Civitas

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January 31, 2005

House Arrest

Some critics of the Government’s plan to put terrorist suspects under house arrest without trial have said it would be conceding the terrorists’ case. Presumably they mean that the terrorists are totalitarians who want to crush liberal democracy. To live under a dictator is to live at the mercy of arbitrary power and to live under the arbitrary power of Charles Clarke would be similar.

Some writers, such as Bentham, understood freedom as the absence of all restraints on the individual. However, the classical liberal view is that to be free is live under law. In other words, freedom is not the absence of restraint but knowing in advance when it can be used against you. The occasions when compulsion can be used must be pre-announced in the form of laws. We must all have the chance to participate in making and changing these laws, which restrain the authorities as well as the citizens. In this sense liberty and order are two sides of the same coin.

Of course, the quantity of law may become so great, and the intrusions so frequent, that the scope for individual initiative is tiny. In this sense we can speak of a trade-off between freedom and order, or in Acton’s terminology, the sphere of conscience and the sphere of authority.

Charles Clarke’s plan for house arrest is inconsistent with the idea of ‘liberty as order’, under which we know when force can be used against us. Instead of his scheme, he should go ahead with an earlier proposal to create a new offence of ‘acts preparatory to terrorism’ and list the types of action that may lead to a charge, so that evidence can be brought forward and contradicted.

Even during the Second World War, when all the Germans were rounded up and interned, there was an independent tribunal that heard their case and released them if no doubts remained about their loyalty.

It is true that the restrictions we place on the police and the state generally make it harder for them to protect us, and it is true that many of these restrictions are only feasible in a society of largely law-abiding people. If groups seek to destroy the society by taking advantage of the safeguards we have imposed to prevent the abuse of power, then some of the safeguards may have to go, until the threat has diminished (whereupon they can be restored). One of these safeguards is the type of burden of proof faced by the authorities. ‘Beyond reasonable doubt’ may have to be replaced by the civil test of ‘on the balance of probabilities’. And if juries are intimidated, we may have to resort to trial by 2-3 judges. Perhaps trials, or parts of them, may also need to be in camera to protect witnesses.

However, even after conceding all this, and even if the threat is grave, it is not necessary to abandon the principle that a suspect should be charged and given an opportunity to reply in the presence of an independent tribunal. To abandon the requirement to declare the case against offenders and to deny them a chance to argue their case before someone independent of their accuser goes against two precepts that have been part of English law for centuries – the rules of natural justice.

The two principles are:
Hear both sides.
No man may be a judge in his own cause.

Many demands for ‘human rights’ are utopian and should be ignored. The Human Rights Act is bad law that has created legal confusion and should be annulled. But we should not abandon the fundamental precepts of English law, the rules of natural justice.

Posted by David Green at 08:51 PM | Comments (0)

January 28, 2005

Why More History by Itself Will Not be Enough to Stop the Rot

“We cannot be surprised that some within the next generation do not value our parliamentary democracy if they know nothing of the English Civil War, do not vote if they are not taught about the struggles to widen the franchise, and do not value any authority figures, if they are not told the inspiring tales of the national heroes of the past.”

So, Tim Collins, Shadow Home Secretary for Education, is reported as yesterday having declared at a conference of Catholic Head Teachers. He went on to make a new Tory pledge that, if elected, they will extend the compulsory study of history at school beyond the age of 14 when it can currently be dropped to 16.

The remedy Mr Collins prescribes for the malady he claims to detect in today’s young seems remarkably ill suited to cure it.

The malady from which Mr Collins claims today’s youngsters too often suffer is political apathy and cynicism, combined with or deriving from insufficient appreciation of the merits of British parliamentary democracy. His prescribed remedy is two further years of compulsory history at school.

If Tim Collins thinks two further years of what passes for history in today’s schools is going to reverse growing political apathy and cynicism among today’s young, it is not they but he who is in need of a course in British history.

No people better appreciated or cherished their political institutions and way of life more than did the British in 1939 and 1940. Yet, at that time, British children did not have to attend school beyond the age of 14, and only relatively few did.

Until the Fisher Education Act of 1918 raised the school-leaving age to 14, most children in England finished their schooling at the age of 12. Their relatively few years of formal schooling did not prevent working-class English men, women, and children in 1897 flocking the streets of London to watch and cheer as Queen Victoria led a procession of troops to Elephant and Castle to mark her Diamond Jubilee.

One could continue further back in time to show that the strength of patriotism and national pride of a people is not a function of how many years history schooling the have received. Nor, given how many highly educated Englishmen and women in the twenties and thirties succumbed to the charms of communism and thereby felt themselves willing to hand over their country to the Soviets, does intensive study of British history guarantee immunity from deep indifference, if not active hostility to, British parliamentary democracy.

When it comes to the political education that history can provide, what matters is not exactly what events are known or how many of them, but how the events that are known are interpreted. Here, it is the political sensibilities of history teachers who provide the crucial filters through which schoolchildren are first made to look on and make sense of such facts of history as they are taught.

To breed political apathy and cynicism among school leavers, it is not necessary history teachers should themselves share these attitudes, though doubtless that can help. Often, these attitudes can be far more readily inculcated in youngsters through being taught by those filled with a fervent hatred of the established way of political life.

Today’s politically apathetic and disengaged youngsters do not result from their having been left ignorant of British history. They are apathetic and disengaged because they have been fed a diet of pernicious half-truths and calumnies about their country by teachers in all liberal arts subjects, not just in history, who for generations now have, for the most part, shared a deep left-wing hostility to British political culture.

No one saw all this more clearly than George Orwell who, in 1945, observed that among the intelligentsia in England ‘a derisive and mildly hostile attitude towards Britain is more or less compulsory’.

What Orwell said about this group then holds even more truly of them today. It makes the problem of how to stem growing political apathy among the young more subtle and complex a problem than Mr Collins gives the impression of supposing.

Perhaps, to inculcate greater patriotism and political interest among young Britons today what they need is less rather than more schooling, especially in British history as it is all too often taught today!

Certainly, the Tories are rightly concerned about current lack of patriotism among many of today’s young. As in so many other areas of public policy, however, having correctly identified a problem, their proposed solutions to it tend to be insufficiently radical.

Classical liberals are ideally placed to help today’s Tories, and New Labour for that matter if they would but listen, think outside the box, in not having any direct parliamentary aspirations of their own.

Lord knows, the country sorely needs some radical thinking on how best to preserve and safeguard its glorious liberal culture and political traditions from the numerous threats that beset it today!

Posted by David Conway at 04:05 PM | Comments (1)

January 27, 2005

All Must Suffer in the Name of Equal Opportunities for Terror Suspects

Last December, the Law Lords ruled by eight to one that it is unlawful for the British authorities to detain indefinitely foreign terrorist suspects whom they are unable to deport to their countries of origin for fear they would then suffer ‘human rights’ violations.

That judgement may yet come back to haunt their Lordships should, as the Security Services warn, Westminster be a prime target for an Islamist dirty bomb. Alas, if it does, they will not be the only ones whose safety their judgment will have imperilled.

The Law Lords gave two grounds for their ruling. First, they judged, indefinite detention of foreign terror suspects discriminatory, since UK nationals suspected of terrorism enjoyed legal protection from indefinite detention without trial. Second, they judged such indefinite detention without trial to violate the right to freedom of all placed under it irrespective of their nationality.

The early Christmas present the Lord Lords gave to Charles Clarke on his first day as Home Secretary left him the unenviable task of deciding how to reconcile that ruling with his responsibility to safeguard national security in the face of the continuing threat from Islamist terrorism.

Yesterday, the Home Secretary unveiled his ‘solution’. He is to introduce emergency legislation that will replace indefinite detention without trial for foreign terror suspects unable to be deported or tried in court with ‘control orders’. These orders will effectively place their recipients under indefinite house-arrest and will be able to be given to UK citizens as well as foreigners suspected of plotting terror.

Under the proposed new legislation, the Home Secretary will be empowered to place these orders if the police or security services give him reasonable cause, which cannot be revealed in court, to believe anyone a national security risk, be they British or foreign.

Civil liberties groups remain unsatisfied by the proposed new control orders. They claim them equally in breach of the article of the European Convention on Human Rights forbidding indefinite detention without trial. To them, it is small comfort the Home Secretary has avoided being discriminatory in locking up without trial whomever he chooses by extending that risk to UK nationals as well as foreigners.

Many less enthusaistic than these organisations about the often spurious ‘human rights’ claimed today might well prefer to risk falling foul of arbitrary detention than risking becoming victim of some Islamist terror bomb. Those with such a preference might also have preferred had the Home Secretary extended indefinite detention without trial to British terror suspects as well as foreign ones, where the relevant evidence could not be revealed in court, to attempting to restrain both by ‘control orders’.

Control orders are unlikely to prove any more effective against genuine terrorists than ASBO’s have proved in restraining juvenile delinquents given them. In its ‘Public Agenda’ supplement this week, The Times reports that the Association of Youth Offending Team Managers has found ‘in some areas of England every ASBO is breached and that one breach in eight leads to custody”.

Should ‘control orders’ be as ineffective a constraint as ASBO’s, then all the Lord Lords will have accomplished by delivering their ruling -- besides triumphantly displaying their newly granted authority over Parliament which, for all its flaws, remains, for the time being, elected -- is to make us have to rest less easily in our beds … or on the tube, going to and from Westminster.

Posted by David Conway at 02:11 PM | Comments (3)

January 26, 2005

Making independence a reality

Oxford University has announced that it is to restrict the number of places available to British students by 1,600 in order to have more places to offer to overseas applicants. The reason is a very simple financial one: fees for British students are paid by the government, at such a low level that the University is left out of pocket, while overseas students can be charged realistic fees which actually make a profit for the university. The overseas students are effectively subsidising the British ones. As there are still large numbers of such students wanting to study at Oxford, it makes financial sense to alter the ratio of imported to home-grown undergraduates.

It would be nice to think that places at Oxford, or any other university, were awarded on grounds of academic merit alone. We like to think of universities as places of higher learning and repositories of the culture. Even people who don’t go there probably feel that their existence adds to the quality of life in the country.

Unfortunately the awarding of places at universities has become so politicised that admissions tutors are complaining that they are not up to it, and would like the decisions to be taken over by committees who have more political awareness. The government wants to increase the size of the university population, but it doesn’t want to pay the costs. Students therefore have to pay part of their fees – unless they qualify for means-tested grants. Access is supposed to be widened, with preference given to students from certain postcodes and underachieving schools, which means that entrance requirements have to be lowered. Universities find that they have to teach students basic skills they should have learned at school. British universities, even those at the top of the tree, are slipping down the international league tables as a result. Meanwhile, middle-class parents who have sent their children to good independent schools, often at great financial sacrifice, find that their offspring are actually discriminated against in the selection procedure, and less likely to get in than applicants from bog-standard state comprehensives. And if they do get in, the parents will be paying extremely high fees to subsidise those who pay nothing at all.

In an excellent article in today’s Times, Simon Jenkins argues that Oxford should stop complaining and take the obvious step – going private. It should stop accepting money from the state and regain control over its own admissions process and academic work.

Simon Jenkins writes, as ever, very persuasively, but why stop at Oxford? Why stop, even, with the Russell Group of elite universities? Surely every university should be independent of state interference? They do, after all, enjoy the legal status of independent charities. If they had to cover their own costs, they would charge whatever fees reflected their academic standing. This does not mean that less well-off students would be excluded. There are ways of running a ‘needs-blind’ admissions policy, that would guarantee a place for every student who would profit by it by combining bursaries with the offer of paid work on campus and generous but realistic loans. This is how the best American universities manage it. Why should it be beyond us to instigate a similar system? It would be worth making the effort to get the politicians out of the ivory towers, and to turn universities back to being institutions of higher learning rather than factories of social engineering.

Posted by at 12:57 PM | Comments (9)

January 25, 2005

The underlying causes of juvenile crime

A new Government study, the Crime and Justice Survey, has found that nearly a quarter (24%) of males aged 14-17 were serious or prolific offenders, committing crimes such as car theft, burglary and violent assaults at least six times (and usually far more) in the previous year.

The social-science evidence points strongly to the influence of parents as the chief underlying cause of juvenile crime. In England, 27 per cent of prison inmates had been in care and 47 per cent had run away from home as a child. But it's not just broken families. Criminal parents are much more likely to raise criminal offspring: a recent survey found that 43 per cent of prisoners had family members who had been convicted and 35 per cent had a family member who had been in jail. But family breakdown is important, especially when parents contradict each other - thereby providing no clear moral lead - or compete for affection by being lax with their children. Such conflict is more likely in disrupted families, when one parent is absent, or when a new partner or step-parent appears.

Over a quarter of children are now being raised by only one parent and just over 40% of children are now born outside marriage.

Most people don't commit crimes because they think it's wrong, and parents play the dominant role in providing their children with a conscience. Because parenting is a difficult task, if one parent must do the job of two it becomes more difficult still. Of course, a lone parent may be able to raise a child successfully if he or she is not naturally pre-disposed to crime, and the school and wider community are supportive. But, single parents have less chance of success, particularly when confronted by an inherently difficult child, and still more so when they live in a disorderly neighbourhood. In such localities, boys who lack the guidance of a law-abiding father often turn to other role models. Perhaps they will be keen on football and the local team manager will have a good influence on them, or maybe they will look up to the local car thief or drug dealer.

The Government knows that family breakdown is a major cause of juvenile crime. The Home Office Youth Lifestyles Survey proves it and the Government's Social Exclusion Unit has shown the connection between disrupted families and crime. The Government ought to be doing its best to encourage both biological parents to stay married while their children are growing up. But it doesn't because it's frightened of being accused of scapegoating lone parents. As a result, tax concessions for married couples have been removed and welfare benefits given to lone parents on such a scale that a single parent can work for only 16 hours a week and receive take-home pay far higher than that of a couple who have put in over 40 hours.

Elite opinion in this country is hostile to the family based on marriage, so much so that the Sunday Times columnist, Ferdinand Mount, recently found it necessary to be apologetic about the 'M-word'. But there can be no solution to juvenile crime without a strong commitment to the 'M-word'. Of course, the police, probation and the courts have a vital role, but the influence of parents outweighs everything else by far. The Government should think again and do its bit to uphold the ideal of the family based on lifelong marriage.

Posted by David Green at 08:24 PM | Comments (3)

January 24, 2005

At last – the beginnings of a rational debate about immigration

Michael Howard has sparked a calm and measured debate about immigration that is long overdue. For too long, false accusations of racism have intimidated many people into remaining silent. Of course, Trevor Phillips, the chairman of the CRE, did his best to fan the flames in the Guardian, where he is quoted as saying: "It appears that Mr Howard has, against his own better instincts, and for purely political reasons, surrendered to the provisional wing of his party to base this campaign, not on measured and rational debate, but on the ill-informed propaganda of some of the more demented anti-immigration groups."

The Government opted not to play the race card. Hazel Blears, the Home Office minister, claimed that the opposition would be unable to afford a new system because of its planned £35bn spending cuts. "Everybody agrees with controlled migration," she said. "That requires investment in both effective border controls and immigration systems. Michael Howard's words and the Tories' spending plans are at odds."

Even if ‘everybody’ does agree that a change of policy is needed, there is still no consensus about some of the fundamental facts. For instance, what have been the economic consequences of immigration? One Home Office report estimated that in the fiscal year 1999/2000 Britain’s 5 million migrants paid in aggregate £2.5 billion more in taxes than they received in government expenditure. However, Professor Bob Rowthorn (among others) has challenged these estimates on the Civitas website. He shows how some unusual factors led the researchers to exaggerate the benefit by about £2.1 billion and how many costs were left out of their calculations.

Posted by David Green at 04:40 PM | Comments (1)

January 21, 2005

By Golly, why can't anyone today see the need for a bally good oath?

Today’s Daily Telegraph carries an op-ed by Tom Utley on the government’s recent announcement that it proposes shortly to offer young native-born British citizens the opportunity to participate in a special ceremony to mark and celebrate their transition to full-blown citizenship when they come of age to vote at 18.

As can be inferred from the title he gives his piece, ‘Free-born Britons don’t need an oath to make them feel they belong', Mr Tom Utley sees little of positive value in the idea of such ceremonies for native-born citizens, and much to condemn it.

He writes:

‘I have no objection to the ceremonies introduced last February for foreigners who take British citizenship. …But there is a world of difference between a ceremony designed to welcome those who switch allegiance from one sovereign authority to another, and … a Blairite [one]… for people who were born British.’

I have slightly altered Mr Utley's wording because, in the original, what he contrasts with citizenship ceremonies for foreigners seeking naturalisation is not some equivalent citizenship ceremony for native born Britons, but a religious service.

Mr Utley makes this substitution following the inadvertent usage of the term 'service' by a Guardian reporter to refer to the proposed ceremony. This word struck Mr Utley as apposite, since, in his eyes, what the government seems intent on introducing is nothing less than ‘an act of communal worship ...[whose] object of veneration would not be God, so much as the Government and the constitution of the United Kingdom, with particular reference to the Home Office’s plans to improve racial integration and “community cohesion”.

I could not agree more with Mr Ultley in thinking that the present Government is liable to exploit the proposed ceremony, as it does every other opportunity that presents itself, to promote its own glory in the eyes of the public, as well as to plug its own highly questionable levelling agenda.

Moreover, I agree with Mr Utley that, were all that could be gained from any such form of ceremony, none would be worth introducing. Maybe, the risk of the ceremony being politicised in this way makes it one not worth taking.

However, it is by no means clear that every form of such a ceremony would be alien to the spirit of the British Constitution. Nor is it clear that no such ceremony could serve any useful political purpose today, claims that appear to be the central reasons Mr Utley offers for rejecting the idea of one.

That Mr Utley thinks any such form of ceremony would be alien to the British constitution is indicated when he writes:

‘Until this government came along, nobody thought that there was need of any state-sponsored ceremony to mark any particular stage in a youngster’s development as a member of the body politic. For Britons, the accumulation of all … rights and responsibilities was just a natural part of growing up.’

That Mr Utley thinks no such form of ceremony could serve any useful purpose is indicated by his observation:

‘We who are born free, need no citizenship oaths … to make us feel that we belong…. Such humiliations are for the people of insecure countries, riven by revolution, or for nations … with a long history of authoritarian rule.’

It is, perhaps, for these two reasons, that he writes:

‘The great thing about being born a British subject is that hundred of years’ worth of rights and liberties come free with our first gulp of breath. No rites of passage are required.’

Classical liberals may, with good cause, be as equally unwilling as Mr Utley ‘to chant from a text written by our …buffoon of a Home Secretary’, or to see their children encouraged to do so.

However, Mr Utley seems a little too eager to dismiss the idea there could be any merit in any form of such a ceremony. That eagerness leads him to make some pretty remarkable and highly contestable claims.

As a matter of historical fact, it is just not true that ‘before the present government, nobody had thought there was need of any state-sponsored ceremony to mark any particular stage in a youngster’s development as a member of the body politic.’

What else were the Corporation Act of 1661 and the Test Act of 1672, which required any form of public office holder to swear allegiance to the sovereign, but ‘state-sponsored ceremonies to mark a particular stage in a youngster’s development as a member of the body politic’?

It is, therefore, just untrue that, until the present government came along, ‘for Britons, the accumulation of all .. rights and responsibilites was just a natural part of growing up.’

After all, until 1829, Englishmen could not vote unless they had signed up to the articles of the Anglican Creed. Some natural accumulation of rights!

No, the civil and political rights of Britons, as we understand these today, had to fought hard for to be won. Moreover, they came only incrementally and gradually, often through struggle at and following the Glorious Revolution.

As to the value of any form of citizenship ceremony for British citizens, while fully sharing Mr Utley’s reservations about the merits of any form of one likely to issue from the pen of any current government minister or appointee, it seems too hasty to write off the very idea of such a ceremony as easily as Mr Utley seems keen to do.

He sees any such ceremony unnecessary because he thinks the liberties of Englishmen too securely entrenched to need being secured or reinforced by such ceremonies. I beg to differ.

It is true no formal oath or declaration of allegiance by itself carries much moral force, especially if the authority to which allegiance is given is, like the Nazi government was, an evil one. But a sincerely sworn oath or declaration of allegiance given to a worthy source of authority cannot but be a good and a cohesive force in any society whose members are customarily given over to making such pledges.

Making oaths has been the time-honoured way in which the British polity has obtained both the full participation and allegiance of its active members. This holds true, all the way from those who undertake jury duty or give evidence in court, through members of the police and armed forces, all the way up to the sovereign to whom, wrongly, Mr Utley supposes British subjects unconditionally bound.

Sine the Glorious Revolution, every incumbent British monarch has been made to swear an oath at their coronation in which they swear, among other things, to govern in accordance with statute and common law and to preserve and uphold all the customary rights belonging to their subjects as custom and statute accord them.

Arguably, since 1688, it has been accepted that the allegiance of British subjects to their sovereigns and to all those who act in their is dependent upon the sovereign and his or her public 'servants' acting in accordance with these time-honoured statutes and customs.

It is precisely the seeming eagerness with which the present government seems keen to sign away all these time-honoured statutes and traditional liberties of the British to what will be an essentially unaccountable remote ruling power situated in Brussels that makes it such a dangerous force.

Moreover, in an age, when nominal British citizenship can all too easily mask allegiance to some sinister and fanatical foreign prince or charismatic leader, what harm is there in requiring all future British citizens, wherever they might have been born, to make such an oath of allegiance? Our present situation is more akin to seventeenth century England, when deep religious conflicts threatened the body politic, than it is to that of Edwardian England or England just after 1945, when the country was far more uniform than it is now culturally and loyalites could be taken for granted.

Rather than dismissing the present-day relevance or value of oaths of allegiance for citizens of this country, those who cherish their British citizenship for the liberties it accords all who enjoy it would do well at this time to be urging their political masters and mistresses, right up to the very top, to remember what they themselves have personally undertaken to uphold and be loyal to in swearing the oaths they did upon assuming office.

Similarly, serious consideration should be given to the franchise beibng restricted to those prepared to swear such oaths. It should be thought by all Britons a privilege to be one and to enjoy the rights attendant upon being one, rather than something which the authorities should see fit to be anxiously seeking to persuade citizens to exercise.

I leave the last word on this subject to that great champion of English liberty, John Locke:

‘Submitting to the Laws of any country, living quietly, and enjoying privileges and protection under them makes not a man a member of that society: This is only a local protection and homage due to, and from all those, who, not being in a state of war, come within the territories belonging to any government, to all parts of whereof the force of its law extends.… Thus we see that foreigners, by living all their lives under another government, and enjoying the privileges and protection of it, though they are bound, even in conscience, to submit to its administration, as far forth of any Denison; yet do not thereby come to be subjects or members of that commonwealth. Nothing can make any man so, but his actually entering into it by positive engagement, and express promise and compact... This is … that consent which makes any one a member of any commonwealth.’ (Second Treatise of Government, section. 122; Locke's emphasis)

Posted by David Conway at 02:49 PM | Comments (4)

January 20, 2005

Why Classical Liberals have Greater Cause to be Alarmed by Bell than British Muslims

On 17th January, David Bell, Head of Ofsted, delivered a widely reported lecture to the Hansard Society on the subject of British citizenship and how best our schools should be deployed so as to turn out good citizens, especially now they are required to teach citizenship.

Mr Bell’s wide-ranging speech touched on a number of different aspects of this thorny subject.

Most media attention was directed to the concerns voiced by Mr Bell about the likely socially divisive consequences of the rapid growth of faith schools, especially Muslim ones, unless they ‘adapt their curriculum to ensure that it … helps [pupils] acquire an appreciation of and respect for other cultures in a way that promotes tolerance and harmony’.

Mr Bell’s concerns here have been greeted with great protestation by British Muslims. Dr Monhmaed Mukadam, chairman of the Association of Muslims Schools, has accused Mr Bell of Islamophobia by singling out only Muslim schools as potential seed-beds of sectarianism.

Whether, in having drawn special attention to the potential divisiveness of Muslim schools alone among faith schools, Mr Bell is guilty of having incited hatred of a religious group is an issue on which, perhaps, we can await instruction from the courts after the government’s bill making incitement to religious hatred a crime has completed its passage through parliament.

My bet is that no English court would ever so regard Mr Bell’s lecture, although it might well do so if exactly the same sentiments were put less guardedly or by some less reputable establishment figure, something which, in itself, should give any classical liberal who values equality before the law cause for concern.

However, there was something else said by Mr Bell in his lecture that to date has gone un-remarked on by the media that should be of far greater and more immediate cause for concern to classical liberals than anything he has said about the need for faith schools to adopt curricula that inculcate tolerance and respect for others.

From a classical liberal point of view, what is truly alarming in Mr Bell’s lecture is the account given there of what all schools should be aiming to impart in their pupils by way of an understanding of their common British heritage as citizens and of why, in virtue of such a common heritage, such citizenship should be valued and cherished. The contentious passage in question in Mr Bell’s lecture goes as follows:

‘We must not allow our recognition of diversity to become apathy in the face of any challenge to our coherence as a nation. I would go further and say that an awareness of our common heritage as British citizens, equal under the law, should enable us to assert with confidence that we are intolerant of intolerance, illiberalism and attitudes and values that demean the place of certain sections of our community, be they women or people living in non-traditional relationships.’

What is deeply disturbing here is that someone in so powerful a position of authority as Mr Bell, should, in a lecture about British citizenship and why British citizens should value it, have equated tolerance under a common law, which is a major feature of Britain’s national heritage and has made Britain such a tolerant and liberal society, with ‘intolerance of intolerance, illiberalism and attitudes and values that demean the place of certain sections of our community.’

Doubtless, it is possible for the British school system to foster national cohesion through teaching its pupils to be ‘intolerant’ of any but liberal attitudes. Were it to do this, however, it would not have and could not have made them genuinely liberal nor appreciative of their British national heritage which has always involved tolerating those not liberal in their outlook, provided any illiberalism in outlook is confined to the sphere of thought, not action.

What, therefore, should be of especial concern to classical liberals in Mr Bell’s remarks is its implicit message that all those who are unwilling to celebrate diversity and espouse politically correct attitudes that embrace the government’s understanding of racial equality, affirmative action, and multiculturalism, etc., are not to be tolerated in tomorrow’s schools or allowed to disseminate their own outlooks.

It is, thus not so much British Muslims but classical liberals who have greater cause to take alarm at this clear warning of the Bell.

Posted by David Conway at 04:22 PM | Comments (2)

Proposed Law Against Religious Hatred

The proposed law against religious hatred is one of the main threats to freedom we face. It is likely to stir up intolerance and religious animosity. The best online briefing on the subject can be found at the Christian Institute website (PDF file).

The Government dropped an earlier proposal in 2001 but has deviously included a new measure in the Serious Organised Crime and Police Bill, now before Parliament. Further comment can be found at this page on our own website.

Posted by David Green at 08:48 AM | Comments (0)

January 19, 2005

Keeping faith-based schools in perspective

The debate about what we now call faith schools is becoming muddled by the grouping together of schools which may be teaching insurrection and disobedience to the law with schools which teach adherence to a particular creed which may be contrary to mainstream, modern, secular thought.

David Bell’s speech, delivered to the Hansard Society on Monday, attracted headlines for claiming that the growing number of independent faith schools is threatening the cohesion of society. There are now over 300 fee-paying religious schools, including 50 Jewish schools, 100 Muslim schools and over 100 evangelical Christian schools. David Bell acknowledges that, in a free society, parents have the right to educate their children in their own beliefs, but that ‘faith should not be blind. I worry that many young people are being educated in faith-based schools with little appreciation of their wider responsibilities and obligations to British society.’

His particular complaint is against the teaching of citizenship, not only in faith schools but throughout the system. Many classes are unsatisfactory, and he claims that ‘scepticism, cynicism and even fear’ surround the subject.

The government was keen to add citizenship to the national curriculum because of problems caused by the rise in anti-social behaviour amongst young people, and their unwillingness to engage with the institutions of a democratic society. However, the expectation that such fundamental problems of failure of socialisation could be cured by a couple of half-hour classes a week were always unrealistic. Teachers, already oppressed by government demands that they compensate for many things going wrong in the wider society, are understandably unenthusiastic about citizenship, and schools, for the most part, do not allocate significant resources to it.

But surely faith schools are more likely to produce good citizens than schools in which children find no over-arching framework of values? If children are taught within a world-view which encompasses transcendental values, they are less likely to engage in crime and anti-social behaviour, and more likely to play their part in society.

If there is any evidence that schools are undermining our democracy by their teaching, then there would be a case for intervention. It should also go without saying that if there were any evidence of encouraging illegal activity, this should be a matter for the police. But we must not allow ourselves to be panicked into thinking that, because people hold strongly to their religious perspectives, that there are grounds for state intervention. Believing that the world was created in seven days may offend many people’s sense of scientific reality, but children can make up their own minds about the evidence as they grow up. The important thing is that these children are, for the most part, growing up in loving and supportive families, who don’t need the government to interfere with their parental rights.

The state would do well to concentrate its resources where they are needed - on those children, who are now numerous, who are growing up without any sense of values at all. It is their behaviour that the government - and the rest of us - should be worrying about.

Posted by at 01:42 PM | Comments (2)

January 18, 2005

Tax cuts to renew personal responsibility

Debate about the small proposed Tory tax cuts has focused on the risk that services will have to be cut. But that is not the real issue. Health and education are largely public sector monopolies. Both main parties say they are in favour of ‘choice’, which implies competition (normally seen as the opposite of monopoly), but neither has connected the ‘tax and spend’ debate with the ‘choice’ debate.

The Opposition ought to use tax reform to bring an end to public sector monopoly in health and education. Their voucher scheme for education is a small step in the right direction, but their plans for the NHS are feeble. Most people who go out to work are paying taxes that cover their share of the NHS. But we are forced to pay our share by handing over an unknown amount to the Treasury. Why not give all of us a tax rebate equal to let’s say 80% of the cost of the NHS on condition that we take out a health insurance policy of our choice? We would all continue to pay enough to cover the cost of ensuring access for rich and poor alike, but without being trapped in a monopoly system.

Tax cuts for their own sake don’t inspire anyone. But tax cuts as part of a strategy to restore personal responsibility, end public sector monopoly and create competition that would help to raise standards for all, are a worthy ideal. The Health Policy Consensus Group has proposed how it could be done.

Posted by David Green at 09:42 AM | Comments (0)

January 17, 2005

Aid is not the key to relieving poverty

In yet another top-quality leading article in The Business Andrew Neil adds a note of realism to Gordon Brown’s crusade for poverty relief.

Peter Bauer, the great champion of poverty relief by means of free markets and free trade, once quipped that foreign aid was a system by which the poor people in rich countries subsidised the rich few in poor countries. To be sceptical about aid seems harsh to most people, but escaping from poverty does not depend on foreign aid – it is only possible where governments keep order, protect property and ensure that agreements are honoured, so that all are free to use their talents and energies as they believe best. The countries that remain poor today have governments that have not created these conditions.

Posted by David Green at 11:43 AM | Comments (0)

January 14, 2005

New Labour’s Novel ‘Solution’ to Prison Overcrowding

Prisons are overcrowded; so the Government has come up with a novel way to deal with the shortage of prison accommodation. According to a report in today's Times, judges are to be forbidden from imposing prison sentences unless they have first checked there is enough room to accommodate the convicted offender.

Apparently, the government has decided our prisons only have holding capacity for a maximum of 80,000. So, rather than build more in face of a projected shortfall of 20,000 in less than five years time, judges are to be to be told they are not to give time to those they convict.

The government has certainly found a novel way for dealing with shortages of resources financed from the public purse, but why has it chosen to accept as much as current prison capacity? If concern with containing costs is to determine how many should be confined, why doesn’t government simply close down our prisons altogether and thereby save the tax-payer loads more money?

Come to think of it, this new government strategy for dealing with problems of shortages of resources can be easily extended into other sectors of public financing.

Hospital waiting lists could be reduced at the stroke of a ministerial pen instructing GP’s to make no more patient referrals unless a consultant and hospital bed were available.

Oh, of course, how stupid of me… I hadn’t realised: hospital services are there to cater for a medical need which would not be met by not providing treatment.

But then, by parity of reasoning, prisons exist because of a need to lock up offenders, a need the magnitude of which must logically be a function of some independent variable besides the number of prison places available.

Clearly, people cannot he imprisoned without there being prisons in which to house them. But the number of prison places is not a constant to which sentencing policy must be adjusted. It is a variable that can and should be adjusted to meet need.

‘But is there need to imprison rather than impose non-custodial sentences ?’ will be the reply that can be anticipated coming from those who favour the government’s line.

Whatever the answer to that vexed question is, it simply cannot be, ‘Well,that all depends on whether we have any prison places or how many we have.’

What the government is proposing is simply unacceptable. Whoever came up with the proposal should be immediately given a custodial sentence… assuming there is a place for them inside, that is.

Posted by David Conway at 12:44 PM | Comments (1)

January 13, 2005

Abandon Hope All Ye Who Enter …

All too many university students today languish in a condition of moral turpitude, according to Professor Steven Schwartz in a report in yesterday’s Daily Telegraph.

“Plagiarism, incivility, rudeness and reneging on legitimate debts – all these are depressingly common among university students”, he is reported as claiming.

“How can we begin to expect them to analyse ethical issues such as stem cell research, nanotechnology, euthanasia or gay marriage when we cannot get them to understand that they should be polite to others and that they should meet their obligations?” he is reported as having lamented.

To improve the moral tone of university life, Professor Schwartz bids university teaching staff to set a personal example. “We must meet our classes on time, return assignments promptly, and mark fairly” he proposes.

Professor Schwartz is well placed to comment on the moral calibre of today’s university students. As well as heading the Government’s working party on University Admissions, he is also Vice Chancellor of Brunel University

Should Professor Schwartz be correct about their state of moral laxity, and there is little reason to doubt his word, it is puzzling why he be should be as keen as he manifestly is to attract as many young people as possible to these dens of iniquity, especially those whose families have no previous history of university education.

Yet it is precisely that on which Professor Schwartz seems hell-bent, forgive the pun.

On the very day the Daily Telegraph reports him deploring the moral character of today’s university students, he is reported in the Times as proudly announcing plans to open at Brunel a city academy for 16 to 19 year olds “to encourage inner-city students into higher education”.

Exactly why Professor Schwartz should be keen to attract youngsters into institutions like his if the latter are the sin-bins he claims they are is deeply puzzling. The Times says he was inspired by the need to show pupils that university “is not just for toffs”.

But was it worth exposing these youngsters to the dubious moral company he claims they are sure to find there just to disabuse them of the notion university is only for toffs rather than louts?

Or did Professor Schwartz want these youngsters admitted in the hope their presence at university would raise the moral tone there? Again, however, is it not more likely any virtuous but impressionable minority of young students would be dragged downward by being made to keep company with rogues than elevating the rogues by consorting with them?

Or, as seems more realistic, if Professor Schwartz supposes the moral character of the newcomers he wants to bring into universities is no more elevated than that of those whom they will find there, one wonders why he and his like should be as keen as they are to expand university numbers through ever-widening university participation.

Surely, these places should, rather, be closed down, given the corrupt and expensive educational charades all too many have become through their reckless over-expansion at the behest of unscrupulous politicians and maverick educational entrepreneurs, masquerading as senior academics, who have forced them to admit manifestly unable students who, in consequence, have been driven to cheat and to which teaching staff at them have been encouraged, if not ordered, to turn a blind eye to maintain state funding.

Posted by David Conway at 03:15 PM | Comments (4)

January 12, 2005

Who cares about public opinion?

The Home Secretary has announced that the law governing the degree of force that householders can use to protect themselves against criminals will not be changed. Instead, the government will run a campaign to tell us what the appropriate response should be. At the same time, a private members bill introduced by Roger Gale MP to allow householders to use whatever degree of force they consider necessary against intruders has failed after being described by Home Office Minister, Fiona Mactaggart, as a recipe for a "spiral of violence and retaliation". The bill reflected the preferences of a poll of listeners to the Radio 4 Today programme.

Once again, an attempt to reform the criminal justice system in a way that reflects the concerns of ordinary citizens has been defeated by those who run the system, and who are convinced that they know what we need better than we do.

One of the reasons for the high level of dissatisfaction with the police and the courts is the feeling of absolute powerlessness that we have in this country. Nothing we think makes any difference, as the criminal justice system is above politics. This sounds good, in the sense that we have always prided ourselves on having a system that can’t be manipulated by party politicians to their own short-term advantage, but in reality it means that it is beyond the ability of voters – citizens – to influence it. In the USA people elect their district attorneys, some judges and, of course, their mayors, for whom the appointment of the police chief is one of the most important decisions they will make. If crime is felt to be out of control, a lot of people are in danger of losing their jobs. In Britain, the authorities can just tell us that the ‘fear of crime’ is the problem, and that crime is really falling. Nobody believes this, but so what?

The situation is made worse by the rock-solid consensus amongst the political parties that no radical reforms are needed. A new initiative here, a bit of extra funding there, is felt to be the answer. Whichever way you vote at the general election, it is unlikely that anything much is going to be done about crime, unless the political landscape suffers a seismic shift.

Posted by at 02:53 PM | Comments (8)

January 11, 2005

Binge or save?

Pensions are a real problem nowadays. The state pension is in trouble as a result of the falling birthrate coupled with increasing longevity, which means there are fewer and fewer young, working people to support more and more elderly people. PAYE pensions mean that anything you pay in now goes straight out to whoever is of pensionable age. When you retire, your pension will depend not on what you have paid in – which will be totally irrelevant – but on what the generation of workers at that time are paying in. ‘National Insurance’ is not based on any recognisable principles of insurance.

Occupational pensions are in trouble, as final-salary arrangements are becoming unsustainable, even in the public sector. The government has announced that, for 1.3 million workers in the NHS, pension age will rise from 60 to 65, and some workers will be offered average-salary pensions rather than final-salary.

Private pensions are in trouble, partly because of Gordon Brown’s raid on pension funds to pay for his own projects, which left them less robust than they would have been to withstand a falling investment market.

And as for saving if you are on a low income – forget it. The government’s pension credit makes it a complete waste of time and assets. You will be much better off if you just spend everything and then claim the Chancellor’s new benefit for the elderly, aimed specifically at those who have never given in to a thrifty instinct.

Which makes it all the more strange that the government launches today its child trust fund, which will open a savings account for every baby born, and put £250 into it, with a top-up at age seven. According to Stephen Timms, financial secretary to the treasury, the aim is to ‘boost the culture of saving… We want to make sure that every single young person has a worthwhile financial asset available to them at the age of 18’.

The only way in which these young people will have a ‘worthwhile financial asset’ at 18 will be if they get into the habit of saving themselves – but why would they do that, when all the signals sent out by the tax and benefits system encourage you to spend rather than save? If they leave the £250 gathering interest for 18 years, it will just about cover their eighteenth birthday celebrations, perhaps enabling them to take advantage of the government’s 24-hour drinking laws and big new casinos.

Posted by at 06:07 PM | Comments (2)

January 10, 2005

Why the Beat Can’t be Beat

Various Home Office spokesmen continue to deny recent changes in police practice have contributed in any way to a massive increase in violent crime recently witnessed in this country. They do so by citing a recent minor fall in the crime-rate as evidence violent crime has not risen, and hence as evidence the new methods are effective.

This reply overlooks two things.

First, the apparent recent ‘fall’ in the crime rate has largely been the result of excluding certain categories of crime from the computation. Second, what is at issue here is not overall crime rate, which may well have fallen recently due to extra-security measures taken by house-holders and car-owners, but the rate of violent crimes, largely committed in public places, which have gone through the roof in recent years.

Two valuable pieces of circumstantial evidence supporting the charge that recent changes in police practice have contributed to increased violent crime have recently appeared in the press. They take the form of personal testimony from senior policemen.

The first piece of circumstantial evidence comes from Sir Keith Povey, the outgoing Chief Inspector of Constabulary. It appears in a recent interview he gave weeks before retirement, reported in the Times last Monday.

Sir Keith here denies the need or desirability of police patrolling in pairs rather than singly, which they have routinely taken to doing in recent times, both on foot and in cars. Sir Keith said: ‘There is far too much double-crewing… whether on patrol or in vehicles. When you think officers have got sprays, side-handled batons,-- they don’t need to be in pairs most of the time’.

Sir Keith’s opinion receives endorsement from a second senior policeman, now retired, in a letter in today’s Times. The author of the letter is David Helm, Deputy Assistant Commissioner of Operations of London’s Metropolitan Police, from 1974 to 1980.

As well as agreeing with Sir Keith on their being no need for joint patrolling, Mr Helm draws attention to a second recently adopted police practice he claims to be no less counter-productive. This is their recent change of accoutrement when on foot patrol that sees them garbed in brilliant yellow jackets festooned with two-way radios on which they incessantly chat with each other.

Mr Helm explains why this new apparel is counter-productive. ‘In my day we were given a pair of white gauntlets only when we were directing traffic. I have followed suspects using the cover of trees and lamp posts and arrested them, which could not be done in a yellow jacket.’

Mr Helm goes on to make the following interesting suggestion: ‘If the PC’s took off the jackets and patrolled singly, so that they could see what was going on and talk to the public instead of chattering to each other, I think we might have a better service.’

The Home Office might care to consider running some local experiments to test whether changing police practice in the suggested ways has any curbing effect on local violent crime rates. Sadly, I fear, the only response the Home Office is likely to make to such a commonsensical suggestion is to invite anyone making it to be on their bikes.

Posted by David Conway at 05:12 PM | Comments (3)

January 08, 2005

The road to a good government job is paved with good intentions, so what the hell?

Mr Ron Bramwell has asked me this question in connection with my article "The sensational and the trivialising press":

"What was driving the public housing planners of the 1960s? Was it money from builders, or voters?"

It is a long, long story.

Part of what drove the planners of that time was sincere do-goodism. They knew best. An old friend of mine wrote a book at the time about the Newcastle planners. The title of Jon Gower Davies's book exactly caught the point: The Evangelistic Bureaucrat. A German book was entitled The Drawing-Board Preachers. My books at that time were about the Sunderland planners.

The planners were not out on a limb. Most people of woolly good will lived outside the slum clearance areas. Among the leading lights of the New Left in London (many of them ex-public school boys), very rapidly joined by the middle-class Marxist and Trotskyist students of the new universities, there was the ridiculous idea that working class life in northern England in the 1960s was accurately described by Engels in his Condition of the Working Classes in England in 1844. (In the early 1890s Engels himself had said that those conditions no longer existed.) In those days, town planning used to head the list of worth-while professionals among students (there were beginning to be a lot of them in the 1960s), so the planners were bouyed up by that.

In People and Planning I go through the history of Sunderland's housing and neighbourhoods from the growth of the town as a great shipbuilding and coal-mining centre in the middle nineteenth century to the 1970s.

Until the 1960s people who desperately wanted to be rehoused were being cleared from their crowded, multi-family houses, with few amenities in squalid neighbourhoods. They couldn't get into council houses fast enough. In the 1920s, 1930s and 1950s families on the new estates would proudly display their new homes, modern schools and new other community buildings and shops to their admiring working-class relatives from the older parts of the town.

It was only in the 1960s that the planners began to bite into respectable working-class neighbourhoods--great communities--and use against people perfectly capable of looking after their own homes, and increasingly owner-occupiers of them, the compulsory purchase laws that had been intended for use against slum landlords.

The estates were further and further away from the big shops and leisure focuses of the town centre. Suddenly, prefabricated tower blocks made their appearance. The local authority allocated dwellings on the basis of "need". "We can't have her rattling about the place like a pea in a pod." People who had a couple of spare rooms where their grandchildren could come and stay found that they had no chance of spare space if their house was demolished.

Then "need" began to mean preference for unmarried girls who were pregnant or had a small child or children. Within three of four years the uncontrolled children were the bane of the housing estates. People who expected neighbours to respect one another's privacy and property moved out, or would not move in. A vicious circle was created. You stood a better chance of a council house if you didn't get married. (That's not a red-top myth. I looked at all this at the time, as a full-time researcher, in the housing offices of the old Sunderland Corporation.)

The inculcated idea that a man's duty primary adult role was to live under the same roof with the mother of his children, and provide by his own work for each child for at least the first sixteen years of its life, was increasingly redundant. Young men were free to drink and fornicate as they liked. It took many years before drugs and the crime that was needed to support drugs took a firm hold. Nobody in those days dreamed that it would spiral as deeply as it did. Perfectly sincere, gruff old Labour politicians, many of them the salt of the earth, were on automatic pilot that more and more council housing was a good thing, and that the very few "bits of lasses" who "got themselves into trouble" should be treated kindly. The very few.

Labour men and women active in an industrial provincial town like Sunderland, with hardly any contact with or sympathy for the advanced ideas of the emerging libertarian Left of the student movements, didn't think there could ever be more than very few. Their world was a world of the universality and permanence in civilised societies (yes, they were as yet untouched by shame about English social institutions) of what everybody knew was the best way to handle sex, companionship and mutual aid, and the upbringing of children: namely, conception within marriage and life-long monogamy.

Men worked hard and long in the forges, foundries, shipyards, glassworks, shipyards and the pit. Women worked hard and long with the children; they worked hard and long in their homes' tiny sculleries, and over the poss-tubs, mangles and coal-fired boilers in the little brick outhouses in their back yards. But there was not much trace of the idea that women had the worse half of the family's grinding existence, and that the institution of marriage had failed.

That they would be the instruments of the family's destruction rarely occurred to any of these old Labour councillors. The prediction would have horrified them.

But--and this is why you commented as you did, I suppose--the planners and councillors who pursued policies of slum-clearing and rehousing were backed up by the people who made money in all the private professions and businesses surrounding demolition and construction. The planners were backed up by the myriad traditional local government professionals whose jobs came to depend on the endless momentum of demolition and rehousing schemes: the quantity surveyors, the architects, the public health officials, the lawyers in the Town Clerk's department, and all their support staffs.

Eventually they were backed up by the extraordinary variety of new professionals and pseudo-professionals in national and local government, and the academics and pseudo-academics who taught them, who emerged to service the burgeoning failures of the new prize winning estates and Corbusieran "machines for living in".

Again, they were, by and large, decent ordinary people who'd done pretty well in the job market. Their intentions were, by and large, benign.

But the damage they were doing didn't affect them adversely, and they knew (at least intuitively) that if the damage stopped being inflicted they'd be on the dole. In their cocoon of self-righteousness and often their superciliousness, they were quite happy to continue "doing good".

In the late 1960s the planners and the public health people produced "scientific surveys" of the housing districts that showed that the houses were technically unfit for human habitation, and physically incapable of lasting another five or ten years.

The surveys were self-contradictory bodged-up balderdash. (You'll have to read People and Planning and Public Participation and Planners' Blight to see the evidence for that, and to see whether or not you agree that the evidence produced there justifies these harsh remarks.) But in the planners' and health officials' eyes it did not matter. They were in the right in their policies of clearing these slums. The system required them to justify their policy by facts. But what did a few facts about the attitudes and homes of working-class people here or there have to do with their grand designs? "Everybody knew" that slum-clearance was a good thing. That's what they'd been taught; that's what their colleagues took for granted; and that's what their advancement in their profession depended on.

There was plenty of petty corruption. Housing and planning councillors were often in the pockets of the better educated and better paid senior officials. But the corruption was, say, bottles of whisky at Christmas from contractors to officers, and drinks bought at conferences by the officers for the councillors, for which the sozzled councillors were sufficiently grateful. The officers weren't doing anything they didn't want them to do.

In the later 1960s the planners nationwide were backed to the hilt by a Newcastle politician, T. Dan Smith, a principled Trotskyist in his younger days. I have no doubt that he was sincere enough in thinking he was doing good. But he was so arrogant in his self-conception, that he was enlightened and right and ordinary people were backward and wrong, that to oil the wheels of progress he spread corruption far and wide through local government.

Wisely, he kept his home base in Newcastle relatively free from corruption.

Corruption was not more than a petty problem in Sunderland (as far as I know, but I've led a sheltered life, as I have admitted in other articles) under an incorruptible and highly competent politician who took over as Council leader in the later 1960s. Charles Slater.

In County Durham corruption in connection with town-planning projects was rife. It was originally exposed by Private Eye in an article entitled 'Handy Andy'.

Smith operated by appointing "consultants" to his various "public relations" firms. Depending on the size of the local authority and the influence of the councillor, he'd appoint him or her (nearly always him in those days) as a consultant at £500 or more, running into the thousands of pounds a year or as a single fee.

Smith was always in the clear. The Chairman of the Housing or Planning or Management Committee would do what Smith was paying him for. Legally he had to declare an interest as being on Smith's payroll. If the errant councillor was exposed, Smith could say, and did say, "How shocking that he did not declare his interest! I naturally assumed he would do so. His misconduct has nothing do with me".

When a prominent Labour leader of a London borough, influential throughout the whole of the south-east of the country, was prosecuted for taking a bribe in this form from Smith, he was found guilty. When Smith was prosecuted for bribing him at a subsequent trial (he managed to have them separated) he was found innocent of bribing him. That's how well it worked.

He was the darling of the Department of the Environment. He once stayed at a London hotel, waiting for the call he expected to receive from Harold Wilson to join his new Cabinet. This was at a time when rumours were swirling around him. But the rule of public life that had prevailed since the middle of the nineteenth century, that the nature of corruption meant that the appearance of impropriety was sufficient to disqualify a person from public office, was being replaced by the assumption that a public official was innocent until his was proven guilty. If anything marked the beginning of the degeneration of British culture, that did.

Practice did not, of course, always follow the rule. The Marconi affair, cash for peerages, police malpractice and other scandals occur as quickly to my mind as to the mind of any reader. But by the middle of the twentieth century, English politics, English public adminstration, and English public life generally were probably as clean as in any large society that has ever existed.

Anyone interested in this side of the matter can look at the Smith affair, and contrast it with the the Sidney Stanley affair, as dealt with in the report of the Lynskey Tribunal, and as dealt with by both Churchill and Attlee when the Lynskey Tribunal's report came before the House of Commons.

The whole thing blew up in everybody's face when a Pontefract architect called John Poulson went bankrupt. When his documents were subpoenaed, hundreds of notes on scrappy bits of paper were unearthed, implicating dozens of politicians, from Westminster to the obscurest pit village on the Durham coalfield. Poulson had kept them for quasi-blackmail purposes. If he went down, they'd all go down with him, so they'd better protect him.

For months, as the scandals unravelled, Smith was supported by important sections of the national broadsheet press. (Guess which.)

He was eventually jailed.

Ronan Point collapsed in east London. People hated the maisonnettes and blocks of flats. Whereas in the 1960s working-class communities had united in opposing the plans to demolish their houses, in the 1980s they were turning out to cheer the dynamiting of the flats into which they had been rehoused.

So it was all bad do's. But it wasn't driven by "builders and money". It was driven by good intentions.

The point is, that if the good intentions had meant that Smith lost money (he ended up on "Millionaires' Row" in Newcastle, and the Rolls Royce of this poor lad from Wallsend had one of the first customised plates--was it T Dan 1?); or had meant that the building industry fueled with enormous taxpayers subsidies lost money; or that local government officers were being sacked instead of hired as fast as the machinery of government could manage; or that university, polytechnic and training-college posts in social work were being curtailed instead of vastly expanded, then the effects of the good intentions would have been subjected to scrutiny by more than a handful of extremely unpopular academics (as one critic wrote) "from their fastnesses on the banks of the Wear". (Note from Jon Gower Davies: "Heh! What about the fastnesses on the banks of the Tyne? I was just as unpopular as you.")

Go to the top of the class the person who sees any resemblance between this phenomenon and the dismemberment of the institution of life-long monogamy. If divorce meant a halving of the houses being needed instead of a doubling of them when the former united household splits into two; and if only half the washing machines, TV sets, refrigerators, beds, resulted from families breaking up instead of doubling the number, do you think that the crime, the disorder, and the damage to children would have been accepted complacently as a case of "change but not deterioration" (the slogan of the 1990s)?

Big business didn't drive the cultural revolution. But the cultural revolution turned out to be very profitable for big business.

And as the breakdown of the family has been good for business, not to speak of armies of government and voluntary social workers of all varieties, then any adverse effects of the breakdown of the family have to be soft-pedalled.

It must be literally among the daftest things that have ever been said, that crime is lower today than it has been since records began. Yet that's what the Home Office officially said in dismissing Cultures and Crimes.

And the Guardian quoted an "expert" (somebody called Professor Mike Hough) who was "bemused" by the book, because "most academics" (still only most academics!) believe that crime rose "in the early 1990s" but that "crime had fallen since then".

The headline in the Guardian was, "Experts deride report on crime and moral decline". Experts? It need not be said that I'm no Einstein (the understatement of the year), but I was reminded of what Einstein said when he heard that Hitler had provided one hundred physicists (wow, that's a lot of experts, Einstein's in trouble now) who all agreed that Einstein was wrong. Einstein remarked, "If I were wrong, one of them would have been enough".

So I agree with the sense of Mr Bramwell's comment. But what interests lie behind any particular long-lasting folly of the intellectuals is sometimes quite a complicated matter, and what those interests are is a puzzle that has to be unravelled in each particular case.

Posted by at 06:44 PM | Comments (6)

January 07, 2005

Cultures and Crimes

There is an interesting debate about the Civitas book Cultures and Crimes: Policing in Four Nations at the Samizdata website.

Posted by David Green at 10:09 AM | Comments (0)

The proposed religious hatred law

It has been said that the proposed religious hatred law is no more than a cynical attempt to buy hardline Muslim votes. In Muslim Weekly Government minister, Mike O'Brien, openly admits that the measure was put forward following lobbying by the Muslim Council of Britain. Mr O'Brien, MP, urges Muslims to vote labour and assures them that it's not the first time that the 'Labour Party has delivered for Muslims'.

The illiberal character of the proposed law and the threat to our heritage of freedom of speech have been ignored in the quest for votes. Melanie Phillips has warned of the dangers. Polly Toynbee is also worth reading on the subject.

Posted by David Green at 08:31 AM | Comments (0)

January 06, 2005

The sensational versus the trivialising press

A post-graduate student of broadcast journalism has sent me this note. 'I wonder if you could let me know what your feelings are about the way in which reports such as yours are often used in the press to sensationalise.'

My reply to the student is as follows:

The first thing I have to say is that I do not wish to give you the impression that I've had much to do with the media. I haven't. Nearly all of them, nearly all the time, have failed to take a blind bit of notice of what I have written.

I am not complaining. My victim status as a Geordie (strictly a Mackem) of working-class origin and present affiliations is a weak one, and I can therefore only conclude that, when my work has been ignored, it has not been good enough to claim attention.

Your query is put in the form known technically as 'begging the question'. It assumes, that is, that I perceive that my work has being senstationalised, and have feelings about that.

As a matter of fact, I have always seen myself as having been treated extremely fairly by the media, and by the press in particular. I certainly do not except the popular press.

To the extent that I have anything to do with them, throughout my career (and I was first appointed to an academic post in January 1953) I have found journalists and feature writers in the national popular press among the most careful to see to it that they are reporting accurately and fairly what I have said or written. More than other journalists, they have contacted me personally to make sure that they've got the nuances of what I am saying right, and have very often got back to me to check that I am satisfied that what they have written is a correct representation of my views.

I have often thought, and said, that they have made a better job at expressing what I want to say than I have myself.

I have never had the slighest complaint against any journalist or feature writer in the provincial press. On the contrary, I have, as often as not, been positively grateful for the clarity with which they have brought to my work by condensing it. I've had most to do with the Sunderland Echo and the morning, evening and Sunday papers of the Newcastle Journal group, but papers like the Yorkshire Post have also been exemplary on the rare occasions that they have dealt with any of my work.

As far as the Sunderland Echo is concerned, I did have intensive contact for the four of five years of the research that I reported in several academic articles and in two books, People and Planning, and Public Participation and Planners' Blight. These are accounts of the clash between the respectable working class community of Millfield, Sunderland, and the planners and councillors who wanted to slum-clear the residents, some of them to tower blocks--a clash between, broadly, sound common sense on the one side, and certificated arrogance and ignorance masquering as expertise on the other. Who was right and who was wrong has been long answered by the history of housing in Sunderland since the 1970s.

Millfield couldn't have asked for more insight or integrity from anyone than was shown by the journalists of the Sunderland Echo, especially Carol Roberton, who reported both sides of the case, the council's and the residents'.

I once had to give an inaugural lecture when a social science department was opened at a college in Lancashire. One of the students asked whether I was worried, as a Labour party member of long standing, when the work I did was used by Conservative ministers. It was in the early days of the transfer of cultural hegemony from the old establishment--the BBC, the Civil Service, the Law, the universities, the broadsheet press etc. as it existed when Anthony Sampson came to describe it in the first edition of The Anatomy of Britain--to the what the Germans and French still call "the sixty-eighters". So I was still a bit stuck in the culture of academic impartiality, which without being pompous (or rather, today inevitably sounding pompous) meant following where the evidence led.

I remember that I said in surprise, 'Do you want me to put on the front of my books, "Not for the eyes of Conservative Ministers"?' A great roar went up: 'Yes!'

I said that that was quite the most extraorindary response I could have ever imagined from a university audience, as it violated the whole point of academic freedom, and the privileges of life-long tenure which guaranteed a life-time's income for faithful independent work, whatever anybody thought of that work. To be fair to the audience, some students came up to me afterwards and said that what I had said, needed saying.

If the question, 'What are your feelings about your work being sensationalised?' carries the meaning at all, 'What are your feelings about your work damaging or destroying this or that political assumption?', then as long as I have carried out my work as conscientiously and competently as my limited abilities allow, and as long as other people can carry out the work that could show that I am wrong, and discuss it publicly and freely, my feelings are those of complete well-being and peace of mind.

I hope that to some extent I have applied to myself the doctrine that facts should control political commitment, and not political commitment the 'facts' and what should be allowed to be considered to be the facts.

I came to the slum-clearance problems of Millfield with a view of the world that town planners had at that time. I'd taught town plannning at the School of Planning in Birmingham. I'd studied town planning at the University of Newcastle. I'd worked as a town planner for the County of Northumberland. But I closed my first book on Millfield with these words:

'My thoughts and attitudes have been radically reoriented as a result of the three years that have gone into the preparation of this book. Edmund Burke has been quoted more than once on previous pages. No concluding words seem more apt than his. "If circumspection and caution are part of wisdom when we work only with inanimate matter, surely they become part of duty too, when the subject of our demolition and construction is not bricks and timber, but sentient beings. The true lawgiver ought to love and respect his kind, and to fear himself."'

I went on after this to be Labour councillor for Millfield (where I was born and still lived at that time). My intention was to prevent--I am sorry to use the word--ignoramuses from destroying social capital that they did not know about, and would not understand the value of if they did. Under the long leadership of the best kind of 'responsible' politician in the Weberian sense, Charles Slater, Sunderland council, I am pleased to say, was never touched by loony-leftism when so many other towns were devastated by it.

I have rarely felt that national radio and TV have been satisfactory. But that is because everybody there works within the constraints of seconds-long affirmations and refutations. For that reason I try to avoid them. But when I have been interviewed or moderated in a discussion I've never felt that, within that given context, my work has been treated unfairly.

I say most of the national press. From time to time I have entertained negative feelings about parts of the national press. Those negative feelings have had nothing to do with sensationalisation.

They have had to do with bigotry--by which I mean a sustained determination not to allow any findings to disturb one's established view of what the facts are.

A few years ago I presented some detailed research to support my conclusion that boys were no longer being socialised, to the same extent as their forebears, to take responsibilty, together with the mother of their children, for creating and maintaining their common 'home' for life-time. Young men were increasingly obtaining access to young women without the expectation that they would be husbands and fathers within the constraints of life-long monogamy. This retreat from socialisation for adult responsibility was one of the reasons for the increase in incidents of criminal and disorderly behaviour among boys and young men.

This was reported on the front page of the Guardian under the headline 'Bollocks'. Bad language was a lot rarer then than it is now. Sex causes crime. Ho, ho, ho! The Guardian's profound report was repeated in even cruder forms elsewhere. Boys are too tired after a bonk to go out mugging ... and much of the same.

My feelings about such treatment by the Guardian or any other commentator have nothing to do with the sensationalisation of my work.

My objection is completely the opposite. I don't think you need to read a report headlined 'Bollocks' to guess that the intellectual content will not be especially elevated. The treatment by the Guardian this week of Cultures and Crimes arouses negative feelings in me for the same reason.

I think that most people will agree that crime and policing are important contemporary issues.

Well, the 'news value' of Cultures and Crimes for the Guardian was not that robberies in England and Wales stood at 800 in 1954, at 3,000 in 1964, at 9,000 in 1974, at 24,000 in 1984, at 60,000 in 1994, and at 101,000 on the last count, 2003/4, after having reached a peak of 121,000 two years earlier.

The Guardian's news value was in the headline, 'Experts deride report on crime and moral decline'. Until I saw that, I had not the slightest inkling that it could be national news that anybody should deride the work of an extremely obscure retired academic, even if he or she was an expert.

The experts were a Professor Mike Hough, who 'reacted with bemusement, because the book says that crime is rising, and it is not'.

A Barry Irving of the Police Foundation was quoted as saying that the report 'failed to take into account changes in the reporting and recording of crime, the huge changes in property ownership, and the great increase in material wealth, meaning there were more goods to steal'.

Oh dear. Please read the book again, Mr, or Dr or Professor Irving.

The Guardian then presented its own devastating intellectual critique of the contents of the book. The two authors, 'have a history of controversial work'. As the Germans say, 'Ja, und ... ?'

This is the same newspaper that it totally devoted to the idea that the prime purpose of the modern artist must be 'challenge' all the taboos of respectable society. But perhaps being 'challenging' is not the same as being 'controversial'.

In a previous book the authors had 'called the Stephen Lawrence inquiry "a Stalinist show trial"'. Now that really is desecrating the holy of holies. No need to go into any evidence, then, on either what that book actually said, or more importantly, this one.

If data put forward by someone are wrong, then it is an excellent thing for somebody else to put them right. If their conclusions are wrong, then it is excellent thing for arguments to be put forward to show why they are wrong. Contentless criticism and innuendo are contemptible.

My other negative feelings are reserved for the Home Office, which put up spokespersons to reply to the robbery figures--the data on which the book concentrates--by referring to another set of figures entirely: "Your chance of being a victim of crime is now at its lowest level for more than twenty years--about the same as it was in 1981". Ja, und... ?

In two newspapers the Home Office exceeds even my expectations by stating that crime is at its lowest levels since records began.

Again, my negative feelings are not aroused by sensationalism, but by something else:ignorance, whether naive, wilful, or paid for and simulated for the purposes of misleading the public.

I hope these thoughts will help you in your studies, and especially to a consideration of where cultural hegemony lies today; what the contents of the hegemonic culture is; how far it is the press and how far it is other institutions, and which institutions, that misappropriate and misrepresent research findings; and whether the problem is a sensational press or a trivial one.

Of course, people who know that the press has sensationalised my work, because a press that sensationaises without exception is what their view of the world requires, can easily deal with the the above 'anecdotal' accounts of my life. I'm a just a typical case of 'false consciousness'. On that premiss, their theory remains intact.

To those who have read--well, have been told about--Engels, Marcuse, Althusser, Derrida or Foucault, all except the Marxist or post-modernist illuminati are the pathetic victims of 'systemic' manipulation.

I don't expect that any of this applies to you. But if you are interested, I deal with this phenomenon of experts 'saving their theory' in Cultures and Crimes, and extensively in Racist Murder and Pressure Group Politics, People and Planning and Public Participation and Planners' Blight, as well as in journal articles such as 'Sociology and the Spirit of Sixty-eight'.

Posted by at 07:19 PM | Comments (2)

You are About to become Volunteered … So Get Used to the Idea

Did you know 2005 has been officially designated ‘Year of the Volunteer’?

Didn’t think so. But then you have probably been too busy working or playing to have had your attention drawn before now to this fact. Well, since you have found a spare moment to read this blog, let me tell you about it.

Under this Home Office-backed scheme, each month is to be given over to some special theme around which individuals and corporations are to be encouraged and funded to engage in or develop forms of this activity.

This month’s special theme is health, an especially fitting one, given the beneficial effects volunteering has been claimed to have upon the health of those who engage in it.

The alleged health benefits of volunteering make this month’s theme an especially fitting one with which to commence this special year in light of a disturbing report in today’s Daily Telegraph that claims almost half the British work-force lies awake at night ‘worrying about their work and home lives’.

Since part of the Government’s aim in focussing this year on volunteering is to encourage employers to grant employees time off to engage in it, then, given its alleged health benefits, the British work-force would seem shortly able to rest more easily in their beds a’night.

If only life were that simple!

Last September, Digby Jones, Director General of the CBI, was reported as having called upon employers to make pay rises and promotions conditional upon the willingness of their employees to engage in ‘volunteering’, proposing half their time doing so be 'donated' from the employee's leisure.

Small wonder Digby Jones received a knighthood in this New Year’s Honours List!

If the Director General of the CBI is calling upon private sector employers to make volunteering a condition of employee advancement in the workplace, you can be sure the day is not far away before the public sector does so.

The result of its becoming such will, doubtless, be to nullify whatever health benefits volunteering might once have had brought to those who engaged in it when truly voluntary. As it is, like so much else within the so-called voluntary sector, even individual voluntary activity seems about to become nationalised under the Government’s relentless and seemingly unstoppable drive to control and regulate every aspect of our daily lives.

It would seem even our nightly rest is to fall shortly under its sway – at the undoubted cost to the national health.

Welcome to 2005, Year of the Volunteer, and its special theme this month, health!

Posted by David Conway at 03:16 PM | Comments (0)

January 05, 2005

Don't make it worse than it is

The response of the public to the terrible tragedy in South East Asia has been almost as difficult to take in as the disaster itself. The stupendous generosity shown by people in this country, and in many other countries, shows that there is no shortage of compassion for the victims of one of the worst natural disasters anyone can remember.

However, some people in political circles are trying to turn this into something more than humanitarian aid. There have been calls for a programme of large-scale, long-lasting aid – i.e. transfers of capital from Western governments and Western-funded multi-national organisations to the governments of affected countries.

This is a very different thing, and could have serious negative consequences. Foreign aid, although well-intentioned, creates welfare dependency on an international scale. People become accustomed to thinking that they do not have to pull their own weight: someone else will always be there with a handout. The effects on the recipient nations are the same as those on long-term welfare support in our own country: industry and initiative are suppressed, sloth, self-pity and mendacity are encouraged.

Giving people money doesn’t make them rich. No rich country in the world today became rich because of free or subsidised transfers of capital from other countries. Wealth is the product of hard work, inspired by entrepreneurial vision. Getting a handout just puts off the day when you realise you have to roll your sleeves up and get down to it. There is a direct correlation between the amount of aid nations have received and their poverty and backwardness. Most foreign aid has gone to sub-Saharan Africa, and the results are there for all to see. Do we really wish to inflict this on the peoples of South East Asia, where a number of countries already have flourishing economies? Indeed, it is not unusual to hear people calling for trade barriers to protect our home-grown producers from the ‘unfair competition’ of Asian suppliers! The irony is that those calling for protectionist measures are often the same people who demand more foreign aid.

Gordon Brown and others have been speaking of a new Marshall Plan. This is misleading, since the Marshall Plan, which was a great success, had a clearly-defined and time-limited goal: to rebuild the devastated infrastructure of Europe after the Second World War. In fact, Europe got back to work so quickly that the Plan was curtailed earlier than had been estimated. It was never intended to be a permanent stream of funding, which is what the foreign aid lobbyists now demand.

Gordon Brown’s dream of managing the affairs of developing countries from the West, at a cost of hundreds of billions of dollars, is not only completely politically unfeasible: it would actually leave the people of the ‘beneficiary’ countries worse off.

Posted by at 06:16 PM | Comments (0)

The Prime Minister is not pleased

In an interview last night, the Prime Minister referred to a recently published book. He said that it ignored the national crime statistics that show an overall drop in crime. The only book about crime that was being extensively discussed in the national press and radio at the time was Civitas's, Cultures and Crimes: Policing in Four Nations.

I don't think that, just because I am a faithful member of the Labour party (and have been for far longer than him), Mr Blair will expect that he can misrepresent my purely factual research with impunity, and that I won't answer back.

Beyond statistical matters: though I have a deep sense of inferiority to the Prime Minister in every other respect, I don't feel I'm greatly inferior to him in my direct knowledge of what 'traditional Labour voters' have believed, have valued and what they now experience.

Far from ignoring it, I put the recent overall drop in crime at the heart of of my book.

The total number of crimes rose precipitously from 1955 to 1995. The steep rise was confirmed by the British Crime Survey figures from 1981 to 1995 (blowing the whole of the "moral panic" school out of the water).

From the mid-1990s strenuous efforts were made by ordinary householders and businesses to protect their property. People stayed away from black spots. Car manufacturers installed ingenious security devices. The overall number of crimes fell. That's an essential message of the book.

But where the reduction in the numbers depended upon effective policing, crimes continued to rocket. The national crime figures on robberies that go back beyond 1981 tell their own story.

1954 800
1964 3,000
1974 9,000
1984 24,000
1994 60,000
2003/04 101,000 (of which 91,000 were robberies of personal property, "street crime")

There were 121,000 robberies at the peak of 2001/02, and the number was down to 101,000 by 2003/04. I do not ignore that fact in the book. I highlight it.

Of course the Prime Minister is strictly right. The book does ignore falls in crime that have taken place--since the book was finished. But the implication of his remark is, that when still later figures are published, they will adversely affect the historical and cultural context of the book's findings.To be kind to him, that's not at all likely.

If the Prime Minister was referring to some other book, this posting does not apply.

Posted by at 05:44 PM | Comments (0)

January 04, 2005

Discrimination Against Whites

According to The Times, the Lake District national park authority is to scrap guided walks by volunteer rangers because too high a proportion of participants are white. Mick Casey, a media officer for the authority, said that ‘only 35,000’ per year took part: “The majority who do the walks are white, middle-class, middle-aged people,” he said. “The Government is encouraging national parks to appeal to young people, ethnic minorities and people with disabilities.”

Can this really have been the intention of the Government? After all, if everything in which the majority of participants were white, middle-aged and middle-class were scrapped, what would be left? The tax burden is disproportionately met by white, middle-class and middle-aged people, but I doubt whether Gordon Brown wants to scrap income tax. And what if the national park authority had expressed the opposite preference? Too many of the people going on the guided walks are black, working class and old (or young); therefore the walks should be scrapped.

Discrimination is wrong when it involves prejudice. Landlords who put up signs saying ‘no blacks’ were prejudiced. That is, they failed to judge individuals on their own merits. But what’s the difference between a landlord refusing accommodation to people because they are black and a national park authority refusing to offer a service to people because they are white (not to mention middle-class and middle-aged)?

The under-representation of ethnic groups in a particular workplace or activity may be the result of prejudice. It might also be for any number of other reasons. (Perhaps members of ethnic minorities have got better things to do than go on guided walks.) The mere existence of disproportionate representation provides no proof of prejudice one way or the other. To believe otherwise is like arguing that; ‘Postboxes are red; therefore every red thing is a postbox.’

Posted by David Green at 08:51 PM | Comments (13)

January 03, 2005

The Home Office said ...

The first reponse from the Home Office to Cultures and Crimes was that the risk of being a victim of crime is at its lowest since records began.

No! Records began in 1857.

If no notice had been taken of the book, that utterly reckless statement would have done the job nicely.

But notice is being taken of the book, and the Home Office has decided that it will have to be more circumspect. Its latest comments on the book are now the much safer, "Your chance of being a victim of crime is now at its lowest level since 1981".

I don't know if the population figures they use are those of 2001 and 1981 Censuses.

If the Home Office did their calculations on a more refined basis than that of the total population, then they can supply the correction, and show what difference it makes to the percentage (and more importantly, to the argument), directly onto this site.

On the basis of the Census population, the risk of being a victim of a BCS crime was almost precisely the same in 2003/04 as it was in 1981, 22.5 per cent--in fact the 2003/04 figure is fractionally lower than the figure for 1981.

Unfortunately for the Home Office spokespersons, the relevance of their comments in relation to Cultures and Crimes is almost zero. The book starts with the fact that crime in general has fallen from the enormously high levels of its 1995 peak--to the still enormously high levels of 1981 and today. From 1955 there had been a relentless rise in crime, so that by 1981 the first British Crime Survey estimated that there were 11 million crimes in the year. In 2003/04 the BCS estimate was that there were 11.7 million crimes in the year.

Crime fell from the mid-1990s in both the BCS and police-recorded statistics because householders and car manufacturers took more and more elaborate precautions to keep criminals at bay.

The subject of Cultures and Crimes is the category of crimes and disorder where the numbers went on rising until 2001/02: the offences the control of which was least within the power of people themselves, and where dependence on the police was greatest--on the streets.

Sorry! I thought that the Home Office had had the sense to realise that they'd been rumbled. But my wife's just come in with this morning's Daily Express. 'A Home Office spokeswoman said: "Latest figures show the the risk of being a victim is at its lowest level since records began."'

The BCS figures, by the way, do not attempt to touch some of the most rapid areas of crime growth.

In spite of the fact that the reduction in the age of both victims and perpetrators is a phenomenon of many years' standing, the BCS excludes all crimes committed against under-16s.

The BCS excludes all drug crimes.

But, hey! The crime figures look a lot better without them!

Posted by at 01:04 PM | Comments (1)

January 02, 2005

Right on cue

On New Year's Eve I posted an essay in which I predicted what the academic reaction to Cultures and Crimes would be.

Right on cue, Professor Mike Hough, the Director of Criminal Policy Research at King's College, London, is quoted in the Observer this morning as saying that "This is nonsense. Academics mostly [sic]agree that crime in the UK rose in the early 1990s".

He only goes so far as to say that academics "mostly" agree that crime was rising in the early 1990s. As I say it was, he can only think that the book is nonsense on that point if he is not among the academics who are now willing to concede that crime was rising, even if only "in the early 1990s". He doesn't tell us.

The book makes clear that from the early 1990s that the criminological and social policy establishment tended to drop the rhetoric of "moral panic" and admit that crime was then rising.

It had dawned on them that the rise in crime could be blamed on the harm that Mrs Thatcher did to 1980s' Britain. But what Professor Hough elides is a core issue: the long period of denial that crime was rising rapidly before (and long before) the 1980s and 1990s.

Is the book nonsense when it says that crime did surge from 1955? Again, Professor Hough is silent.

Professor Hough says that crime peaked around 1995 and has been falling ever since. The book makes quite clear that general crime did fall from the mid-1990s. Professor Hough can't think that bit of the book is nonsense, either, then.

Crimes that were most capable of being controlled by the security measures of householders and manufacturers themselves did peak around 1995 and have been falling ever since. The book gives the statistics that confirm this.

But one of the main points of the book is that crimes the control of which depended largely upon the effectiveness of the police soared away, until the robbery figure of 121,000 in 2001/02 at long last acted as Britain's wake-up call. Professor Hough ignores this crucial fact. It is a fact that is at the very heart of the book's argument.

The spokesperson of the Association of Chief Police Officers (Acpo), following no doubt his or her careful study of the book, provides what I called in my essay "contentless" criticism in its purest form. The book, according to the spokesperson, uses conflicting evidence to draw simplistic conclusions. What conflicting evidence? What simplistic conclusions?

The Association of Chief Police Officers, the Observer blandly reports, has reacted "with fury". The Observer, usually alert to such things, makes no comment on the fact that "criticism" of this sort from the most senior police officers in the country is a little unsettling.

The book is "a criticism of the police" only in sense that it argues that the deterioration of the ratio of police officers to crimes, and the diminution of the rights protecting victims as compared with the rights protecting perpetrators, has made it sociologically impossible for the police to engage in effective crime prevention on the old Peelite model.

Police officers are bound to be stuck at their desks for long periods filling out forms, and talk about "beat policing" anything remotely as dense as it was up to the later 1960s, on present "record" police numbers (they are at a record) cannot be anything but moonshine.

As for the Home Office ... "The risk of being a victim is the lowest since records began." Well, who could have possibly worked that one out from the Home Office's figures?

Posted by at 08:14 AM | Comments (2)

January 01, 2005

Nothing worth pinching

Ron Bramwell speaks of his gut feeling as a police officer that crime surged after 1955 because there were more things to steal.

In the second half of the nineteenth century, England was still reaping the benefits of having a head start on all other countries in the industrial revolution, and there were many more things to steal at the end the century than there had been in the middle. Criminal Statistics 1908 summed up the period in these words:

"Crime has increased very little in the past half century, and taking into account the greater opportunities open nowadays to an indiviudal of criminal tendencies through the greater profusion of wealth and personal possessions ... it may reasonably be inferred that the members of the predatory classes are appreciably fewer than in 1857 in spite of the fact that in the interim the population has almost doubled."

The pervasive tone of the literature of Edwardian times is a settled confidence that England was indeed steadily becoming a still more crime-free and civilised society. What George Dangerfield called "The Strange Death of Liberal England" did not occur until later, when George V was on the throne.

We are talking about offences under the criminal code, not unrest in response to economic and social injustice, and for at least the first fifty or sixty years of the twentieth century it remained an inarticulated major premiss of social reform that this benign connection would continue to hold between an increase in possessions and lower crime rates, that is, that as the standard of living rose for from the bottom to the top of the income and wealth distribution, theft would continue to decline.

As compared with today, the destitute before the Great War, between the wars and during and after the Second World War tended to steal far less from the poor, the poor from the people who had a margin of comfort, the barely comfortable from those who had a bit more, and so on.

During the later years of Victoria's reign and the reign of Edward VII, George V and George VI, on a Friday night and Saturday there was money in the mother's purse on the kitchen table in many a working class house, and even on a Thursday there might be still a few shillings left in it--as precious to a thief, too, as pounds are today. Between the wars there was many an unlocked bicycle leaning against the front wall of the house, or left unattended at work. There was not the universal assumption that if anything of the slightest value wasn't nailed down, somebody would take it.

The late Victorian and Edwardian streets of the respectable working class are still to be found in provincial cities and towns in large numbers. Even looking at them from the outside now (I was brought up in them) why does it now so easy to say, and be believed, that they contained nothing worth pinching on their mantle pieces and sideboards, in their cupboards and drawers or coal houses, and that is why the doors were left unlocked, or the key as public knowledge hung on a string behind the letter box, and little piles of money left on the table for the rent man or the insurance man to come in and collect from the empty house?

There is very little about crime in any of the party manifestos for the first sixty or seventy years of the twentieth century. In most of them there is nothing about crime at all. Surely this was a reflection of the fact that crime was not an issue in most people's day-to-day lives. The rise in crime in the 1930s and 1940s (miniscule by post 1955 standards) was attributed, so far as I know without exception, to the decline in the standard of living, to the paucity of possessions, due to the Depression and the shortages of war. In the early 1950s crime levels did fall again as the post-war standard of living rose.

Among ordinary Labour Party people (and once there were a lot of them) it was very much taken for granted that given that there would be gradations of income, and given that some ordinary people would choose to spend their money on current consumption while others would choose to spend money on possessions, a rising standard of living would ameliorate, not worsen, the problem of crime, such as it was.

In making their demands that ordinary families should be enabled to afford better and more items of household equipment, a more expensive pair of boots and an extra pair of shoes in Edwardian times or a motor bike and a side car in the 1960s, and perhaps buy a better pocket watch for their waistcoat pocket or a more expensive ring or bangle, they did not think that they had better be cautious, because all these were "more things to pinch". and that the additions or improvements to their existing stock of household and personal goods, their newly-acquired modes of transport, kitchen gadgets, garden tools, ornaments, trinkets, heirlooms, wirelesses and clocks would unleash a crime wave. They did not think that their leisure time from newly-won holidays with pay and shorter working hours would be suddenly spoilt for them by the hitherto unheard-of theft or wanton destruction of the growing crops in their allotments and council-house back gardens.

I was active in the Labour Party in Sunderland in the late 1940s, in the coal-mining town of Featherstone in the early 1950s, in two housing estates in Bristol in the mid-1950s, in inner-city Birmingham in the later 1950s and in Sunderland again since the 1960s, for much of the time in the coal-mining area of the town and for some of the time as Labour councillor for the area where I was born.

I cannot say that I ever came across anybody in Labour circles before, say, the 1970s, to whom the idea, that there was an automatic connection between more and new possessions and more crime, would have ever even occurred.

With a policeman's experience, Mr Bramwell correctly sees that all this turns out to have been an exceptionally sad case of "the murder of a beautiful theory by a gang of brutal facts".

Yes, I've led a sheltered life. I definitely should have got out more. Like anybody else, I spent most of my time with people who shared my view of the world. No doubt, therefore, there are Labour people who did think then that more goods would lead to more crime. They can put me right, and tell me what their thoughts were on their dilemma at the time, and not what they think now with the benefit of hindsight.

As a matter of the history of England since 1955, Mr Bramwell is right.

But also as a matter of history, it has not always been true that more possessions have led to more crime. Whether they do or not depends upon the presence or absence of other elements in the social equation.

Possessions increased within one moral environment in the second half of the nineteenth century. When they increased in the second half of the twentieth century, unfortunately from the point of view of crime levels at any rate, the moral environment was completely different.

Posted by at 08:54 PM | Comments (1)

A cultural gem

If you are interested in changes in English culture from, say 1956, when there were still quite large pockets of disquiet at the introduction of government-sponsored gambling in the form of Premium Bonds, and still for the Labour Party the redistribution of income by gambling was morally only marginally superior to its redistribution by theft, I hope you did not miss the gem on the BBC Today programme this morning.

One in six of us, it was reported, have adopted as our New Year Resolution ... "winning the Lottery".

While I was picking up the morning paper I mentioned this in the shop. "What clown came up with that figure?", a man growled. "It'll be more like nine out of ten."

Posted by at 10:19 AM | Comments (1)