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November 30, 2004
Should David Blunkett be Given an ASBO?
It looks as if David Blunkett has used the trappings of power to impress a female he was attracted to. He admits giving her two first class rail tickets at the taxpayer's expense and there is little doubt that his official chauffeur-driven car (along with official papers) has been used to give Mrs Quinn lifts to Derbyshire.
Is all the publicity just prurience? Would it be better to treat the scandal as a personal matter best kept private? Or is there a legitimate public interest at stake? It is revealing that Mr Blunkett’s press office has tried to put a spin on the breaches of the ministerial code of conduct by claiming that the couple were in ‘a deep and close relationship’. Was this a unique intervention by the press office, or is it revealing of it's general mentality?
Unfortunately the Home Office has a habit of putting a one-sided spin on events. Here are some examples of the misleading way it reports on progress towards its own policy targets. The initial report on its flagship alternative to prison for serious young offenders, the Intensive Supervision and Surveillance Programme, was also presented as if a failure had been a success.
Under Mr Blunkett, the provision of public information by the Home Office has been politicised more than ever before and deception has become a habit of mind to such a degree they don’t know when they’re doing it.
Posted by David Green at 03:26 PM | Comments (2)
November 29, 2004
Patriotism and History
It’s well worth reading a piece by Amanda Craig in the Sunday Times in which she criticises the disjointed teaching of history that is now typical of our schools, public and private. Children are taught a bit about the life of the medieval peasant, before skipping to a module on Hitler’s Germany or life in the trenches in World War One, but not presented with the continuous story of the emergence of their country from the earliest times.
History should be taught as an effort to encourage patriotism – not turning a blind eye to our faults as a people or past events that were seen as mistakes at the time or look like mistakes now – but offering a complete narrative of how the struggle for liberty took place in this land. It is an inspiring tale that will encourage love of country and a greater willingness to serve the common good and provide mutual support for one another when it is needed.
Posted by David Green at 07:59 AM | Comments (0)
November 26, 2004
Onward Christian Soldiers…
Many among Europe’s intellectual and political elite are atheists and would welcome Europe becoming entirely secular.
Their attitude towards religion was recently well illustrated by the recent decision of the European Parliament to reject the entire team of Commissioners proposed by the incumbent President of the Commission than accept as one someone who had had the temerity publicly to espouse a religious doctrine he must share with literally millions of fellow-Europeans, be they Roman Catholic like him, or non-Catholic.
Another illustration of the same mind-set was the recent decision of Islington Education Authority to remove the word ‘Saint’ from the title of one of its previously Anglican schools, ostensibly to avoid offending adherents of any other faiths whose children might attend it, and despite opposition to its removal from local Jews and Muslims who would prefer the English to affirm their traditional faith, even if different from theirs, than lapse into unbelief.
A third illustration of this same mind-set was the decision by those responsible for drafting the new European Constitution to remove from it all reference to God or to Europe’s Christian heritage.
There are signs, however, that the Christian population of Europe, who probably still outnumber all others within that continent, are increasingly unwilling to respond to this repudiation of their continent’s heritage by turning the other cheek.
Yesterday’s newspapers report that a Christian coalition has been formed to challenge the decision to make the European Constitution a godless document. The coalition has so far gained over one million signatures to a petition that is designed to appeal to heads of governments in member states to make some reference to their country’s Christian heritage in their own national versions of the preamble to the Constitution.
With the characteristic self-effacement for which he has become so well-known and highly regarded, Valery Giscard d’Estaing, the man given overall responsibility for drafting the text of the Constitution, remarked of the decision not to include any reference to Christianity, ‘I have chosen not to insert the reference to the Christian heritage in the Constitution. Rather I appeal to you to persuade me of its necessity.’
In one sense, of course, Mr d’Estaing is correct to deny the need for any reference to Europe’s Christian heritage in its Constitution, but, by the same token, many would harbour similar doubts as to the need for such a Constitution in the first place.
The case for including reference to Europe’s Christian heritage is not one of necessity, in the sense that no form of written Constitution for Europe could make semantic or grammatical sense without it.
The case for including such a reference is one of desirability in the sense that, more than anything else, it is that common Christian heritage of Europe that unites the cultures of its various constituent nations. In so doing, it thereby unites them in a way no number of directives or pieces of paper emanating from Brussels ever could, and this irrespective of however religious or irreligious any European happens personally to be.
No one saw more clearly that it was their common Christian heritage that bound the peoples of Europe together than the poet and philosopher, T.S.Eliot. Speaking in German to the defeated German nation in three radio talks broadcasts in 1946 under the title, ‘The Unity of European Culture’, Eliot observed:
“The common tradition of Christianity … has made Europe what it is… and this common Christianity has brought with it … common cultural elements. … It is in Christianity that our arts have developed; it is Christianity that the laws of Europe have – until recently – been rooted. It is against a background of Christianity that all our thought has significance. An individual European may not believe that the Christian Faith is true, and yet what he says, and makes, and does, will spring out of this Christian heritage of Christian culture and depend upon that culture for its meaning.
To our Christian heritage we owe many things besides religious faith. Through it we trace the evolution of our arts, … our conception of … Law, … our conceptions of private and public morality, and … common standards of literature…. The Western World has its unity in this heritage, in Christianity and in the ancient civilisations of Greece, Rome and Israel, from which, owing to two thousand years of Christianity, we trace our descent…. This unity in the common elements of culture, throughout many centuries, is the true bond between us. No political and economic organisation, however much goodwill it commands, can supply what this culture unity gives. If we dissipate or throw away our common patrimony of culture, then all the organisation and planning of the most ingenious minds will not help us, or bring us closer together.” [T.S.Eliot, ‘The Unity of European Culture’, in Christianity and Culture (San Diego, New York and London: Harvest Book, 1960), pp. 200-201]
Perhaps, Mr Giscard D’Estaing would do well to reflect on T.S.Eliot’s words, suitably translated into French, of course.
There is, then, a powerful case for including reference to Europe’s common Christian heritage in the preamble to its Constitution, if Europe must have one. Whether it needs to do so is another matter. As to whether Europe ever will, all that can be said at the moment is, God only knows….
Posted by David Conway at 09:40 AM | Comments (2)
November 25, 2004
Lammy’s Lament -- a Case of Misplaced Dissatisfaction
According to reports in yesterday’s newspapers, David Lammy is not a happy bunny. In that respect, he is probably no different from the vast majority of his compatriots who daily make their way wearily to and from work, doubtless concerned about where to find the readies this year to cover the costs of celebrating Christmas.
Why should Mr Lammy’s unhappiness be deemed more worthy an item of news than theirs?
Mr Lammy differs from the vast majority of his compatriots in at least two respects that make his unhappiness more newsworthy, at least in the eyes of newspaper editors.
First, as well as being a Labour MP for the London constituency of Tottenham, Mr Lammy is currently junior minister at the Department for Constitutional Affairs. Moreover, Mr Lammy is not just any old MP or even junior minister. At 32 years of age, Mr Lammy remains one of the youngest MPs, not to mention Government ministers. Moreover, when elected in 2000 at the age of 28, he was the youngest person to be elected to Westminster for decades, if not centuries.
It is, however, not just his relative youth in relation to the level of seniority of the position he holds in public life that makes the state of Mr Lammy’s mental well-being such a matter of public interest.
Mr Lammy stands out from the vast majority of his fellow ministers and MPs, not to mention the vast majority of his compatriots, by virtue of being black. Moreover, he achieved his prominence in public life against all the seeming odds, for he achieved his swift advancement from the most seemingly unpromising of circumstances. Born and raised in Tottenham to a black single mother as one of five children, Mr Lammy managed to escape his relatively disadvantaged background through educational scholarships that led him to gain law degrees from London and Harvard and thereby pursue a successful career at the bar before taking up his present career in politics.
With all this going for him, one wonders what Mr Lammy could possibly find wrong with the world to make him unhappy. Precisely what has turns out to be a second way in which his unhappiness differs from that of his everyday un-newsworthy compatriots.
Most normal everyday unhappiness springs from people considering themselves to have not enough money or from being jilted. Mr Lammy’s state of unhappiness springs from less mundane concerns than these. It springs from what he considers is the insufficient diversity within the legal profession through whose ranks he has made such swift and notable progress.
Mr Lammy made known his dissatisfaction with the lack of diversity in the legal profession in a speech he delivered in London on Tuesday of this week to a meeting of the Standing Conference on Legal Education. There he drew attention to the need for greater diversity in the legal profession by making the following remark: ‘Whilst the values of diversity are widely accepted – in reality, diversity is permeating the dense structures of our legal profession only very slowly. We need to speed up the process’.
Although, in is speech, Mr Lammy recognised and welcomed the fact that ‘there are more black or minority ethnic solicitors than ever’, it would seem there are still not enough of them to satisfy him. He complained that, in 2003, only just under 8% of solicitors with practising certificates came from an ethnic minority background, as did only 10% of self-employed barristers, and 14 % of employed barristers.
Mr Lammy reveals how much ethnic minority participation in the legal profession would be needed to satisfy him when he described as good news that over 25% of current law students are black or from an ethnic minority.
What saddens Mr Lammy most is not so much the sheer lack of ethnic minority lawyers. It is their lack of relative progress and success within their profession. ‘We should not be content with black and ethnic minority lawyers finding only that they are doing asylum and immigration work’, he states.
Who or what, in Mr Lammy’s view, is to blame for their relative lack of achievement and success? In his eyes, the fault lies with the top legal firms and chambers who, in his view, are not doing enough to sponsor and recruit law students who attend new universities in comparison with those they sponsor and recruit who study at Oxbridge. What these firms must do, according to Mr Lammy, to remedy their fault is engage in more aggressive outreach and affirmative action so they recruit more ethnic minority lawyers and to positions in which they will eventually enjoy the greatest income and prestige within their profession.
How deserving of sympathy is Mr Lammy for what ails him? Not a lot, it must be said.
First of all, according to the Office for National Statistics, ethnic minorities currently make up only 7.9% of the overall population. This is exactly the same proportion as that in which they are currently present in the legal profession. Why should diversity require they be represented in greater numbers?
Second, were ethnic minorities to be represented in the legal profession in the greater numbers for which Mr Lammy calls, this could only have come about were they selected on grounds other than merit or ability, unless they were demonstrably more able or more ambitious than their white counterparts. Mr Lammy produces no evidence they are. Since, without evidence of their being so, it would come dangerously close to chauvinism or worse for him to claim they were, it can only be inferred that Mr Lammy is requesting law firms to recruit and sponsor law students on grounds other than merit. This need not necessarily be in their best interest, as a recent study has shown.
A recently published study of the effects of affirmative action on behalf of black law students, conducted by Richard Sander, a law professor at UCLA, found that, on the whole, they were harmed not helped by it. Professor Sander wrote that most of the black law students whom affirmative action had helped gain places at top law schools “end up at schools where they will struggle academically and fail at higher rates than they would in the absence of preferences.” Professor Sander concludes, “A strong case can be made that in the legal education system as a whole, racial preferences end up producing fewer black lawyers each year than would be produced by a race-blind system.’
As for Mr Lammy’s concern that the top and most lucrative law firms are not doing enough to sponsor and recruit ethnic minority law students, Mr Lammy has produced zero evidence the firms in question do not recruit and sponsor solely on grounds of ability not colour, as his own remarkable progress within the legal profession testifies.
It is hardly surprising top law firms recruit students from Oxbridge, and, we might add, from Harvard, given this is where they have sponsored them to study. Nor is it surprising that it is these universities the top firms sponsor students to attend. It may not have escaped Mr Lammy’s attention that Oxbridge and Ivy League Universities are almost universally thought to offer the best higher education which is precisely why his Government is at such pains to increase the rate of minority participation at them.
In conclusion, it would seem there are better things for Mr Lammy to worry about appertaining to the law and diversity than his concerns about what turn out to be a wholly illusory lack of diversity in his former profession. One such is the over-representation of ethnic minorities among victims of mugging and violent crime. Another is the apparent over-representation of some ethnic minorities among the perpetrators of them. Happy Xmas, Mr Lammy!
Posted by David Conway at 05:07 PM | Comments (1)
November 24, 2004
What do yobs have to do with global terror?
Tony Blair appears to have used the Queen’s Speech to ‘steal a march’ on the Tories by making Labour appear the party of law and order in the run-up to the next election. The speech contains no fewer than 32 bills which will give the government unprecedented powers to intervene in people’s lives. These bills cannot all be passed before the next election – expected to be in May 2005 – hence the suspicion that some of them are largely window-dressing. However we can be sure that at least some of them, such as the controversial proposal to introduce identity cards, will be revived in the next session of parliament, should Labour win the election.
The government justifies these new intrusive measures by referring to the spread of global terrorism and the yob culture which is disfiguring many communities – as if these things naturally go together. In fact, they are totally separate issues, demanding different policy responses.
The war on terror is so incredibly complex that it is very difficult to know what, if anything, the free nations can do effectively to protect themselves against international terrorism, whilst remaining free. It may be the case that we have to surrender some of our traditional liberties, if the intelligence we receive is credible, and not manufactured by Downing Street, like the carefully leaked story about the ‘plan’ to ‘attack’ Canary Wharf.
But the yob culture is quite different. Not only is it an indisputable reality, but we have no need of any extra measures to counter it, because we already have sufficient laws on the statute books to deal with it. Unfortunately, they are not being enforced because the police are not interested in what they call low-level crime. They prefer to concentrate on more serious crime, ignoring the evidence that graffiti, vandalism and yobbishness create the sort of threatening environment in which serious crime is more likely to take place. The Broken Windows theory of criminal behaviour has been tried, tested and proved in the USA, but in Britain we seem determined not to learn from anyone else.
David Cameron, the Conservative Party’s policy co-ordinator, has accused the government of giving us ‘a police state without the police’. It is easy to follow his argument. You never see a policeman on the beat nowadays because they are too busy tearing around in cars, sitting in the station filling in forms or hanging around the courts for trials that have to be abandoned for procedural reasons. We need more police, but we also need to have them better deployed. As long as the present culture prevails in the criminal justice system, and as long as the police remain as ineffective as they are, it gives the government the perfect excuse to introduce new measures like identity cards which erode our traditional liberties in favour of political control. To politicians of all parties, this probably seems like the ideal outcome.
Posted by at 03:49 PM | Comments (1)
November 23, 2004
Religious Discrimination
There has been recent press speculation that the Government intends to introduce a law against religious hatred, possibly under the guise of setting up a new Commission for Equality and Human Rights. If it does, it will encourage religious extremism by shielding religious leaders from legitimate criticism. It will reverse the triumph of liberalism and free enquiry over entrenched authority and permit religious dogma to go unchallenged. And it will encourage religious fanatics to 'play the religion card'.
Trevor Philips, the chairman of the Commission for Racial Equality, recently found himself under attack for Islamophobia because he had the temerity to appeal to Muslim leaders to reiterate their opposition to terrorism. And for her audacity in criticising the inferior status of women under Islam, Guardian columnist, Polly Toynbee, has been declared the ‘Most Islamophobic media personality’ by the Islamic Human Rights Commission. It led, she says, to a bombardment of emails ‘each one more luridly threatening than the last’. Read on.
Posted by David Green at 01:45 PM | Comments (0)
November 22, 2004
Know Your Place
Prince Charles stands accused of wanting people to ‘know their place’. According to the current Education Secretary, Charles Clarke, the Prince is hostile to the ambitions of ordinary folk, whose interests are championed by the present Government. Does this accusation fit the facts?
If Mr Clark were really in favour of allowing everyone the chance to make the most of their talents he would, at the very least, expect schools to aim for the highest possible standard of attainment. But, in truth, the present government has done quite the opposite. At every level where measures are available, there is evidence, not only of falling standards, but also of the decline being deliberately concealed by moving the benchmarks. The Government is more interested in social engineering than in real achievement.
Here is some of the evidence. First, employers and universities, have been pointing out the consequences of school failure for some years now. In August 2004, a CBI survey of over 500 firms found that 37% were not satisfied with the basic literacy and numeracy of school leavers, up from 34% in the 2003 survey. During the previous 12 months, 33% of firms had to give school leavers basic training in literacy and numeracy.
The latest issue of the Times Higher Education Supplement reports a survey of about 400 university academics. It found that 71% agreed that their ‘institution had admitted students who are not capable of benefiting from higher level study’. And 48% said they had ‘felt obliged to pass a student whose performance did not really merit a pass’. Nearly 20% admitted turning ‘a blind eye’ to student plagiarism.
Key Stage 2
At Key Stage 2 (age 11) level 4 represents the expected standard of literacy for children of that age. In 1996 48% reached level 4 and in 2002 it was 75%. Was the achievement real? The University of Durham's Curriculum, Evaluation and Management Centre found that there had been no real increase. It applied the same test of ability between 1997 and 2002 in 122 schools involving about 5,000 pupils. In reading it found no increase in ability.
The Qualifications and Curriculum Authority (QCA) commissioned a report into the claim that standards had been lowered. It compared 1996 and 2000 and claimed that, overall, their evidence 'gives the lie to any theory of conspiracy to undermine' standards. However, when the report compared English at Key Stage 2 (for eleven year olds) between 1996 and 1999 it found that reading standards had fallen. Reading (and total marks) for the 1999 test were, on average only 4 marks lower, but the overall 1999 cut-scores for levels 4 and 5 were nine marks below those in 1996, overcompensating for the harder 1999 reading test by 5 marks.
GCSEs
The latest results for 2003/04 show that only 53.4 % achieved 5 or more grades A* - C at GCSE or equivalent. 4.2% did not achieve any passes at all.
In August 2001, Jeffrey Robinson, a senior examiner in GCSE maths for the OCR Examination Board, claimed that pupils achieving As and Bs would have received C and D grades ten years earlier. The pass mark for a C grade had fallen from 65% in 1989 to 48% in 2001.
'A' Levels
The Engineering Council produced a report in 1999 and compared A level grades with a standard diagnostic test devised by the University of Coventry. The same test was applied between 1991 and 1998. In 1991 those with a grade B at A level in 1991 scored 40.5/50 on the diagnostic test. In 1998 those with a B scored 36.8/50. At grade C the gap was from 39.9 in 1991 to 32.1 in 1998. As the report remarks, the score of 32.1 in 1998 was 2.3 marks (4.6%) lower than the N grade achievement in the same year.
A study by the School Curriculum and Assessment Authority (SCAA) published a report on 'A' level achievement over time. It found that the proportion of pupils obtaining two or more 'A' level passes between 1975 and 1995 had increased from 12.1% to 19.9%. To test whether the achievement was real Dr Robert Coe of Durham University has been able to compare actual achievements between 1988 and 1998 using the International Test of Developed Abilities (ITDA). The test is applied voluntarily in a minority of schools, and the results may not be representative of all schools. However, across six subjects (biology, English, French, geography, history and mathematics) achievements fell steadily. The average ITDA score for maths in 1988 was 72.3 and 59.3 in 1998, and for English Literature 57.0 in 1988 and 51.5 in 1998. However, the average 'A' level grade increased over the same period from 4.59 in 1988 to 5.96 in 1998 and in maths from 3.78 in 1988 to 5.69 in 1998. (The 'A' level grades are coded as follows: A=10, B=8, C=6, D=4, E=2, N=0, and U=-2.)
Posted by David Green at 08:09 AM | Comments (2)
November 19, 2004
Call Me Old-fashioned or What … But What Did the Prince Say Wrong?
Outraged attacks on the Prince of Wales filled today's airwaves and press. What occasioned the wrath of so many was his having had the apparent effrontery to remark in a private email that far too many of his younger compatriots today consider themselves qualified for jobs far beyond their talents and aptitudes.
The burden of the attacks on the Prince are two-fold. First, it is no bad thing so many young people today harbour high personal ambitions. Second, the Prince has no business to criticise others for wanting to better themselves, when he is able to lead the life of Riley without enjoying any conspicuously greater talents or natural abilities than they.
Neither criticism seems at all justified.
As regards the first, what the Prince said seems spot on. In no way was what he said inconsistent with recognising the desirability of young people setting themselves demanding and ambitious personal targets and life-goals. What the Prince was complaining about was not young people having high personal ambitions, but the frequency with which all too many of them today have formed hopelessly unrealistic ones, based upon vastly inflated estimates of their own abilities.
The Prince went to speculate why so many young people did, linking their so doing to our current education system which discourages them from ever having to confront and recognise their own limitations through making severe demands on them.
It was this conjecture of the Prince that provoked the especial ire of Charles Clarke, Secretary of State for Education. ‘Everybody has a field marshal’s baton in their knapsack’, he remarked, implying it wrong of the Prince not to want people to harbour the very highest personal aspirations whose successful realisation would require them to have correspondingly exceptional abilities.
It is truly tragic the country’s education system today lies in the hands of a man who seems genuinely to be of this view. That he does, perhaps, explains the Secretary of State’s determination to increase the participation of school leavers in higher education until it reaches the government’s target of 50%, in face of all the evidence that simply not enough of them are up-to-the-mark and that our Universities only succeed in absorbing ever-increasing numbers by admitting far too many manifestly unsuitable and then keeping them by lowering standards to ensure they do not fail.
On the very same day as the Secretary of State expostulated against the Prince, the Daily Mail carried a report on the results of a survey conducted by the Times Higher Educational Supplement of almost 400 UK academics. The survey revealed that over 70% of them believed their institution to have admitted students manifestly incapable of benefiting from a place, and 50% admitting to having felt obliged to pass students not deserving to.
When, under pressure from government, our higher education system encourages young people to form unrealistically high expectations of themselves, small wonder is it we find ourselves with the culture of which the Prince complained.
The reason it is tragic for our country’s education system to lie in the hands of a man glad it has such a culture is that it is bound to produce only frustration and disappointment in large swathes of the population. To see why, we need to recall the words of a truly great and gifted man, the liberal philosopher, John Stuart Mill.
In his famous work of 1861, Utilitarianism, Mill declared the ultimate criterion of morality to be what is conducive to human happiness. Responding to the objection that happiness cannot be the object of morality, since it lies beyond the capacity of humankind to attain it, Mill conceded happiness to be such if, by it, was meant a life of rapture. He then went on to observe in words on which our Secretary of State should be made to dwell daily:
‘The philosophers who have taught that happiness is the end of life…meant … not a life of rapture; but moments of such, in an existence made up of few and transitory pains, many and various pleasures, … and having as the foundation of the whole, not to expect more from life than it is capable of bestowing.’[emphasis added]
It is the last clause of Mill’s quoted statement on which the Secretary of State would do well to dwell. If Mill is correct, the education system over which he presides is busy helping to form a culture that condemns the mass of population to permanent frustration, disappointment, rancour and envy.
As regards the second criticism to which the Prince has been subjected, the one denying him the right to condemn others no less gifted than he for wanting to live as well as he, two things may be said on behalf of the Prince.
First, he did not choose to apply for the post he currently holds. He found it thrust on him by birth.
Second, although not requiring any exceptional talents or gifts, the position of heir apparent certainly does demand a heck of a lot of job-training from a very early age. It also probably condemns whoever is made to undergo it to far less parental care and attention as a young child than can possibly be in their best interest.
Few would wish to claim the Prince flawless. Doubtless, the Prince would not be one who did. However, to malign him for having privately expressed an undoubtedly sound opinion about a deep fault in our present culture is to demand from him a degree of restraint that is as unwarranted as it would be impossibly onerous for anyone to attempt to exhibit.
Posted by David Conway at 03:14 PM | Comments (3)
November 18, 2004
We're pretty sure there were no store loyalty cards in 1984...
At a speech yesterday to drum up support for the government’s controversial identity card scheme, David Blunkett claimed that the real threat to people’s privacy comes from store loyalty cards:
The Home Secretary said that the public needed to wake up to the fact that personal information they supply to retailers and banks is far more detailed than the personal information that will be collected on the ID card database.
"It is time people got real about what is happening to them," he said. "A lot of information about where people shop and who they bank with is valuable business information and is sold on to other companies."
Launching a broadside against concerns over the privacy of personal ID data, Blunkett argued that if the public was happy to disclose a wide range of sensitive data to private companies, it should not be concerned about disclosing data to the government, which is more tightly regulated.
Yes, loyalty cards have a lot of information on them, but that information is put to use not only for the companies but also for the consumer. By knowing more about its shoppers, the store learns how better to accommodate its clientele. Presumably, everyone wins.
Of course, you may still find the idea of a store tracking your shopping habits a bit creepy, and decide against signing up. What Mr Blunkett ignores in his argument is that when you walk into Boots or Marks and Spencers, and they ask you if you would like to sign up for their loyalty card programme to become a preferred customer, you can simply say, ‘No thanks’. If the Home Office gets its way, when the state starts demanding you pay for the privilege of receiving these ID cards, ‘no thanks’ will not be an option.
Posted by at 04:23 PM | Comments (0)
Mr Trevor Phillips Puts His Foot In It …
The Commission for Racial Equality (CRE) was set up by the Race Relations Act to foster racial equality by rooting out racial discrimination and racial hatred.
In recent years, the CRE has become one of the most vociferous advocates of a change in the law so that the current prohibition of incitement of hatred towards racial groups becomes extended so as to cover religious groups too.
The chief intended beneficiary of the extension are British Muslims. Not coinciding with any single racial group, they currently remain unprotected in law from hatred being incited against them on account of their religion.
This extension of the law is in the pipe-line and destined to reach the statute book within the lifetime of the present parliament.
Its critics claim the extension of the law is bound to curb free-speech and legitimate criticism of religions. They argue adherents of any religion subjected to criticism will be able to suppress it by claiming it will incite hatred of them.
Advocates of the extension respond by denying legitimate criticism will be curtailed by the change in law. One to have so argued is Trevor Phillips, current Chair of the CRE.
In a conference in July of this year organised by the IPPR, Mr Phillips welcomed this extension of the law, denying it ‘would lead to people not being able to criticise other religions; these changes would protect the believer, not the belief’.
On Tuesday of this week, Mr Phillips delivered at Oxford's Centre for Islamic Studies a public lecture entitled, ‘Why Muslims will make Britain a better place’. The lecture was largely given over to an elaboration of the multifarious ways in which the speaker saw a Muslim presence in Britain as enhancing the life of that country.
Given its title and contents, plus Mr Phillips' other credentials as a champion of this country’s minorities, it might hardly have been expected his lecture would have given British Muslim leaders any cause for complaint.
Yet, yesterday’s newspapers carry reports that some of them at least are up-in-arms with Mr Phillips, metaphorically speaking of course, for his having supposedly upbraided them in his lecture for not doing enough to exhibit public condemnation of acts of terror carried out in the name of their religion by the likes of Al Qaeda.
Their complaint is that, since they have repeatedly given public expression to their abhorrence of Islamist terrorism, what Mr Phillips said went beyond legitimate comment and amounts to ‘Islamophobia’, something the public expression of which Mr Phillips has called for to be banned.
At first glance, or even after closer scrutiny, the published text of Mr Phillips’ lecture fails to disclose anything in it that can remotely be construed as Islamophobic. All Mr Phillips said in it about the need for Muslim leaders to display public opposition to Islamist acts of terror was this: ‘Though I know it is irritating to many of you, and feels unjust that you have to do this time and again, it remains important for mainstream Muslim leaders to point out that British Muslims have no time for terrorism, and call on anyone who practises it in the name of Islam to cease.’
Given the manner in which, since the Macpherson report, racist acts have become officially construed as being any that a racial minority finds such, it would seem the mere fact some Muslim leaders consider Mr Phillips’ remarks to be an expression of Islamophobia will, in time, suffice to render them such in the eyes of the law after it becomes changed in the manner for which, among others, Mr Phillips has called.
If the Chair of the CRE cannot be trusted to know where the line is over which no one should be allowed to tread in publicly speaking about different religious groups, what hope is there for the rest of us?
Either Mr Phillips must be considered unworthy of his job on account of his harbouring unconscious Islamophobia, or else the extension of the law for which he has called must be considered unworkable and hence undesirable -- in which case his suitability for the job he holds becomes equally suspect through having called for it.
Alternatively, the appropriate lesson to be drawn from the furore occasioned by Mr Phillips’ lecture is that the entire enterprise of seeking to achieve racial and religious harmony by legal diktat as to what may or may not be said about any religious or racial group is a legal quagmire into which it would have been better for this country never to have allowed anyone to step, including the Chair of the CRE.
Posted by David Conway at 11:51 AM | Comments (0)
November 17, 2004
Alternatives to Prison
This week a private commission of inquiry (the Coulsfield Inquiry) has made yet another call for greater use of alternatives to prison. It criticises prison for failing to prevent former inmates from committing crimes when they are released into the community and then calls for more of them to be given sentences in the community. At least when offenders are in jail they can’t commit crimes against the public. When on community sentences they can and do reoffend frequently.
The Coulsfield Inquiry purports to have surveyed the evidence but doesn’t take the slightest notice of it in framing its recommendations. At least it did not stoop as low as the Youth Justice Board, which recently put out a press release claiming that a failed programme was a success.
Posted by David Green at 03:28 PM | Comments (0)
November 16, 2004
New Labour - the New Puritans?
The Government thinks we eat too much, drink too much and smoke too much, and it's going to use the full weight of the law to put a stop to any further irresponsibility. But a consistent puritan would want gambling stopped too, and yet the Government wants us to gamble more. This inconsistency helps us to see more clearly the motivation of New Labour.
Two rival views of society currently contend for support. One derives from our liberal heritage and sees society as made up of individuals who are moral agents, capable of judging right from wrong, the wise from the foolish, and making mistakes and learning from them. The role of government is to frame laws to give individuals the chance to use their talents as each believes best.
New Labour's view is very different. Society is made up of individuals who are primarily members of the workforce. Their chief role is to create output that can be taxed. When New Labour's New-Puritan streak runs into economic realities, economism triumphs. If we smoke, drink and eat too much we make ourselves too ill to work and, to make matters worse, it costs the Government money to make us well again. But gambling is fine, because the Government will be able to tax us more.
The ultimate inspiration behind the Government's plans for public health is not moral, it is the desire to increase its own power. It wants fit workers who can increase output to add to Treasury revenue. It does not want morally responsible individuals capable of judging for themselves what's best, based on the available evidence and in the light of public discussion.
Acton famously pointed out that the realm of compulsion and the realm of conscience were mutually exclusive spheres. This Government leaves too little room for the realm of conscience.
Posted by David Green at 03:15 PM | Comments (3)
November 15, 2004
The Welfare State We're In
The Welfare State We're In by James Bartholomew has just been published. It looks afresh at all aspects of the welfare state, from schools and hospitals to pensions and child benefit, and asks whether we made a mistake in placing so much confidence in government-provided welfare.
It deserves the strongest recommendation. The book presents the evidence on complex issues while remaining highly readable and avoiding over-simplification. It is available from Amazon at 30% off.
Posted by David Green at 07:26 AM | Comments (1)
November 11, 2004
The Police: Reassuring the Public or Enforcing the Law
David Blunkett's police reforms are intended to reassure the public. But as Julia Magnet, a New Yorker now living in London, points out in The Times, the aim of Mayor Guiliani's police reforms was, not to pacify frightened citizens, but to stop crime.
Posted by David Green at 02:46 PM | Comments (1)
'If I were in their shoes I'd do the same thing.'
From Hit and Run:
Yesterday the Norwood, Ohio, City Council voted, 8-1, to dispossess Carl and Joy Gamble of the home they've lived in for 35 years. In another example of the eminent domain abuse the U.S. Supreme Court will consider this term, the city is taking the property on behalf of a wealthy developer who plans to build offices, shops, housing, and restaurants. The justification is that the new development will bring in more tax revenue.
The Gambles, represented by the Institute for Justice (which also represents the New London, Connecticut, property owners whose case will be heard by the Supreme Court), have been fighting the seizure for two years. "I don't like to remove anyone from their home," one city council member said. "But it is in the best interests of the city to take this property."
More here.
Such property cases have become a hot topic for small-government, laissez-faire types, as these land seizures betray any basic understanding of the sanctity of private possession and the enforcement of contracts—two issues guaranteed to fire up libertarians and classical liberals. The idea that the state can simply say, ‘You’re going to have to move out of your house, and it’s because we’ve decided that it’s for the greater good’ is almost Soviet in its caustic disregard for personal liberty and the right to your own property. The U.S. constitution clearly states that any seizure of property must be for ‘public use.’ Cases like this suggest that politicians are now defining ‘public use’ as a tax grab, which in all likelihood was not its original intent.
Surely there must be another explanation. Seeking it, I called Norwood councilman Mike Fulmer, the source of the ‘best interests’ quote above, and asked him a simple question: Why do you think it’s okay for your council to take these people’s property? Here's a bit of our give and take:
Fulmer: The property in question is being developed…it’s under urban renewal. Everyone else has left the area, and we’ve gotten 66 signatures from people who want out. The area is deteriorating every year and it’s getting worse…
Heffernan: So what will you build there?
Fulmer: A shopping complex and two office buildings.
Heffernan: A shopping mall?
Fulmer: Ah, no, not a mall. I think it’s called a lifestyle centre.
Heffernan: Surely you can see why these people are upset.
Fulmer: If I were in their shoes I’d do exactly the same thing. But the courts have ruled in the city’s favour. The constitution gives the government the right to seize property. This is in the best interests of the city.
Heffernan: Okay, well thanks for your time-
Fulmer: Let me ask you something. The government can close down businesses and people who’ve worked in a place for 15, 20 years can lose their jobs or have to go elsewhere. The government will say it’s for the best. Should they be allowed to do that?
Heffernan: I would argue that your government should have no right to displace people from their homes or force a business to relocate, and certainly not do it under the guise of the 'public good.'
We spoke some more and Fulmer seemed generally sympathetic; of course, it must be easy to be sympathetic since his side won the case. One thing he mentioned several times was the idea that in certain situations people should not be able to hold up the wishes of the majority, be it in this case or to use another of his examples, a farmer whose land is blocking a freeway development. He also argued that the Gamble’s hold-out was hurting the other people who were desperate to move on and collect the compensation package the government was offering. He was polite and articulate, which is exactly why he and people like him are so dangerous. Having the power of the courts and misinterpretation of their nation’s constitution behind them, they can explain and sympathize all they want as they force people to bow to their idea of the all-mighty common good.
Posted by at 10:20 AM | Comments (0)
November 10, 2004
God Save Us From Our Latter-Day History Professors
George Bush’s electoral victory last week has shaken the predominantly left-leaning Anglo-American intellectual elite to its core. How, they collectively have wondered, could the American electorate have been so stupid? And, more pointedly, what do the Democrats have to do to ensure such an electoral debacle will never be repeated in future?
The answers to these questions currently favoured by this elite go as follows. The Republicans won because the American heartland is so heavily populated by bigoted, ignorant Christian fundamentalists. The Republicans were able cleverly to exploit this electoral constituency to its to own advantage by being able to appeal to ‘flag, faith, and family’ in a way in which Democrats did not.
To secure victory next time, the Democrats have to prevent the Republicans from assuming sole occupancy of the moral high ground. To prevent them doing so, Democrats must offer the American electorate a vision of their country as a moral community, that is more enlightened because wholly secular. By so doing, they will be able to exploit and turn to the electoral advantage of the Democrats the altruistic and communitarian values many Americans have.
A graphic illustration of this proffered explanation for Republican victory and prescription for future Republican defeat was provided in last week’s Sunday Times in the form of some reflections on the outcome of the election given by the celebrated historian, Simon Schama.
Although born and educated in England, Professor Schama has, for many years, resided on the east-coast of America at premier universities. Commenting on the outcome of the election, Professor Schama claimed himself to belong to a worldly elite that is ‘horrified’ by the Bush vote. In Professor Schama’s view, all Europeans belong to this elite, or at least all Sunday Times readers do, in contradistinction to those inhabitants of America’s heartland who voted for Bush. He writes, ‘You and I – like anyone in Western Europe – live in a world where Christian belief is marginal.’ By contrast, the ‘Bush heartland is … an America that’s as remote to us as Shi’ite Islam.’
Given such an electorate, Professor Schama suggests, to secure victory next time, Democrats must ‘create the political equivalent of a Norman Rockwell painting’ which provides voters with a vision of America as a genuine but all too often benighted community as a result of rapacious Republican policies. Democrats can thus appeal to the altruistic values of their compatriots by providing them with a genuine alternative moral vision to the inferior one to which the Republicans successfully were able to appeal in the absence of any alternative. As Professor Schama puts it, ‘[T]he Democrats ... need to tell stories about Sid and Jane out on the prairie, people who can’t afford prescription drugs, whose gas is $3 a gallon, who’ve got a kid in the National Guard. The[y]… have to make a moral connection... [and] ... appeal[s] to a very deeply lodged sense of moral community in America .’
How sound is this explanation of the Democrats’ defeat? And how sound is the associated prescription of Schama’s for securing Democratic victory next time? Neither seem plausible for the following reasons.
First, if, as John Hood, president of the John Locke Foundation, has done, the exit profiles for last week’s election are compared with those for 2000 in which the margin of victory was more slender, it turns out that it was those who seldom or never attend church rather than regularly attend church among whom support for Bush chiefly grew.
Second, as Hood also points out, approximately as many American voters supported civil unions for gay couples, but not marriage, as were opposed to both. Yet, majorities in both groups of voters preferred Bush to Kerry.
These facts suggest that the concerns of voters that secured President Bush electoral victory were more mundane than those the likes of Professor Schama would have us believe.
The decisive electoral concern seems to have been foreign policy, especially the War in Iraq and the War on Terror. Of those polled after voting in the 2000 election, 12% considered “foreign affairs” the most important issue. By 2004, that figure had risen nearly three-fold to 34%. In both cases, a majority of these voters voted Republican.
As well as having exaggerated the importance of religious values in determining the outcome of last week’s election, Professor Schama would also seem to have exaggerated how much more religious the American electorate is in comparison with their British counter-parts. A report in today’s London Times states that as many as a third of Bush’s supporters never go to church, and that as many as two thirds of Kerry’s supporters never do. This means nearly a half of American voters never attend church, a figure very close to the percentage of British voters who never do.
Not only has Professor Schama exaggerated how much more religious in outlook Americans are by comparison with their British cousins, he, and they who think like him, seem equally to have exaggerated how secular in outlook the British are. Over half the British electorate are reported as attending church at least a few times each year, and nearly one fifth of them attending church at least monthly. This hardly makes the British inhabit ‘a world where Christian belief is marginal’, as claimed by Professor Schama. Religion assuredly plays little part in the life of British intellectuals like him, but the same holds true of their American counterparts.
The truth seems to be that the outcome of the American election was not decided by religion – or at least not by any religion practised outside the caves of Afghanistan. Nor are the British any less religious in outlook than their American cousins, although British intellectuals wish they were, sometimes to the point, like Professor Schama, of seemingly labouring under the illusion they are. The last word on this latter issue is best left to an earlier historian of England whose grasp of the realities of English life seems firmer than that of his latter-day ex-patriot counterpart.
Writing in 1956, Sir Arthur Bryant once remarked:
‘England is a Christian land, and only by contemplation of her long Christian history can one comprehend her. … That is why, to any lover of England and her history, … her cathedral and parish churches matter so much…. [O]ur civilisation was made by these churches… and, when they crumble or are destroyed, will perish with them…. They knit us together as a people… [and] without them ours would be a raw materialistic polity of concrete factories and offices and purposeless urban populations fast receding into barbarism.’
Perhaps, the present Labour Government would do well to take Sir Arthur Bryant’s remarks to heart before seeking to replace England’s traditional skyline dominated as it is by church steeples with one dominated by the flashing neon of casinos, and replace Christian worship and instruction in schools by multicultural secularism.
Posted by David Conway at 02:14 PM | Comments (2)
November 09, 2004
Mandelson admits that EU regulation costs 4% of GDP
In a speech to the CBI Peter Mandelson, the EU Trade Commissioner designate, said that EU red tape cost about 4% of GDP. It was partially offset by a 2% addition to GDP, which he attributed to the Single Market.
Having admitted that the EU is a drag on our economy, he then goes on to say that the solution is to give the European Commission even more power to sort things out! Nice try!
Posted by David Green at 03:36 PM | Comments (1)
November 08, 2004
The Nightmare from which the BBC Claims to Have Awoken Us … Continues
Those domiciled in Britain are obliged to pay an annual license for the privilege of being able to watch any television in that country. The revenue raised from this license fee goes to fund the BBC which justifies its privileged position by claiming its news and current affairs of the highest quality and both well-informed and impartial.
Over the past three weeks, the BBC has broadcast a three-part documentary series entitled, ‘The Power of Nightmares’. Designed to rebut the idea that the West faces any orchestrated threat from an Islamist terror organisation, the series claimed the idea of such a threat to be a neo-conservative myth, deliberately manufactured to fill the public with enough dread to enable its manufacturers to succeed in a cynical and repressive political power-play which threatens civil liberties in the West.
The documentary series might have been correct in denying Al Qaeda is akin to a regular army with a central chain of command. However, any suggestion the West does not currently face an orchestrated terror campaign from Islamic fundamentalists who take their inspiration, if not marching orders, from Osama bin Laden, must be rejected. This is something, sadly, events that have taken place in Holland since the screening of the final part of the BBC series have revealed.
Sunday’s newspapers contain chilling accounts of the brutal murder at the hands of Islamic terrorists of a Dutch filmmaker who had had the temerity to make a documentary critical of Islamic attitudes and practises towards women.
What makes this murder so chilling, and why it discredits the BBC’s documentary series, is that several Dutch politicians have simultaneously received death threats from Islamists who have declared anyone in the West who speaks out against their religion or otherwise offends them to be fair-game for similar treatment.
You might not need a central chain of command to orchestrate such hit-squads. Disaffection with the West combined with a merciless disregard for the sanctity of human life will suffice. We in Europe seem in line for the start of an Islamist terror campaign which, if it happens, will have all the qualities of nightmare – save for being real!
Rather than the idea of an Islamist threat to the West being only a neo-con nightmare that lacks any genuine basis in reality, it is rather the BBC who are guilty of attempting to induce the British public to dream there is no such threat. It is time for the British public to wake up to just what poor service its state-funded broadcasting service is currently providing it in return for the TV licence. It is time for them to call on their political representatives to think again about renewing the BBC's Charter.
Posted by David Conway at 04:36 PM | Comments (4)
Understanding America
A lot of British commentators on the US election result find it incomprehensible, particularly the central role played by religious campaigners. It’s well worth taking a look at Gertrude Himmelfarb’s explanation in the Sunday Times. The attitude of Americans who thought the election was primarily about moral issues would not have been a mystery to Britons a couple of generations ago. Many Americans have remained true to values once taken for granted here, but now abandoned.
Posted by David Green at 07:28 AM | Comments (0)
November 05, 2004
Why the American Electorate was Right to Reject Gay Marriage
Among the various results of Tuesday’s elections in the United States, of only slightly less significance than George Bush’s victory over John Kerry was the decisive rejection by the American electorate of ‘gay’ marriage. In eleven states, voters were given the opportunity to vote for or against amendments to their state constitutions confining marital status to unions between members of the opposite sex . In not a single one of them did voters do other than register their support for such an amendment, often by huge majorities.
In the same week as that in which the political elites of Europe made it plain no European could expect to hold high public office there if prepared openly to call homosexuality a sin, the American public made it plain no Americans could expect to enjoy the benefits of marital status unless prepared to join in union with a member of the opposite sex.
In rejecting the idea of gay marriage, were American voters simply giving vent to an ugly ill-informed form of homophobic bigotry of which, clearly, the majority of MEP’s consider anyone to be guilty who considers homosexuality a sin? Or were they merely registering their discernment in heterosexual marriage of a social value that cannot be replicated by homosexual unions, a value that would be threatened were homosexual unions granted a similar status to those heterosexual unions in which the parties choose to marry?
Homosexuals say that any positive human values, such as devotion, intimacy, and even good parenting, capable of being instantiated by heterosexual unions can also be exhibited by homosexual ones. Hence, so they argue, any legal privileges conferred on heterosexual couples who marry and denied to homosexual couples, through being unable to marry, can only be unjust to the latter.
There is, however, one important property heterosexual unions possess that homosexual ones do not and cannot, no matter how monogamous and caring they are. The form of sexual act that consummates heterosexual unions is the unique one through which procreation can and does take place naturally. Each child is born of some woman in consequence of the sperm of some man having fertilised one of her eggs. Typically, these acts of conception result from heterosexual intercourse.
In so far as children and their mothers benefit from receiving the care and support of the fathers of these children, marriage between heterosexual couples secures an environment for parents most likely to lead to such paternal care of children and spouses. For in such circumstances, the mothers know their sexual partner has undertaken to care for any children they might have, and the male partners can expect any child their partner has to be his.
In according legal privileges to those prepared to make such reciprocal commitments, society registers its approval of heterosexual couples who make them. It does so because of the value such reciprocal commitments bring to the children they have and thereby to the wider society of which they form part.
Whatever social benefits might accrue from homosexual couples being faithful to one another rather than promiscuous, since all forms of such relations are necessarily non-procreative, none of them can ever possess the same social significance as those which are procreative, potentially at least. This difference would remain, even if, in consequence of undergoing some special ceremony in which the parties to it pledged themselves to each other, homosexual partners became entitled to exactly the same legal rights and privileges as heterosexual couples acquire upon marrying.
In rejecting gay marriage, therefore, the American electorate need not necessarily be construed as having intended to express any form of moral disapproval of homosexuality. They need merely be construed as having giving expression to their recognition that heterosexuality has a social significance and value that homosexuality can never have.
Those advocating gay marriage do so because they recognise human sexuality can and should be harnessed to work in support of love, rather than just be a source of mere physical titillation. They must also surely admit that only heterosexual activity can naturally of itself issue in the procreation of children.
All it takes beyond recognition of these two facts to justify confining the legal privileges of marital status to heterosexual couples willing to enter into marriage is recognition of two further facts. The first is that, other things being equal, children benefit from receiving the care of both their parents and the parents of any benefit from being able to care for, and to give to and receive from their children love. The second is that society has a legitimate interest in wishing children born into it to grow up in the most favourable conditions for them possible.
Since marriage between the parents of any child provides for that child, other things being equal, the optimum possible conditions in which to be brought up, it follows society has a legitimate interest in encouraging couples liable to have children to marry.
Parties to unions who cannot become joint parents, therefore, have no just cause to complain if society refuses to accord them the same status as it willingly accords heterosexual couples who choose to marry. This is because unions of the former kind are incapable of serving the same positive social function as justifies heterosexual couples willing to enter into the marital bond being accorded by society such a privileged status relative to all others who are not.
The American electorate has spoken. In so doing, there is much it has given Europeans to reflect on.
Posted by David Conway at 12:38 PM | Comments (3)
November 04, 2004
Stagnant European Economies
Nearly five years ago, European leaders held a summit at Lisbon to make Europe one of the world's most dynamic knowledge-based economies within ten years.
According to an article in The Times, a report by former Dutch prime minister, Wim Kok, has found that with only five years to go little has been achieved. Could the economic straitjacket imposed by the Euro be part of the problem?
Posted by David Green at 07:33 AM | Comments (1)
November 03, 2004
Inciting Intolerance
In a Guardian article entitled ‘Words that inspire killer deeds’, Gareth McLean tries to associate moral persuasion with threats of violence. Rocco Buttiglione, the former candidate for the EU Commission, said that homosexuality was a sin and, thereby according to Mr McLean, helped to create an atmosphere in which homosexuals could be murdered. So too does Sizzla, the Jamaican singer, whose songs include lines such as, ‘Kill dem battyboys’ and ‘I kill sodomites and queers, they bring Aids and disease pon people’.
But this claim fails to distinguish between moral persuasion and violence. Moral persuasion rests on the assumption of moral equality, the founding principle of Western liberalism. It assumes that all are capable of choosing right from wrong. It enjoins people to change. It assumes an inner life, and a thinking mind open to the influence of others. The moral criticism of a Mr Buttiglione is made in the spirit of the Christian cliche, ‘Hate the sin, love the sinner’. Such criticism is a great leveller, implying that all are equal in the sight of God and bear a responsibility to do the right thing.
Sizzla is inciting violence and should be dealt with according to law. There is no comparison with moral criticism grounded in the assumption of moral equality.
Why does the author try to blur the difference between the two when our whole heritage of liberal-democracy rests on settling differences, however strong, through discussion rather than violence? In Gareth McLean’s view, every criticism of a type of behaviour is an incitement to hatred. Yet, if he is right, then his own criticism of Mr Buttiglione, and anyone who agrees with him, is also an incitement to hatred. In truth, refusal to distinguish between moral criticism and violence is an excuse for violence against people who voice non-violent, merely persuasive, criticisms. It is a rationale for aggression – these moralists deserve all they get. Perhaps this attitude explains the intolerance of the majority of the European Parliament.
Posted by David Green at 05:40 PM | Comments (0)
November 02, 2004
Our Right to Self-Defence
It’s well worth taking a look at Libby Purves' article in today’s Times about our right to tackle burglars without fear that the police will arrest us. Civilisation’s restraint, she says, “is an admirable thing, but not when it diverges too far from basic perceptions of justice.” She mentions the Oklahoma model, not uncommon in America, which allows victims to use “any degree of physical force” including deadly force against burglars, if they reasonably fear for their own safety, “no matter how slight” the risk. We urgently need to reform our own laws, to permit householders to use whatever force is necessary to protect themselves.
Posted by David Green at 02:08 PM | Comments (0)
November 01, 2004
European Constitution
At the end of last week, leaders of the 25 EU members signed the EU Constitution despite the strong opposition in many countries. Ten countries plan to hold a referendum in the next two years. Ours will probably not be held until 2006.
In the end, it's a matter of whether we can trust our politicians. Experience of the last referendum, in 1975, suggests that a pan-European elite has emerged comprising self-appointed intellectuals who feel a stronger loyalty to Brussels than to their own people. They have such a strong sense of their own righteousness that they feel entitled to mislead the electorate.
We have produced a facsimile of the Government leaflet produced for the 1975 referendum. It shows the extent to which we have been deceived.
Posted by David Green at 07:17 AM | Comments (1)