protest are not prevented from doing so, all could also have been begun to be dealt with. In places Brown also falls into producing the same sort of chutzpah as that of Straw above, claiming that "our abhorrence of torture is and must be unequivocal", which must be a surprise to those who found themselves kidnapped by the CIA and taken to black sites, all with the connivance of a nod and a wink from the British authorities, who knew full well what was going on. Recent allegations have even suggested that there was a black site on Diego Garcia, the islands we kicked the inhabitants off, giving their home to the US military, from which attacks on Iraq have taken place.

Overall though, this was a good start, and an encouraging break from the past 10 years of hardly hidden contempt for the "civil liberties brigade". These words however must precipitate action, otherwise Brown will fall even further into the currently deserved sobriquet of bottling it.

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10/25/2007 08:27:00 PM | | | links to this post

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