Civitas

July 19, 2006

Freedom

Rory Bremner has published a good article in today's Daily Telegraph about freedom.

Posted by Nick Seddon at 11:16 AM | Comments (0)

May 17, 2006

A Sad Day for Europe

The bravest and most articulate apostate critic of Islam in the West has been stabbed in the back by those who should have most supported her.

The manner and speed with which Dutch immigration minister and aspirant leader of the liberal party (VVD) Rita Verdonk yesterday set about the task of stripping fellow- party member and Dutch MP Ayaan Hirsi Ali of her citizenship because of lies she had admitted she told when applying for asylum some 14 years ago are as truly and utterly appalling as they herald a form of capitulation to those who would prefer appeasement to Dutch Islamists than confrontation that is truly dismaying in terms of what it heralds for the future of this once liberal nation.

To say this is not to indulge in special pleading on behalf of Hirsi Ali. Nor is it to deny the need for the Dutch immigration minister to play by the rules when it comes to deciding which asylum seekers to admit.

In any case, perhaps, it was mere posturing on Verdonk’s part to assert that since a Dutch passport had been issued to the fictitious person with the fictitious name of Hirsi Ali whom the 22 year old asylum seeker named Hirsi Magan was purporting to be when she claimed asylum, it is the fictitious person not the Dutch MP to whom asylum had been given and hence strictly Ms Ali no longer enjoys it and must leave Holland six weeks after the period lapses during which she has time to appeal against the decision, should she wish to do so.

Doubtless were Hirsi Ali to appeal against the decision or reapply for Dutch citizenship during this period, she would be granted it and the niceties of procedure would have been met.

However, there was no need for such alacrity or lack of consideration for the feelings of her former parliamentary colleague in the manner by which Verdont summarily stripped Hirsi Ali of her citizenship. Her decision might play well in certain quarters, but it clearly wounded Hirsi Ali who immediately brought forward her resignation from parliament and who announced she will shortly be leaving Holland to take up a position at the American Enterprise Institute that she was offered last week when on a visit to the USA, among other things, ironically, to receive a European of the Year Award from the Reader’s Digest.

By the time she will be obliged to leave Holland if she does not appeal or reapply for Dutch citizenship, she will be ensconced in Washington to start a new life, without constant fear for her life as she has been in Holland since the killing of Theo van Gogh with whom she made the film that led to his killing.

Why in earth should she stay in Holland that refused to allow her to remain in her apartment after neighbours complained her presence there made them unsafe?

Some wag suggested on the internet that Ms Ali could star in a re-make of a film a about Anne Frank the German Jewish refugee finally betrayed to the Nazis by the Dutch hiding her.

To read her own account of the matter and get some idea of the enormity of what has befallen her, click on here to read Ms Ali’s letter of resignation from parliament and weep: http://www.trouw.nl/hetnieuws/nederland/article318849.ece/Tweede-Kamerfractie+/+Persverklaring+Ayaan+Hirsi+Ali+(Engels.

Posted by David Conway at 04:51 PM | Comments (0)

April 05, 2006

The Big Brotherization of Britain

We received this as an email yesterday. What follows is a detailed and clear explanation of the (sinister) implications of ID card / National Identity Register database legislation. The email finished with the words: “If you did not know the full scope of the proposed ID Card Scheme before and you are as unsettled as I am at what it really means to you, to this country and its way of life, I urge you to email or photocopy this and give it to your friends and colleagues and everyone else you think should know and who cares.”

“You may have heard that legislation creating compulsory ID Cards passed a crucial stage in the House of Commons. You may feel that ID cards are not something to worry about, since we already have Photo ID for our Passport and Driving License and an ID Card will be no different to that. What you have not been told is the full scope of this proposed ID Card, and what it will mean to you personally. The proposed ID Card will be different from any card you now hold. It will be connected to a database called the NIR (National Identity Register), where all of your personal details will be stored. This will include the unique number that will be issued to you, your fingerprints, a scan of the back of your eye, and your photograph. Your name, address and date of birth will also obviously be stored there. There will be spaces on this database for your religion, residence status, and many other private and personal facts about you. There is unlimited space for every other details of your life on the NIR database, which can be expanded by the Government with or without further Acts of Parliament.

By itself, you might think that this register is harmless, but you would be wrong to come to this conclusion. This new card will be used to check your identity against your entry in the register in real time, whenever you present it to 'prove who you are'. Every place that sells alcohol or cigarettes, every post office, every pharmacy, and every Bank will have an NIR Card Terminal (very much like the Chip and Pin Readers that are everywhere now) into which your card can be 'swiped' to check your identity.

Each time this happens, a record is made at the NIR of the time and place that the Card was presented. This means, for example, that there will be a government record of every time you withdraw more than £99 at your branch of NatWest, who now demand ID for these transactions. Every time you have to prove that you are over 18, your card will be swiped, and a record made at the NIR. Restaurants and off licenses will demand that your card is swiped so that each receipt shows that they sold alcohol to someone over 18, and that this was proved by the access to the NIR, indemnifying them from prosecution.

Private businesses are going to be given access to the NIR Database. If you want to apply for a job, you will have to present your card for a swipe. If you want to apply for a London Underground Oyster Card, or a supermarket loyalty card, or a driving license you will have to present your ID Card for a swipe. The same goes for getting a telephone line or a mobile phone or an internet account. Oyster, DVLA, BT and Nectar (for example) all run very detailed databases of their own. They will be allowed access to the NIR, just as every other business will be. This means that each of these entities will be able to store your unique number in their database, and place all your travel, phone records, driving activities and detailed shopping habits under your unique NIR number.

These databases, which can easily fit on a storage device the size of your hand, will be sold to third parties either legally or illegally. It will then be possible for a non-governmental entity to create a detailed dossier of all your activities. Certainly, the government will have clandestine access to all of them, meaning that they will have a complete record of all your movements, from how much and when you withdraw from your bank account to what medications you are taking, down to the level of what sort of bread you eat – all accessible via a single unique number in a central database.

This is quite a significant leap from a simple ID Card that shows your name and face. Most people do not know that this is the true character and scope of the proposed ID card. Whenever the details of how it will work are explained to them, they quickly change from being ambivalent towards it. The Government is going to COMPEL you to enter your details into the NIR and to carry this card. If you and your children want to obtain or renew your passports, you will be forced to have your fingerprints taken and your eyes scanned for the NIR, and an ID Card will be issued to you whether you want one or not. If you refuse to be fingerprinted and eye scanned, you will not be able to get a passport.

Your ID Card will, just like your passport, not be your property. The Home Secretary will have the right to revoke or suspend your ID at any time, meaning that you will not be able to withdraw money from your Bank Account, for example, or do anything that requires you to present your government issued ID Card.

The arguments that have been put forwarded in favour of ID Cards can be easily disproved. ID Cards WILL NOT stop terrorists; every Spaniard has a compulsory ID card as did the Madrid Bombers. ID Cards will not 'eliminate benefit fraud', which in comparison, is small compared to the astronomical cost of this proposal, which will be measured in billions according to the LSE (London School of Economics). This scheme exists solely to exert total surveillance and control over the ordinary free British Citizen, and it will line the pockets of the companies that will create the computer systems at the expense of your freedom, privacy and money.

The Bill has proceeded to this stage due to the lack of accurate and complete information on this proposal being made public.”

Posted by Nick Seddon at 09:20 AM | Comments (10)

March 23, 2006

Faith, Hope and Santa Claus

Today’s Times carries a report about Abdul Rahman, the 41 year-old Afghani facing trial in his home country for what still remains there the capital offence of having converted from Islam to Christianity, something he did some fourteen years ago whilst residing in Pakistan. Apparently, it is reported, he might be able to avoid the death penalty by pleading being unfit to stand trial by virtue of insanity.

One need not be a follower of the libertarian anti-psychiatrist, Thomas Szasz, who rejected the very notion of mental illness, to be disinclined to pin one's hopes for this poor man’s future on faith in any such a sanity clause.

The reason the man should not be having to face trial or the death penalty for having done what he is alleged to is not that he is unfit to plead by virtue of insanity. It is, rather, that he has no case to answer, having done nothing for which he deserves to stand trial or be punished in having left his previous faith for another.

What is truly insane is the notion that has brought him to be facing trial-- viz. that apostasy from Islam should be a legally recognised offence, save a purely religious one, for which, at worst, ostracism by Muslims should be the only penalty allowable by law. Indeed, the legal practice of punishing it by death should not just be considered insane, but the most flagrant breach of human rights, if there be any such rights at all. Any country which has instituted such a practice should be subject to the severest possible sanctions by the international community.

The story about this man first broke in the English press on Tuesday of this week which was the same day as the Prince of Wales delivered a speech in Egypt, which he is currently visiting as part of an official tour of the Muslim world, in which he will have, reportedly, quite correctly told his audience that: ‘It’s tolerance, it’s understanding of what other people hold sacred which … is so vital’.

The trouble with espousing this sentiment in that part of the world, however, is that, in all too many parts of it today, what is held sacred is intolerance of what others hold sacred. And, when and where it is, anyone who wishes to practice tolerance faces the question of how much religious intolerance may and should be to tolerated.

The Times, which on Tuesday carried reports both about the Prince of Wales’ speech as well as the plight of the poor Afghani, devoted a leader to this subject, which bore the promising title, ‘Faith and Respect: Why religious intolerance must not be tolerated’. Despite its condemning apostasy from Islam, or from any other religion, being anywhere in the world a criminal offence, the newspaper can be condemned for having ducked the serious issue posed by Islam in having asserted that nowhere in the Koran is apostasy prescribed a capital offence. This allowed it to claim that Islam was as tolerant of Christianity and Judaism as these two other religions were of each other and it. ‘The Prince rightly underlines the importance of respect by one religion for another – especially the three Abrahamic religions’ the editorial ran, before adding that: ‘All three religions commend such tolerance.’

This latter claim is most tendentious, and one wonders why on earth it was ever made. It is all too easy for westerners to avoid having to face up to the very harsh and uncomfortable question about how genuinely tolerant a religion Islam truly is and can be by their denying to be integral to it, as the Times leader does, any morally objectionable tenets such as those of its adherents do who think it prescribes and who as a result impose a death penalty upon apostates from it.

It is all very well for the Times, in support of its claim that Islam is as tolerant a religion as Judaism and Christianity, to cite the apparent extreme moderation of Sheikh Tantawi, rector of the University at which the Prince was due to give his speech. But why should his tolerance prove by itself his religion to be a genuinely and inherently tolerant one, any more than Osama bin Laden’s invoking his religion to preach and practice the most despicable form of intolerance establishes the opposite? They cannot both be right in their interpretations of their religion, and maybe there is no such thing as a definitively correct interpretation of it or of any other religion for that matter. What, surely, matters is not whether ‘Islam’ is or is not as tolerant of other faiths as are the other two ‘Abrahamic faiths’: only that all those who purport to practice any or none of them practice tolerance towards all others who are willing to be tolerant of others who are tolerant of others who are tolerant …. ad infinitum.

When they are not, then all those who uphold tolerance as a value, should be united in their common intolerance of such intolerance. The sad fact is that, even if Islam is as inherently and genuinely tolerant at its core as the Times and Sheikh Tantawi avowedly consider it to be, much of the Muslim world is currently anything but, and it derives its authority for being so intolerant from its religion as it understands and practises it. Until that intolerant part of it becomes tolerant, the idea that Islam is ‘a religion of peace’, rather than something far less benign, remains as much of a fairy-tale as the notion of Santa Claus -- and one in which we would do well to place as little faith as that poor Afghani should find himself having to do who currently finds himself in a jail in Kabul, facing execution, for the in-offence of having placed his faith in Jesus.

Posted by David Conway at 12:31 PM | Comments (3)

March 09, 2006

The BBC does not deserve its public service privileges

The time has come to strip the BBC of its status as a public service broadcaster. A programme broadcast on 5 October 2005 called 'Little Kinsey' manifested such a distortion of its source material that we can no longer depend upon the integrity of the BBC's factual programmes.

The full press release is here.

The report by Norman Dennis is here. (PDF - large file)

Posted by David Green at 12:47 PM | Comments (1)

March 08, 2006

Why the Pen Must Remain Mightier than the Sword -- not Le Pen, Stupid!

If proof were needed that, on occasion at least, the pen can be a match for the sword, it has been more than amply provided by the recent spectacle of widespread disturbances within the Muslim world over the publication by a small Danish newspaper of cartoons of the prophet, Mohammed.

Ostensibly, what has affronted the protestors has been the cartoons violating an injunction of their religion forbidding pictorial representations of him. Since drawings of Mohammed have long existed in both the Muslim world as well in the West without occasioning comparable protests, their true cause must lie elsewhere.

The most obvious explanation is the irreverent manner in which the cartoons have depicted Mohammed, and many protestors have claimed, and western critics of the publication of the cartoons have agreed, that they are simply a gratuitous form of offence to Muslims for which no conceivable justification can be offered.

However, whether any offence the cartoons have caused Muslims is gratuitous is precisely what is at issue and cannot be decided merely by the fact that some or even many Muslims have been offended by them.

Without pre-judging whether it is all, or only some, versions of their religion which are worthy of criticism, no one can deny whose opinion on the matter is worth taking seriously that, of late, not a few highly objectionable and despicable deeds have been perpetrated in the name of Islam, nor that it was to this fact about it that the cartoons were alluding in the manner in which they did.

Even if it has only been through heretical versions of Islam that it has been invoked to justify such evil deeds by those who have committed them, adherents of that religion who do not subscribe to any of these aberrant versions of it can hardly deny some versions of their religion have been used in that way. If they have a legitimate case to make against the cartoons for having in their view wrongly suggested it has been the religion per se which has licensed such deeds, rather than some aberrant versions of it, the appropriate way for them to make their case is surely by means of the pen rather than the sword of which the use merely confirms the impression there is something about the religion, rather than any specific heretical versions of it, that all too readily is apt to give rise to unjustifiable acts of violence on the part of its adherents.

Because of this, it is vital western countries not yield to Muslim demands to make all such forms of representation of their religion or of its founder an offence. Any western political leaders tempted to accede to these demands should pay especially close heed to a statement signed by twelve writers, including Salman Rushdie, that was published last week in the French weekly Charles Hebda.

For those Civitas readers who might not otherwise have across it, here is an English translation of the statement taken from the report on the BBC News web-site:

After having overcome fascism, Nazism, and Stalinism, the world now faces a new global totalitarian threat: Islamism.

We, writers, journalists, intellectuals, call for resistance to religious totalitarianism and for the promotion of freedom, equal opportunity and secular values for all.

Recent events, prompted by the publication of drawings of Muhammad in European newspapers, have revealed the necessity of the struggle for these universal values.

This struggle will not be won by arms, but in the ideological field.

It is not a clash of civilisations nor an antagonism between West and East that we are witnessing, but a global struggle that confronts democrats and theocrats.

Like all totalitarian ideologies, Islamism is nurtured by fear and frustration.

Preachers of hatred play on these feelings to build the forces with which they can impose a world where liberty is crushed and inequality reigns.

But we say this, loud and clear: nothing, not even despair, justifies choosing darkness, totalitarianism and hatred.

Islamism is a reactionary ideology that kills equality, freedom and secularism wherever it is present.

Its victory can only lead to a world of injustice and domination: men over women, fundamentalists over others.

On the contrary, we must ensure access to universal rights for the oppressed or those discriminated against.

We reject the "cultural relativism" which implies an acceptance that men and women of Muslim culture are deprived of the right to equality, freedom and secularism in the name of the respect for certain cultures and traditions.

We refuse to renounce our critical spirit out of fear of being accused of "Islamophobia", a wretched concept that confuses criticism of Islam as a religion and stigmatisation of those who believe in it.

We defend the universality of the freedom of expression, so that a critical spirit can exist in every continent, towards each and every maltreatment and dogma.

We appeal to democrats and free spirits in every country that our century may be one of light and not dark.

Posted by David Conway at 01:32 PM | Comments (0)

February 23, 2006

Where Should the Legal Limits of Free Speech be Set?

If any conjuncture of events could have been better tailored to give liberals of all shades cause to ponder exactly where the acceptable limits of freedom of expression should be set by law, few can be thought of being so well suited for the purpose than the rare and striking combination of events to which we have recently been witness.

They comprise the on-going world-wide wave of Muslim protests sparked by the publication by a Danish newspaper of cartoons of their prophet, Mohammed; the recently concluded separate and quite independent trials of Abu Hamzu and David Irving for each havinf expressws views which has resulted in their receiving substantial custodial sentences; and, finally, the still unresolved confrontation with the law of Nick Griffin and his fellow British National Party member for having publicly aired certain disparaging opinions about Islam.

What should a consistent liberal’s position be in relation to these several cases, all involving expression of opinion or publication of images? Should all be permitted by law? Should none be? Alternatively, if what is called for is a more nuanced approach, by reference to what principle or set of principles can and should liberals determine which forms of expression may and should be allowed by law within a country, and which should not?

Some with an axe to grind have been quick to exploit the complexity of the situation presented by this conjuncture of events to argue for some position they favour in relation to one of them by demanding similar treatment in relation to it as that which has been meted out in some other case. Thus, both the 57-nation Organisation of the Islamic Conference and the British National Party have accused of double standards those who would support newspapers having freedom to publish cartoons of Mohammed, while not being willing to extend similar freedom to David Irving to be free by law publicly to deny in Austria that the Holocaust ever happened.

Ironically, of course, the two organisation draw precisely the opposite practical inferences from their common demand for parity of treatment in these two cases. While the OIC demands neither form of expression be permitted under the law, doubtless to obtain proscription of the one in which it is specially concerned, the BNP demands both forms of expression be legally permitted, again doubtless to ensure the freedom for exression of the opinions it favours.

Liberals, of course, favour liberty, and so their presumption must that there should be freedom of expression unless a compelling case can be made out against it in a specific case. Short of downright incitement to violence of the sort of which Abu Hamza was found guilty, many liberals have found themselves obliged to accept that people such be free to express in public views that fall short of direct incitement to violence, however false, distasteful, and offensive these views might be.

On this view, while the conviction of Abu Hamza was acceptable, since he incited the Muslims whom he addressed in his sermons to carry out acts of violence against non-Muslims, newspapers should be free to publish whatever cartoons they choose, no matter how offensive others might find them, and likewise so should Griffin and Irving be free under the law to express opinions that fall short of incitement.

One very clear example of a liberal who feels reluctantly constrained by liberal scruples to concede this in the case of David Irving is Daniel Finkelstein. In an op-ed piece in yesterday’s Times, after movingly relating his own family’s intimate and tragic personal involvement in the events of the Holocaust, Finkelstein felt constrained to acknowledge Irving should be free to express the opinions that he did and should not have been tried or imprisoned. He writes:

‘It is difficult not to feel anger at Irving. And I do feel rage. But I do not wish him behind bars, not for giving an opinion, not for delivering a lecture, however warped and horrible his opinion is…. I believe that by allowing anyone to assert anything, the truth will triumph, provided that its friends are vigilant and relentless.’

How reasonable and liberal Finkelstein sounds, and how intolerant and illiberal does he make appear all who brought Irving to trial, sentenced him to prison, and framed the laws that enabled them to do so. In this case, however, it is Irving’s prosecutors, not Finkelstein, who are the liberals and tolerant, and it is Finkelstein, not Irving’s prosecutors, who is favouring illiberal intolerance by what he is advocating.

What David Irving did back in 1989 in Austria and for which he has just been convicted was not just publicly to express scepticism about the Holocaust. What he did was publicly to express complete disdain for the notion that anything like it had happened, and before an excited audience of right-wing Austrian students who had invited him to address them in the very country in which Hitler had been born and from which the scourge of Nazism was and still remains far from being removed.

Irving’s speeches were deliberately calculated to enflame their pro-Nazi sentiments and sympathies, by allowing them, and others like them, to dismiss the idea there was anything of which the Nazis and their latter-day sympathisers have cause to be ashamed save their late Fuhrer’s defeat, while simultaneously he fanned their anti-Semitic ire by suggesting that Jews who have made a fuss of the Holocaust have thereby perpetrated on the wolrd a gigantic fraud of which Germany and Austria have been the chief victims, and for having done which they should be made to pay the price.

The Austrian law forbidding Holocaust denial is on a par with and motivated by exactly the same concerns as both there and in Germany, where there is a similar law, as are behind the laws in these two countries that proscribe the Nazi party and the public wearing of Nazi insignia. These laws are motivated not by any illiberal intolerance similar to that which once fuelled Nazism, but by the perfectly liberal concern to ensure that venomous ideology does not flare up there again.

There is a perfectly bona fide liberal case for favouring the legal interdiction in these two countries, and wherever else there is a genuine threat of resurgent Nazism, of the public expression of such opinions as those Irving expressed and for having done which he has been imprisoned. It issues from no less an impeccably liberal source than John Stuart Mill in his famous essay On Liberty which this week has been so often wrongly cited as giving warrant for supposing liberals have no alternative but to condone Irving's saying what he did and to deplore the fate he has suffered at the hands of the Austrian authorities for having said it.

In the first paragraph of the third chapter of that essay that immediately follows the famous one in which Mill defends freedom of thought and expression, Mill adds a caveat to his general commendation of such freedom. He observes:

‘even opinions lose their immunity, when the circumstances in which they are expressed are such as to constitute their expression a positive instigation to some mischievous act. An opinion that corn-dealers are starvers of the poor, or that private property is robbery, ought to be unmolested when simply circulated through the press, but may justly incur punishment when delivered orally to an excited mob assembled before the house of a corn-dealer, or when handed out among the same mob in the form of a placard. Acts, of whatever kind, which, without justifiable cause, do harm to others, may be, and in the more important cases absolutely require to be, controlled, … when needful, by the active interference of mankind.’

The Austrian students who heard Irving speak may not have thereby been prompted that very night to go out and burn down any Jewish properties. But were such speeches as Irving’s freely allowed in Austria and Germany, there was and remains every reason for the Austrian and German authorities to suppose that before long their streets, and those of their neighbouring countries, would once again echo to the sound of the breaking glass of the windows of shops and places of worship belonging to Jews and other ethnic minorities, and other sounds much, much worse than these.

To illustrate what danger Irving posed, consider a speech he made in March 1990 in the East German town of Halle to an audience of neo-Nazis. The account of it comes from a book about Irving’s unsuccessful libel suit in 2000 against Penguin Books and Deborah Lipstadt for having published a book she had written accusing him of having wilfully and maliciously distorted facts of history, of which he was fully aware, so as cast doubt on the idea that the Holocaust had really happened. A video of his speech was presented as part of the evidence of the defendants to show motive:

‘A trench-coat clad Irving is shown addressing a crowd of young skinheads…. As the ranks of skinheads march in front of him stamping their Doc Martens and waving the red and black Reichskriegsflagge – Reich battle flag emblem of German irredentism since the turn of the century, and a stand-in for the banned Nazi swastika, …in response to a burst of German rhetoric from Irving, they begin chanting: Sieg Heil! Seig Heil! Sieg Heil!’ [D.D.Guttenplan, The Holocaust on Trial: History Justice and the David Irving Libel Case (London: Granta Books, 2001), p. 244]

Again, consider a slogan Irving coined and unveiled to the world at a press conference that he gave in West Berlin in October 1989 which subsequently was used as the slogan of a conference in Munich in 1990 at which Irving spoke. The slogan runs: Wahrheit Macht Frei (The Truth Makes Free), and is a clear allusion to the slogan Arbeit Macht Frei (Work Makes Free) that festooned the gates of Auschwitz. Clearly, within the context of Holocaust denial what it seems to be suggesting is that, by denying the occurrence of the Holocaust in the manner in which Irving and his like are, legitimacy, and thereby, more importantly, legality, will once again be able to be conferred on the Nazis and their latter-day sympathisers.

This last-mentioned consideration brings me to the question whether, as some have claimed, a custodial sentence of the length Irving received was too severe for a crime he committed so long ago. Had Irving merely been fined or given a conditional discharge, he would have been able and likely to accept the invitation to attend and speak at the Holocaust Denial Conference about to take place in Iran organised by a President of that country who has sworn to wipe Israel off the map and who is busily seeking nuclear capability.

That consideration alone was cause enough for Irving to have been awarded a custodial sentence, notwithstanding his cynical and clearly insincere belated avowal of belief in the Holocaust. The suggestion that the remoteness in time of the speeches for giving which he was punished render that sentence excessive is refuted by the fact that it was only in 2005 that he exposed himself to such punishment by choosing then to return to Austria.

Irving and others like him should not be allowed to deny the Holocaust in the countries which spawned Nazism, especially before gatherings of excited neo-Nazis, only too eager to be able to bask before the world in the aura of legitimacy that Holocaust denial enables them spuriously to pretend they have.

Of all the remarks on this subject that I have come across, by far the most perceptive, in my view was, that among several hundred commenting on a posting about the Irving verdict to be found on the wonderfully informative web-site Little Green Footballs. The comment (number 302) by a John Schneider runs so:

‘Arrested for saying what you think? Can't happen in a free society, right?

‘Depends on what you think. There's a continuum of speech from merely offensive, but protected, to becoming a criminal offence. Everything from fraud to solicitation of murder is punished.

'Nothing is simple in the realm of speech. "Turning the prism" factually makes a huge difference. "Mere" Holocaust denial is one thing. Rallying neo-Nazis (cough, Muslims, cough) to another Holocaust under the banner of free speech sounds all too familiar in today's world.'

Returning to David Irving and to Daniel Finkelstein’s qualms about Irving's incarceration for having said what he did, my concluding observation is that is only a pity the Austrian den in which he is currently being detained contains no lions. For it is unlikely the God of Finkelstein and his forefathers would have been nearly as protective of Irving as He is reported to have been of a certain ancient Israelite who shares one, if not the other, of Finkelstein’s names.

Posted by David Conway at 02:54 PM | Comments (5)

February 15, 2006

They are terrorising our freedoms

One of the most persuasive arguments for taking up smoking again seems to me to be the news that it has now been banned across England. It’s a civil liberty thing – pubs should be allowed to choose. As for ID cards – civil liberties are relevant counterargument, but the imbecility of the measures owes more to the government’s inability to make such an ambitious scheme work, the exorbitant costs, and the imminent failure to achieve any of the stated objectives for national safety. Now, the anti-terror legislation being debated in the Commons tempts me to start attending libertarian rallies or hollering about the glories of Fascist freedom fighters and Marxist revolutions.

Let’s be clear that the terror bill has got nothing to do with being firm on terrorism. The offence of glorification owes more to Downing Street's obsession with being seen to do something than a wish to tackle terrorism in a meaningful way. The Conservative shadow attorney general Dominic Grieve has said his party will back the plans to ban indirect encouragement of terrorism, but has rightly accused the government of trying to manufacture a ‘dust up’ so that Mr Blair can claim other politicians aren’t protecting the public. ‘This is a bogus spat,’ he said this morning on the Today programme, ‘generated by No 10 Downing Street for the purpose of the prime minister looking tough.

There are, I think, two points which show that this is the case.

Firstly, the wording of the bill. After the incitement to religious hatred bill you’d expect the government to be more conscientious about its legal language. You’d expect them to tidy and tighten things up a bit. Yet ‘glorification’ – which is not a clause but a subclause within the ‘indirect encouragement clause’ – was originally removed by the Lords because it is so poorly defined. Unless ‘glorification’ is properly defined, as Dominic Grieve has pointed out, the Irish taoiseach could face prosecution in the UK for celebrating the Easter Rising. Far better, and entirely adequately stringent, is the definition of ‘indirect encouragement clause’ itself: ‘making of a statement describing terrorism in such a way that the listener would infer that he should emulate it.’

Secondly, the government’s own lassitude in dealing with terrorists undermines its claims. Abu Hamza – ‘Captain Hook’ – who the Home Affairs Select Committee has today said is very far from an isolated case in Britain - was on the loose for far too long before finally being arrested. Likewise, the likes of Jack Straw and Peter Hain were incredibly loathe to condemn the placard carriers when their messages constituted the serious criminal offences of incitement to violence and murder. It came down to the Tories to make the first public calls for arrests. While the government drags its feet about acting on more serious incitements to murder, Charles Clarke pleads for a ‘glorification’ clause to cover mincing abuses like ‘we glorify terrorism’.

The lowering of the bar will only have the negative impact of limiting the freedom of speech acts that should not be criminalized. There is and always has been a trade-off in which the citizens of Britain permit the limiting of their freedoms in return for greater national security. This will have no such effect. It totally fails to strike a balance between national interests and individuals’ freedom of speech.

Posted by Nick Seddon at 11:46 AM | Comments (4)

February 09, 2006

Why Rees-Mogg Should Not Be Such a Pussy at This Difficult Time

‘There should always be charity and goodwill between different beliefs; toleration must be the norm, but even toleration has its limits. Locke would not have believed in insulting publications….’

Thus writes William Rees Mogg in an op-ed in last Monday’s Times entitled ‘Tolerating the Intolerable: Even Locke, our greatest prophet of liberty, would never have defended those offensive cartoons’.

In seeking to recruit the great British seventeenth century philosopher to the cause of those who, whether by government edict or self-censorship, would suppress publication of the cartoons, critical of Islam, that have lately become the epicentre of a firestorm of frenzied Muslim protest throughout the world, Rees-Mogg -- normally a voice of comparative sanity in an otherwise turbulent sea of media madness -- has erred very badly indeed.

There are several reasons for thinking that, had Locke been alive today, or had the cartoons been published in his day and Locke known all we now do of and about Islam, he would not have opposed their publication, or called for their suppression by law or self-censorship.

First, as Rees-Mogg himself was forced to admit in his piece, Locke was not averse to making remarks he must have known to be deeply offensive to British Roman Catholics and atheists of his day.

Specifically, Locke denied both groups fit for full inclusion within the British political commonwealth. He did so because he considered the the ultimate allegiance of the former to lie with a foreign hostile sovereign, the Pope, and the latter precluded by their disbelief from being able to swear the appropriate oaths by which alone, so he believed, could the necessary unshakeable commitments be created.

But, more importantly and secondly, towards the end of his Letter Concerning Toleration, Locke expressly asserts something seemingly in blatant contradiction with the view Rees-Mogg seeks to attribute to him.
Locke asserts:

‘Uncharitableness … and many other things are sins, by the consent of all men, which no man ever said were to be punished by the magistrate. The reason is, because they are not prejudicial to other men’s rights, nor do they break the public peace of societies.’

The implication of Locke's remark which puts it so at odds with the view Rees-Mogg wants to ascribe to him is that, even were publication of the cartoons uncharitable because offensive to Muslims, their publication is not indefensible, since it neither violates any rights nor breaches the peace.

Of course, some protesting Muslims have claimed their publication has violated their rights and those of their coreligionists. Similarly, since their publication, many breaches of the peace have taken place in protest, all too many, tragically, with fatal result.

However, given the content of the cartoons and the purpose of the Danish newspaper in publishing them, it flies in the face of reality to suggest they were published to incite breach of the peace, rather than draw critical attention to the propensity Islam seems to have to arouse all too many of its adherents on the slightest pretext to commit such breaches.

Moreover, as is shown by what Locke was prepared to say about the ineligibility of Roman Catholics and atheists for full active British citizenship, Locke was certainly not of the opinion that anyone had or should be given a right not to be offended by others. Or else, if he was, it was a right that he was fully prepared to believe could justifiably be infringed whenever political circumstances demanded it be – which was, given what he writes about Catholics and atheists, whenever the security and integrity of the realm was at stake.

Mention of this latter consideration brings me to the third and final reason Rees-Mogg is wrong to suppose Locke would have condemned the publication of the cartoons or supported their mandatory or voluntary suppression.

In his Letter, Locke was prepared to assert that ‘neither Pagan, nor Muhametan, nor Jew ought to be excluded from the civil commonwealth, because of their religion’, as he was not prepared so to do, for reasons already mentioned, in the case of Roman Catholics and atheists. However, the eligibility of the former for inclusion always remained conditional, in Locke's view, on their willingness to abide by the rule of law and accept and observe the other principles constitutive of a sovereign liberal nation. Where they are not so prepared because of how they construed their religion, there is ample textual warrant within Locke’ writings to suppose that he would not have been willing to tolerate them.

Although written with only intra-Christian rivalries in mind, Locke makes an observation at the end of his Letter highly germane to the current unrest among Muslims here and abroad about the cartoons and other western liberal ways. Locke writes:

‘It is not the diversity of opinions (which cannot be avoided) but the refusal of toleration to those that are of different opinions that has produced all the bustles and wars that have been in the ... world upon account of religion. [Religious] heads and leaders, moved by … insatiable desire of dominion, making use of … the credulous superstition of the giddy multitude, have incensed and animated them against those who dissent from themselves… [T]his … will continue … so long as ... preachers … excite men to arms and sound the trumpet of war. But that magistrates should suffer these incendiaries, and disturbers of the public peace might justly be wondered at; if it did not appear that they have been invited by them unto a participation of the spoil.’

Substitute for ‘participation in the spoils', 'the prospect of Muslim votes’ or ‘a covenant of trust that avoids domestic terror while allowing it to be plotted for abroad’, and one begins to see just how apposite Locke’s observation remains today as well as just how decisive a rebuttal it provides of Rees-Mogg’s view of what Locke’s attitude to publication of the offending cartoons would have been.

If any further proof were needed of just what good reason there might be for publication of the offending cartoons, notwithstanding all the protests their publication has provoked, two recently published facts supply it.

First, only a day after the publication of Rees-Mogg’s article, a report appeared in the Times of the findings of a Populus poll of 500 British Muslims which found that as many as 37% of them believed that the Jewish community in Britain were a legitimate target, and no fewer than 7% thought suicide bombings in Britain justifiable.

Second, notwithstanding that the European Commission appears to be pressing for a European-wide code of conduct in the reporting about religions to avoid future disturbances, and one which would involve self-censorship of future publication of cartoons like those which have given rise to the current disturbances, it now turns out that an Egyptian newspaper saw fit back to publish the entire set of them last October without its having occasioned so much as a murmur of protest at their publication at the time. So much for the cause of the current protests being their offensiveness to Muslim sensiblities.

For what the true reasons for the protests might be, I refer back to the blog I wrote on the subject last week, although that conjectural explanation has to some extent been superseded by a very illuminating account in today's New York Times of how the protests were planned by Muslim heads of state at a meeting in Mecca back in December of last year.

Finally, if we must , as I am all for doing, go back to the turbulent seventeenth century for instruction on how best to interpret and respond to current Muslim unrest, we will find no better instructor than the playright and former poet laureate, Tomas Shadwell, and the response to his play The Lancashire Witches.

First performed in 1681 at the height of the Exclusion Crisis, when parliamentarians in vain sought to prevent the accession of Charles ll's openly Catholic younger brother James, the play was virulently anti-Catholic by having suggested, not without some reason, there was a concerted conspiracy among some of their number to re-Catholicise the country. Among other salacious delights contained in the play was a graphic depiction of a full witches’ black Sabbath orchestrated no less than by an aptly named Irish Roman Catholic priest, Tegue O Divelly!

When first performed, however, Roman Catholics disguised their true reason for opposing the play, which was the doubt it raised about their loyalties, by focussing on its portrayal of a smug obsequious young Anglican, the equally aptly named Smerk, who was house chaplain to a true and upstanding stalwart member of the English gentry, Sir Edward Hartfort -- i.e stout of heart or stout-hearted.

When first published in 1682, Shadwell went into some detail in a prefatory note to the reader recounting the initial reception of the play upon its first performance. There is much in this account to instruct and inspire those today who are confronting current protests at the irreverent cartoons of Mohammed.

Shadwell begins by alluding to the sharp and intense religious divisions of his day so:

‘Fops and knaves are the fittest characters for comedy, and this town [London] was wont to abound with variety of vanities and knaveries till this unhappy division. But all run now into poltics, and you must needs, if you touch upon any humour of this time, offend one of the parties.’

He goes on to remark that he is unable to see how what he had written could possibly give cause for offence to anyone save Roman Catholics, about offending whom he seems to have been as little exercised as Locke, until he learned how some closet Catholics had objected to his play on the pretended grounds of its having insulted the Church of England by the way it portrayed Smerk.

Although initially first licensed for performance in almost its entirety, Shadwell recounts how later the play came under severe censorship as a result of the disingenuously motivated and artificially staged protests that had attended its very first performance. These protests, he recounts, had been artificially stirred up by Catholics who had paid others to attend the play and to hiss during its performance. His account of how and why these planned disruptions failed is well worth reading by all who rightly see no reason why newspapers should not be perfectly at liberty to publish cartoons like those the Danish newspaper did, despite all the outrage and protests their publication has occasioned:

‘But they [the Catholic opponents of the play] had gotten mercenary fellows, who were such fools that they did not know when to hiss and this was evident to all the audience. It was wonderful to see men of great quality and gentlemen, in so mean a combination’ -- that is, people of integrity and learning prepared to stand up and not be bullied by this orchestrated conspiracy of ingnoramuses whio had been paid to disrupt the play’s performance.

Shadwell then relates how the protests of the rent-a-mob failed in their intent of preventing the play from being performed:

‘But to my great satisfaction they came off as meanly as I could wish. I had so numerous an assembly of the best sort of men, who stood so generously in my defence, for the first three days, that they quash’d all right the vain attempts of my enemies, the inconsiderable party of hissers yielded, and the play lived in spite of them.’

Those who recognise just what is at stake at present over the cartoons should be both uplifted and inspired by what Shadwell relates here about how his play was able to withstand the orchestrated attempts to shout it down. . What he writes should reinforce their unwillngness to be misled by faulty Lockean exegesis into supposing there is no truly classical liberal response but to do as Rees- Mogg has bid them and roll over like tame pussies to await their stomachs being rubbed by the hand of some appreciative Muslim whose anger has been temporarily stayed by that submissive gesture.

Posted by David Conway at 12:53 PM | Comments (0)

February 02, 2006

Reflections, but Certainly Not Genuflections, On The Latest Desert Storm in a Turban

‘Muslims up in arms over all over the world at irreverent Danish newspaper cartoons of Mohammed’, ‘Death threats received by Danish and Norwegian newspapers for publishing cartoons of the Prophet', ’ ‘Middle eastern Muslim countries boycott Danish goods’, ‘Armed Fatah militia surround EU offices in Gaza after EU defends Danish Prime Minister for refusing to condemn or prosecute editor of Danish newspaper’ etc, etc, scream newspaper headlines around the world.

These headlines, or words to their effect. report the latest twists and turns in the long-running and still on-going saga of the widespread outrage that has been provoked within the Muslim world by the publication of irreverent cartoons of Mohammed in a Danish newspaper last September and since in other European newspapers.

Time was when I would have been appalled by how out of all proportion to its ostensible cause was the scale of this latest outburst of Muslim outrage and indignation. But if there is such a thing as jihad-fatigue, I am beginning to suffer from it.

By this I do not mean to imply that the death threats and boycott threats should not be taken seriously by those at whom they have been directed, as well as by the authorities whose job it is to protect their recipients. I mean that it has become all to sickeningly clear that the numerous Muslims throughout the world who have responded so disproportionately to this latest perceived failure by non-Muslims to extend towards their religion the deference that they consider it due are no longer worthy of being taken seriously, intellectually or morally.

The disproportion of their sound and fury to what they claim has been its cause reveals that there is simply no other way in which to respond to them, save to say:

‘Look, brother! I don’t give a damn that you may claim to be feeling as outraged as if someone had issued the gravest personal insult about your parents. Mohammed was not your parent. Nor can the cartoons of him you claim to find so offensive remotely be thought to be ‘dissing’ him. By showing an exploding bomb on his head, all the cartoon was alluding to was the fact how conducive the religion that he founded appears to be, whether by accident or design, to militancy. This is something your reaction of outrage to this cartoon of him rather confirms.

‘You claim it is offensive to Muslims even to depict the prophet. This is untrue, or at least it is by no means true of all Muslims. Hundreds of drawings and paintings of the prophet have been made, copied ,and displayed in the Muslim world for centuries before without having triggered this reaction. Some are in Mecca to this day.

‘If it is not the representation of the prophet as such but the irreverent manner in which the cartoons depict him to which you talke exception, all one can say is: you are over-reacting. To compare their publication, as have some of those who have reacted like you, to a decision by that or another newspaper to fill one of its pages with Swastikas, given of what that sign became a symbol during that recent ghastly episode in European history, is to fail to distinguish between making a serious, critical point about a religion, albeit in an intentionally humorous fashion, and incitement of hatred towards, and ultmately the systematic murder of, an entire people on account of their race.’

But I fear that even to offer such a reply is already to dignify the Muslim outrage by extending to it more respect than it deserves.

The clash of civilisations between the Muslim and non-Muslim world shows every sign of having recently intensified, what with the latest posturings and brinkmanship of the Iranian president, the victory of Hamas in the recent Palestinian elections, and now the flag stamping and other rantings of the zealots with which we have become sadly all too familiar of late.

Mercifully, by no means all Muslims are as petulantly intolerant as those of their brothers who have kicked up this latest storm in a turban. Mona Eltahawy has very sensible things to say about the subject as a Muslim in her comment 'For many Muslims, cartoonish excess', published in an issue last week of the Lebanese-based paper, ‘The Daily Star’.

Likewise, Hamid Karzai is reported as having responded to the cartoons with similar restraint and moderation. He is quoted as having said of their publication: ‘Prime Minister Rasmussen explained Denmark’s position on that which was very satisfactory to me as a Muslim’.

People who go throwing their weight about to extract respect from others are, typically, people deserving of very little of it. When Muslims are able to shrug their shoulders at the publication of irreverent cartoons of their prophet will be the day their publication will have ceased to serve any useful function … or to be funny. Until that day comes, they do and are.

Posted by David Conway at 04:18 PM | Comments (2)

January 18, 2006

Big Brother

David Cameron is right to be opposing ID cards, as reported in the Daily Telegraph this morning. Everything Blair and co. do is designed to grow government at the expense of civil society and the individual. This is yet another example. And even more cogent arguments against ID cards can be made, not on the basis of civil liberties, but on the feasibility and cost of the scheme.

Are ID cards a proper response to the terrorist threat? Simply, no: they are the wrong answer to the problems of crime and security. They will offer the illusion of safety based on technology not intelligence. ID cards in Spain did not prevent the Madrid bombings, nor would they have done anything to stop 9/11. Richard Reed, like most terrorists, did not hide his identity, only his intention.

Are ID cards going to be effective in controlling immigration? There are already so many illegals in Britain – the government guesses there could be as many as 570,000 illegal immigrants (multiply that by three to get a more accurate estimate) – as to render the scheme almost pointless. The only way it would work would be if ID cards were mandatory for every British citizen, and the borders were far more effectively policed.

Are ID cards going to stop benefit fraud? Less than 2 per cent of benefit fraud is due to ID fraud; instead, benefit fraudsters tend to misrepresent their circumstances. The fact that there are 73 million live national insurance records, but only 46.5 million in the country entitled to a national insurance record hardly fosters confidence in the government's ability to run such a scheme.

Are ID cards going to stop ID fraud? Biometric testing can hardly be said to be failsafe. Even if with three biometric measures it could be said to be 99.9 per cent effective, there would still be a 1 in 48,000 failure rate, which means that someone would be able to access several different records using his own biometrics in order to create different identities (99.9 per cent is, by the way, beyond the realm of possibility).

Are ID cards going to stop crime? If they ever catch them, police rarely have trouble identifying suspects, only proving they're guilty. Cards won't deter criminals unless the government gives police stop and search powers and, again, for this to be effective the card would have to be mandatory. It’s difficult to see what difference ID cards would make, unless the criminal kindly leaves his propped up on the mantlepiece after stealing your DVD player.

Then there’s the question of viability. Can we really trust the government to deliver such a high-risk centralised database? The ID system would require data to be permanently accessible from a wide range of public and private locations, which would mean building one of the most complex computer systems on the planet. The government's own Information Commissioner said last year it is 'unnecessary', and the UK Computer Research Committee expressed 'deep scepticism about the Home Office's ability to specify, procure and implement a national software intensive system on the scale that would be necessary'. Let's not forget the Home Office's record on IT is hardly perfect. It is also worth mentioning that the European Commission has expressed doubts about the storage of such secure information on a central database due to the 'risk of data misuse', which is why Germany is sensibly introducing a passport with facial biometrics and fingerprints - but not on a central database.

What about the costs? Who is going to fund libraries, banks and hospital emergency services for the card reading machines to be installed? Quite apart from the expense of each individual card, that money will obviously have to come from the taxpayer. No one can say how much the cards will cost, and the government dismisses the LSE's calculation of anything up to £20 billion for the whole system.

But then the government never is too reliable about the costs of such projects. It said that the criminal court computer system would cost £150 million, but that ended up costing £400 million, and it said that moving GCHQ's computers to another building would cost £20 million, and that ended up being closer to £450 million. The cost of the scheme will be phenomenal, and what's spent on ID cards cannot be spent on anything else. Money would be better used to provide thousands of extra police officers and invest in courts, prisons and rehabilitation centres that would provide genuine security for the citizens of this country.

It’s difficult to see any upside to the scheme. Unless you’re a fan of Big Brother.

Posted by Nick Seddon at 01:14 PM | Comments (1)

December 14, 2005

Authoritarian...

‘I pass protesters every day at Downing Street, and believe me, you name it, they protest against it. I may not like what they call me but I thank God they can. That's called freedom’

Not only does that statement, made by Tony Blair in 2002, sound intolerably smug, but it’s also become increasingly untrue...

People dislike the constant wittering about civil liberties, but situation really has become rather bad, as countless examples attest. A few will do. How can it be, firstly, that a 20-year-old girl was arrested at the Midlands Game Fair for wearing a ‘Bollocks to Blair’ t-shirt, on the basis that old ladies might be offended? Worse still, how can it be that a peaceful protest was punished under terrorism laws? This concerns last week’s news that the controversial new security powers intended to protect Parliament were used to prosecute a peace campaigner. Maya Anne Evans, a 25-year-old cook, became the first person to be prosecuted under the law which bans unauthorised demonstrations within one kilometre of Westminster after reciting the names of British soldiers killed in Iraq outside the gates of Downing Street. And, for the sake of another instance, how can it be that a peace protester, who the courts have said may stay where he is, could be forcibly removed by police, arrested and then released without charge? This is of course a reference to Brian Haw, who’s been stationed in Parliament Square for years.

There has been much discussion of this across the press. A slangy slogan, capable of causing more offence to the PM than old ladies; a peaceful protest that is evidently not a terrorist threat; a man arrested for doing nothing: faced with the usual government sophistry, with the obfuscation of the police and the vast web of new laws against freedom of speech and against civil liberty, no wonder the people of Britain are feeling impotent. It smacks of Orwell and Huxley. How prescient those doom mongers are now turning out to be. But what can be done?

... And incompetent

On a different note, the BBC reports today that OfSTED has declared that poor levels of literacy and numeracy are marring improvements in standards in primary and secondary schools in England. For our take on this, see the first in a two part piece for the Spectator.

Posted by Nick Seddon at 11:54 AM | Comments (0)

December 06, 2005

Roger Scruton Interview

It's well worth reading Roger Scruton's interview on the occasion of the 25th anniversary of the publication of The Meaning of Conservatism. Part I is at the Right Reason blog site. Part II of the interview by Max Goss is here.

Posted by David Green at 03:52 PM | Comments (0)

November 17, 2005

The Sheikh of Things to Come…

Despite making light of it in a leader that parodies the diary he might currently be keeping in some remote cave dwelling in a far off land, the report in today’s Daily Telegraph that Verso Books has just brought out, in a specially commissioned new English translation, a collection of all statements made by Osama bin Laden between 1994 and 2004 is no laughing matter.

For the same week has also seen reports, not only that the Queen is now an Al Qaeda target, but that Islamic web-sites have recently been showing a video made by the British-born July suicide-bomber, Mohammed Siddique Khan, shortly before he blew himself up along with fellow passengers on the London Underground, in which he calls on his fellow British Muslim brothers and sisters to join him in the jihad that the Saudi Sheikh declared on the West some years ago, whose text Verso Books has now so responsibly and obligingly brought to the nearest bookshop of every university campus in the country, where, doubtless, many an impressionable confused and alienated young man and woman will have ample opportunity to read it at leisure, doubtless impressed by the apparent veneer of legitimacy the new imprint has given his views.

The publishers are quick to claim that, in publishing them, they are not implying their agreement with them. Rather, they claim on their web-site that they have decided to published bin Laden's statements to ‘demythologise the terrorist network’.

‘The idea is to have an annotated, scholarly collection of bin Laden’s words. Until now, his words have only been available in poor translations or sound-bites’, so one of Verso’s editors is reported to have explained.

According to the report in the Telegraph , one of the things the book makes clear is that, among the terms of surrender on which the Sheikh is apparently insisting before being willing to call off his war against the West, is that it discontinues ‘alcohol and gambling’ as well as displaying adverts that contain photographs of women who, apparently, are also required to step down from all jobs in which they serve ‘passengers, visitors, and strangers’.

While being, therefore, most unlikely to attract to his cause any chavs or Essex boys and girls, the views of bin Laden contained in the book are unlikely to be nearly as off-puting to any disaffected young British Muslims who might stumble upon the book, many of whom seem especially vulnerable at the ,moment to being drawn into the more fundamentalist and intolerant versions of their faith such as that which are espoused in it.

In light of this undoubted fact, it was arguably the height of cynical irresponsibility on Verso’s part to decide to commission and publish the book.

Only one thing, perhaps, can be said in favour of the book. This is that it is a vast improvement in terms of intelligibility, if not coherence or cogency of argument, on the often almost incomprehensible jargon-ridden and theory-laden rubbish by the likes of such authors as Louis Althusser, Theodor Adorno, Enest Mandel, Robin Blackburn and Terry Eagleton that, in its former incarnation as New Left Books, Verso churned out by the dozen in the seventies and eighties on a generation of hapless undergraduates who were required to read them by the fellow-travelling leftist lecturers who insisted on their inclusion on reading-lists.

Doubtless, since the collapse of demand for such Marxist gobbeldy-gook as it formerly spewed out, Verso are banking on the new book finding its way onto the readings lists of countless media and cultural studies courses throughout the land to keep it out of the red where it well and truly belongs and where, had it had an ounce of integrity, the publishing house should have been content to remain.

Posted by David Conway at 02:40 PM | Comments (0)

November 11, 2005

Ask Not for Whose Head the Suicide Bomber Calls…

After having seen Parliament emasculate the Anti-Terrorism Bill by reducing the maximum period terror suspects can be detained without trial from 90 to 28 days, its remaining provisions are now under assault from the Muslim groups created by the government after 7/7 to give advice on how it should go about improving relations between Muslims and non-Muslims.

Today’s Guardian reports these groups are claiming such provisions of the bill as that proscribing the glorification of terrorism will only serve still further to alienate young British Muslims, thereby increasing their likelihood of ending up recruited in the ranks of Al Qaeda's suicide-bombers.

They claim these clauses will antagonise these young Muslims if enacted because they will then no longer feel able to engage lawfully in what they consider to be perfectly legitimate support of ‘self-determination struggles around the world’. For example, these groups are reported to have claimed, “the extremely fine line” between empathising with the Palestinian cause and justifying the actions of suicide bombers could no longer be drawn with any legal certainty.

Similarly, they claim, any list compiled by the Home Office of extremist websites, bookshops and organisations judged of concern will be seen as ‘censorship of all those who might criticise British foreign policy or call for political unity among Muslims.’

Instead of anti-terror legislation, what should begin, the Muslim advisory groups claim, is a ‘dialogue’ between British Muslims and others.

There are several puzzling things about these expressed concerns and proposals.

First, the Muslim groups opposed to the anti-terror bill for the reasons rehearsed above also tend to favour a Religious Hatred Law proscribing incitement of hatred towards those of their faith. They are apparently unconcerned about the repeatedly expressed concerns critics of this bill have voiced that it is bound to inhibit legitimate of criticism of religions, Islamic or otherwise.

How can there be open dialogue between Muslims and non-Muslims, something for which the Muslims advisory groups are calling, if non-Muslims are to be inhibited from openly voicing critical opinion about aspects of their reigion through fear of thereby exposing themselves to prosecution for incitement to religious hatred?

Muslim critics of the anti-terror bill must abandon either support for the Religious Hatred Bill or opposition to the proposed anti-glorification of terror clause of the Anti-Terrorism Bill. They cannot expect to be able to have it both ways.

Secondly, and far more importantly, ...

those seeking to introduce anti-terror legislation need to recognise that, if they intend that law to make it an offence for anyone publicly to extol the bravery and heroism of such acts as the London underground suicide bombings, many here will become just as alienated as the Muslim advisory groups claim their young coreligionists will become through suffering any real or imagined restriction of freedom to voice support for the Palestinian cause or criticism of British foreign policy, should it remain lawful for anyone publicly to extol Palestinian suicide bombers in Israel.

Some might think this matter of only marginal concern. Or else they might suppose that, since, as some Muslim and non-Muslim apologists for Palestinian suicide bombings in Israel and Iraq claim, a legitimate distinction can be drawn between these, since allegedly directed at combatants, and such bombings as might occur here against civilians, it should remain lawful to be able to praise suicide bombings in Israel and in Iraq, when the latter are confined to British and American military personnel and installations.

That British Muslims should remain at liberty to voice support for such suicide bombing is strongly hinted to be the view of the Muslims advisory groups by their suggesting their co-religionists will not take kindly to any restrictions imposed on their freedom to voice their support for 'self-determination struggles around the world'.

Before passing any such legislation, parliament ought to decide and spell out very clearly whether or not it intends to proscribe public praise of all suicide bombings, or only those carried out on British soil. Either way they will unquestionably alienate some British citizens and risk comprising their loyalty.

My sincere hope is that, should Parliament decide to proscribe the glorification of any suicide bombings, it will choose to proscribe the glorification of all of them. Apart from any other reason why it should is that it is quite spurious to suppose security in Britian will be likely to be much increased were Parliament to exempt from proscription glorification of suicide bombings in Israel or against military targets in Iraq.

Unless Britain ceases to recognise the state of Israel and decides forthwith to withdraw from Iraq, it will unavoidably expose its citizens to becoming targets of Islamist terrorists who consider any support by a state for Israel or any military intervention against any Muslims qualifies its citizens for being legitimate targets of sucidie bombings, irrespective of how they personally stand on these matters.

A chilling reminder of this fact was given by what the 19 year old Amsterdam-born Samir Azzouz is reported by a Dutch television station to have said in a video he allegedly made last month immediately before his unsuccessful attempt to shoot down an El Al airliner as it took off from a Dutch airport, an act which led to his arrest.

In the a transcript of the video which was placed on the website of the Dutch television station, Assousz is quoted as having condemned the Dutch government for supporting George Bush, before claiming all Dutch citizens legitimate targets for having participated in its election. ‘You saw the images from the prisons of Guantanamo and abu Ghraib’, he is reported to have said. ‘You will be held responsible for this. We will, by Allah, take revenge…. You are considered soldiers because you elected this government…. We will spill your blood here as you helped steal the riches of the Muslims in Israel.’

It is, indeed, as our British Muslim friends say, ‘an extremely fine line’ between empathising with the Palestinian cause and justifying the actions of suicide bombers, unless such empathy stops well short of exonerating, let alone praising, Palestinian suicide bombers in Israel.

All the British pundits and parliamentarians who gloated at Mr Blair’s discomfiture last Wednesday when the 90 day clause was struck down had better get used to the idea that their having so voted or even voting down the clause that proscribes the glorification of terror will not so easily get them or their compatriots off the hook of Islamist terror.

Nothing short of dhimmitude or conversion to an extreme form of Islam is going to. For many that price will be far too high.

The battle for Britain’s continued freedom against radical Islamism then is only just beginning. All who gloated at Mr Blair’s discomfiture should remember that they too are fair game in the eyes of the Islamists, no matter what stand they took on that issue.

Posted by David Conway at 04:22 PM | Comments (0)

November 10, 2005

The Scales of Justice and the Balance of Terror

‘[T]he obvious purpose of a 90-day detention law… [s]urely. was to put pressure on suspects and their associates to talk. The police would be able to pick up anyone they felt like and say: "Tell us all you know and we will let you go. Otherwise we'll hold you for three months and interrogate you all the time."

This observation is made in a letter to the editor that appears in today’s issue of the Daily Telegraph.

Given how weak were the ostensible reasons offered by the police as to why they needed power to detain suspects without trial for as many as 90 days, it seems the letter writer has hit on the real reason behind their request. Let us henceforth suppose it so.

The writer of the letter appears to think such powers excessive and unconscionable. He writes:

‘Maybe this would have helped them make some intelligence breakthroughs, maybe it would simply have generated false accusations against innocent people. Either way, it looked like a step toward Guantanamo-style torture.’

Behind all the hype and tripe served up by pundits and politicians in the last few days over this issue, it seems the real issue might be whether the current threat to national security from Islamist terror is so grave as to justify granting the authorities license to place such enormous harrowing psychological pressure on individuals in the hope thereby of extracting from them information that might enable them to prevent acts of terror.

All sides admitted there was no magic to the chosen figure of ninety days: but clearly the longer the period of detention the greater the pressure capable of being exerted.

Suppose that had the ninety day clause been passed yesterday, the extra pressure the extra sixty days would have allowed the police to exert might in the future make the critical difference in terms of their being able to extract from detainees vital information that enables them to prevent some future terror bombing that claims several hundred or thousand lives.

Would its being able to do be enough to justify this extra period of detention, even though some might be scarred for life by the experience of being detained under its terms, although entirely innocent and having been found in to possess no useful information at all?

How much suffering and psychological damage incurred by how many innocent detainees, if any, could be the morally justified price that needed to be paid to prevent the death of how many other innocent people?

These are agonising and unpleasant questions that present circumstances force us to face.

Some seem to feel the probability such an extension of police powers might be able to make a critical difference in terms of their ability to prevent terrorism is too low as to warrant being given them.

Frankly, if I knew for certain it would do so, I would have no compunction in wanting the police to be given them. But, of course, we don’t know it will do so, but we can be fairly certain that some innocent people will be made to go through hell if they are. So how are we to weigh up the balance of risks and potential benefits against each other.

Rather than all the waffle that was talked yesterday, should not such issues have been discussed by MPs yesterday?

Posted by David Conway at 12:45 PM | Comments (0)

July 15, 2005

University Challenge: Your Starter for Ten…

In the wake of last week's terror suicide bombings in London, the Government is considering introducing new legislation to strengthen the country’s defences against further acts of terror.

Among the new laws under active consideration is one that would permit, if not require, non-nationals to be denied entry into the country, if they have previously been denied entry by another country, with whom the UK has friendly relations, on grounds of being suspected of having links with terrorists or terror organisations.

Should the Government introduce such a law very rapidly, someone who could well be liable to be denied entry to Britain as a result is Professor Tariq Ramadan of Geneva, due to speak later this month at a conference in London specially arranged for Muslim youth.

The reason why Professor Ramadan might be denied entry to Britain, should such new legislation be introduced is that, last summer, he was denied entry to the USA where he was due to take up a university appointment in Islamic ethics, after the US State Department revoked his entry visa at the last minute.

A spokesperson for the US State Department subsequently explained to a Washington Post reporter that it had revoked Professor Ramdan's entry visa 'under a section of the US code that bars terrorists and their associates, as well as people who have incited others to violence’.

On today’s World at One news programme, Professor Ramadan was interviewed about the possibility he might be denied entry into Britain on such grounds.

In that interview, Professor Ramadan was adamant there was absolutely no reason why he should be denied entry. He insisted he had always expressed opposition to the use of suicide bombings and other forms of terror and just as strongly denied ever having had any links with Islamic terrorists. He said:

‘There is nothing in my record. There are as many links to terrorists in my life as there are weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. There is nothing in my life connected to terrorists.’

In view of Professor Ramadan’s assertion, it is, perhaps, time the US and UK governments should consider resuming their search for WMD in Iraq. This is because, although it went unmentioned in the BBC radio interview with Professor Ramadan, last December it was reported by the Geneva newspaper, Le Temps, that his name had become linked with that of alleged Al Qaeda member, Djamel Beghal, currently under arrest and about to face trial with others for having attempted to blow up the US embassy in Paris in 2001.

According to the post on the weblog of Daniel Pipes for 14 December 2004, this newspaper article ‘describes Beghal as an active part of the international Islamist terror network, an itinerant preacher dedicated to living as the Prophet did and to acts of violence against infidels. The part [of the indictment] salient to Ramadan concerns Beghal's having become a practicing Muslim in 1994. … At that time, according to the indictment, "he [Beghhal] took charge of preparing the lectures of Tariq Ramadan."’.

Professor Ramadan apparently does not admit ever having met or even being able to recall Djamel Beghal, but unfortunately did not reply to messages left by Le Temps seeking an interview on the subject.

Countries have no legal or moral obligation to reveal to non-nationals to whom they deny entry what their reasons were for denying them entry, if these reasons pertained to grounds for suspecting they might have had links with terrorists or terror organisations.

Prima facie, it looks as if the USA, and, by extension, therefore, the UK too, does have reason to suspect that, at one time Professor Ramadan, may have had significant links with a member of Al Qaeda.

It is also worth adding that, according to the on-line encyclopedia, Wikpedia, this suspected Al Qaeda member with whom the there is some reason to think Professor Ramndan might at one time have had significant links ‘once lived in London and attended the Finsbury Park mosque along with Richard Reid, Zacarias Moussaoui, … and other Al Qaeda suspects’.

Whether the Government should introduce legislation that would enable it to deny Professor Ramadan entry into this country before he is due to speak to Muslim youths here is a question I shall leave to readers to comment on.

Posted by David Conway at 05:08 PM | Comments (1)

July 01, 2005

Identity Cards

It's difficult not to feel uneasy about the number of new powers that have been granted to the government. Again and again, liberties which we once held dear and which previous generations fought to safeguard are derided and dismissed: Blair and Co. have removed habeas corpus, put house arrest on the statute book, banned protesting within a kilometre of parliament, and put forward proposals for the satellite tracking of cars for road use charging - and now ID cards are on the way. Nineteen Eighty-Four has been held up by MP's in the House of Commons on a number of occasions recently. Poor Orwell: he intended his dystopia to be cautionary, not a textbook for the Cabinet.

In response to worries about holding personal information on ID cards, the government smugly replies that it can already access whatever it wants - from our tax details, to that bout of tonsillitis ten years ago, to the points on our driving licence, and the dating line we called last week. But this is not the same as having all the data on a single central database - especially since cards could someday be demanded by police on the streets or required for the use of basic public services. So with the opposition saying that ID cards are a threat to civil liberties, and the government promising that ID cards will protect our civil liberties, who is right? Are the sacrifices required by such a measure worth making?

The principle purpose of the cards given by the government changes constantly, as each reason is presented and rebuffed, so it pays to look at some of them in turn.

Are ID cards a proper response to the terrorist threat? Simply, no: they are the wrong answer to the problems of crime and security. They will offer the illusion of safety based on technology not intelligence. ID cards in Spain did not prevent the Madrid bombings, nor would they have done anything to stop 9/11. Richard Reed, like most terrorists, did not hide his identity, only his intention.

Are ID cards going to be effective in controlling immigration? As we have just heard, the government guesses there could be as many as 570,000 illegal immigrants (multiply that by three to get a more accurate estimate), so there are already so many illegals in Britain as to render the scheme almost pointless. The only way it would work would be if ID cards were mandatory for every British citizen, and the borders were far more stringently manned - or just manned.

Are ID cards going to stop benefit fraud? Less than 2 per cent of benefit fraud is due to ID fraud; instead, benefit fraudsters tend to misrepresent their circumstances. The fact that there are 73 million live national insurance records, but only 46.5 million in the country entitled to a national insurance record hardly fosters confidence in the government's ability to run such a scheme.

Are ID cards going to stop ID fraud? Biometric testing can hardly be said to be failsafe. Even if with three biometric measures it could be said to be 99.9 per cent effective, there would still be a 1 in 48,000 failure rate, which means that someone would be able to access several different records using his own biometrics in order to create different identities (99.9 per cent is, by the way, beyond the realm of possibility).

Are ID cards going to stop crime? If they ever catch them, police rarely have trouble identifying suspects, only proving they're guilty. Cards won't deter criminals unless the government gives police stop and search powers and, again, for this to be effective the card would have to be mandatory. And even still, the police already have the power to stop and question someone if they have reasonable suspicion they're about to commit a crime. So it is difficult to see what difference ID cards would make, unless the criminal kindly leaves his propped up on the mantlepiece after stealing your DVD player.

Then of course there is the question of viability. Can we really trust the government to deliver such a high-risk centralised database? The ID system would require data to be permanently accessible from a wide range of public and private locations, which would mean building one of the most complex computer systems on the planet. The government's own Information Commissioner says it is 'unecessary', and the UK Computer Research Committee has expressed 'deep scepticism about the Home Office's ability to specify, procure and implement a national software intensive system on the scale that would be necessary'. Let's not forget the Home Office's record on IT is hardly perfect - recent failures include the tax credits benefits system - and it is a fact universally acknowledged that hackers can access pretty much anything they want to these days. It is perhaps worth mentioning that the European Commission has expressed doubts about the storage of such secure information on a central database due to the 'risk of data misuse', which is why Germany is sensibly introducing a passport with facial biometrics and fingerprints - but not on a central database.

What about the costs? Who is going to fund libraries, banks and hospital emergency services for the card reading machines to be installed? Quite apart from the expense of each individual card, that money will obviously have to come from the taxpayer. No one can say how much the cards will cost, and the government dismisses the LSE's calculation of anything up to £15 billion for the whole system, but then the government never is too reliable about the costs of such projects. It said that the criminal court computer system would cost £150 million, but that ended up costing £400 million, and it said that moving GCHQ's computers to another building would cost £20 million, and that ended up being closer to £450 million. The cost of the scheme will be phenomenal, and what's spent on ID cards cannot be spent on anything else. Money would be better used to provide thousands of extra police officers and invest in courts, prisons and rehabilitation centres that would provide genuine security for the citizens of this country.

This risks becoming the lastest security failure, a multi-billion pound blunder, and what will we get out of it? Check your Orwell.

Posted by Nick Seddon at 01:21 AM | Comments (5)

March 07, 2005

BBC Bias

The BBC is often accused of bias towards the Left. James Naughtie gave the game away last Wednesday (2 March) when he was interviewing Labour candidate Ed Balls. He said: "If we win the election...", and then hastily corrected himself to "If you win the election." The Observer blog has produced a short MP3 recording of Naughtie's Freudian slip.

Posted by David Green at 04:44 PM | Comments (1)

March 02, 2005

Thought Police

Muslims not aware that the Blair administration is forever giving with one hand and taking away with the other should take note. For two pieces of legislation currently being rushed through Parliament – a law supposedly preventing Incitement to Religious Hatred and the Prevention of Terrorism Bill – both have the potential to foment Islamophobia.

The Serious Organised Crime and Police Bill, due to receive its Second Reading in the House of Commons on 7 March, contains proposals to ban hatred on religious grounds that will promote intolerance while seeming to encourage tolerance. Among other things, this sloppy piece of legislation would slur the difference between religion (a choice one may object to) and race (an ascribed status one may not); create unwarranted chaos over subjective terms like ‘hatred’ and ‘insulting’ (none are usefully defined in the Bill); make legal the notion that a perception of a fact is a fact (plaintiffs would be under no obligation to prove that a statement actually is capable of incitement); confuse the courts; and bring about caution in the media amounting to self-censorship.

Under this Bill, Salman Rushdie would have been punished not protected and cult satirical classics such as Not The Nine O’Clock News taken off the air. Criticism of Islamic shari’a law would be proscribed, and ‘defamation in the character of the Prophet Muhammed (PBUH)’, according to Iqbal Sacranie of the Muslim Council of Britain, would be ‘a direct insult and abuse on the Muslim community’ and illegal. Just as it is in Iran, Somalia and Syria, countries where apostates may be executed. This law is an affront to George Orwell’s dictum that ‘if liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear’.

Yet if this Bill is a cynical attempt to win over the Muslim support that Labour squandered through the war in Iraq, it would nevertheless not unambiguously favour Muslims. In Australia, where a similar law was passed, religious communities have started monitoring each other in order to bring cases: it rewards the least tolerant – those most anxious to take offence – rather than the most tolerant – those willing to turn the other cheek. Quite apart from how the BNP would exploit things, Muslims could find themselves in trouble for making even innocuous statements about Sikhs, Atheists, Scientologists, Satanists…

For all of us, and especially Muslims, the Prevention of Terrorism Bill would turn our to be even more punitive. One of the Prime Minister’s more egregious comments of late is that there is no greater civil liberty than to live free from terrorist attack. True, but this is disingenuous because it in no way justifies depriving citizens of their freedom on evidence that will never be subjected to the scrutiny of an independent court. The House of Lords and House of Commons Joint Committee on Human Rights has already come out strongly against the Bill on a wide range of points. The plan to impose house arrest ‘control orders’ at the discretion of the home secretary, it affirmed, is ‘unlikely… to be compatible’ with the ECHR, and, it added snidely, Charles Clarke’s insistence he should decide which citizens to detain without charge is an ‘eccentric interpretation’ of the traditional separation of powers between the executive and judiciary.

Even if, as now looks likely, select members of the judiciary will end up giving control orders, this could too easily become like a secret commission, as Baroness Kennedy said yesterday in the House of Lords. Mightn't it even be redolent of Charles I’s Court of the Star Chamber? There is, according to the Commission, ‘no need, in order to deal with the current threat to the nation, to take much wider powers by which the government’s own admission are not at present strictly required’. So why does the government want to make provisions for derogation? Why should it be given draconian powers it doesn’t need? If history teaches us anything, surely it's that the greatest threats to civil liberties come not from terrorists but from governments that have been allowed to exercise excessive power over their own people.

Just as the religious hatred law will, as Ken MacDonald, Director of Public Prosecutions, said, ‘criminalize a state of mind’, so this Prevention of Terrorism law concerns thought crime. If Muslims were put under house arrest, without trial, their coreligionists would feel they were being attacked for their religious background. In fact, according to The Independent, the delightfully incompetent Hazel Blears even managed to admit yesterday that the ‘reality’ was that ‘our counter-terrorism powers will be disproportionately experienced by the Muslim community.’ And what if the law supposed to protect Muslims then failed? What if Muslims also ended up in jail for implying, by the strength of their assertions about Islam, that all other religions were wrong? The two laws would turn out to be a double whammy. Ihtisham Hibatullah, spokesman for the Muslim Association of Britain, said yesterday: ‘we need to ask the Government to make its position in relation to Muslims very clear.’ He’ll be lucky if he gets a straight answer.

Posted by Nick Seddon at 02:04 PM | Comments (3)

February 08, 2005

Intimidation of Christian Converts from Islam

In The Times last Saturday Anthony Browne describes the risks many Muslims face when they convert to Christianity. One courageous individual told The Times that:

‘He and his family have been regularly jostled, abused, attacked, shouted at to move out of the area, and given death threats in the street. His wife has been held hostage inside their home for two hours by a mob. His car, walls and windows have been daubed in graffiti: “Christian bastard”.’

Mr Blair’s Government is falling over itself to pass a law against the encouragement of religious hatred at the request of the Muslim Council of Britain in the hope of winning Muslim votes. Ostensibly the measure will protect Muslims from Islamophobia, but the most serious problem we face is not the victimisation of Muslims by non-Muslims, rather it is the intimidation of former Muslims by those who have retained their faith. Few freedoms are more important than the ability to join or leave voluntary associations of all types, including religious faiths, without fear. Instead of inventing a thought crime, the Government should enforce the law against violence as it stands.

Posted by David Green at 10:29 AM | Comments (0)

February 01, 2005

Releasing of foreign terrorists

A foreign terror suspect held without trial or charge since December 2001 has been freed from Woodhill Prison. He is an Egyptian known as ‘C’. According to the Home Secretary, there was not enough evidence to maintain his ‘certification’ as a terrorist suspect. His case was due to be reviewed at a Special Immigration Appeals Commission (SIAC) hearing later this week.

At a previous appeal hearing, Home Office lawyers had argued that C was a leading member of Egyptian Islamic Jihad, now allied with Al Qaeda. He was said to have been in contact with prominent extremists in the UK and had assisted in fraudulent fundraising. He was wanted in Egypt where he had been sentenced to 15 years in prison for terrorist offences.

Instead of releasing him, he should have been deported to Egypt. The counter argument is that he might be tortured or executed, but other countries, such as Sweden, have successfully agreed to extradite terrorist suspects to countries such as Egypt, Algeria and Jordan by making an agreement that prisoner will not be executed. France regularly sends terrorists back to Algeria. It is further argued that such agreements are only ‘a piece of paper’ but all these countries are friendly nations, with whom we have diplomatic relations, and often very close ties, going back many years. They have strong reasons not to break their word.

Moreover, they deserve our full co-operation in the struggle against terrorism. Looked at from the vantage point of countries such as Egypt or Jordan, it must seem as if we are giving safe haven to terrorists who threaten them. If the Human Rights Act gets in the way, then it’s yet another reason to abolish it.

Posted by David Green at 08:24 PM | Comments (4)

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 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 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

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 06, 2005

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)

December 10, 2004

What the Butler Saw… and What Should Always Remain Private

In an interview contained in this week’s issue of the Spectator, former Cabinet Secretary, Lord Butler, delivers a coruscating attack on the style of government of the present administration.

Of especial concern to Lord Butler has been the way Prime Minister Blair’s almost Presidential approach towards his job has steadily eroded the sovereignty of Parliament, and, in particular thereby, undermined the authority of the House of Commons.

In face of what Lord Butler has exposed as the present administration’s contempt for representative government, small wonder is it that many of today’s more serious national dailies make their top news story the government's decision to reject the advice of the Electoral Commission that it proceed no further with its plan to replace the secret ballot by postal voting.

The Electoral Commission has rejected postal ballots on the grounds that their trial introduction in some constituencies in recent local elections have shown them to be highly susceptible to vote-rigging, especially, through intimidation.

The government’s ostensible reason for replacing the ballot box by postal ballots has been its concerns about low voter turn out and belief that postal ballots would encourage more voter participation.

However, it is almost inconceivable that any government, and especially this one, would have sought to make the change unless it thought it stood to gain some electoral advantage from implementing it.

In any case, that the government seems bent on pressing on with introducing postal ballots, against the advice of the Electoral Commission, is further evidence of its contempt for representative government that is of such concern to Lord Butler.

No one anticipated more clearly the dangers of postal ballots or spoke out against them more eloquently than John Stuart Mill.

As we witness the present government about to strike yet a further nail into the coffin of parliamentary democracy, it is worth recalling Mill’s warning against using postal ballots in parliamentary or local elections delivered back in 1861. Mill wrote:

‘The proposal … of allowing the voting papers to be filled up at the voter’s residence, and sent by post, … I should regard as fatal. The act would be done in… the presence of all the pernicious influences. The briber might, in the shelter of privacy, behold with his own eyes his bargain fulfilled, and the intimidator could see the extorted obedience rendered irrevocably on the spot.’

Then, in a footnote, Mill took care of the present government’s concerns about the need to reverse current low voter turn-out. He writes:

’The expedient [of postal voting] has been recommended … on the score of … obtaining the votes of many electors who otherwise would not vote, and who are regarded by the advocates of the plan as a particularly desirable class of voters…. But when the matter in hand is the great business of national government, …[t]he voter who does not care enough about the election to go to the poll, is the very man who, if he can vote without the trouble, will give his vote to the first person who asks for it, or on the most trifling or frivolous inducement. A man who does not care whether he votes, is not likely to care much which way he votes; and he who is in that state of mind has no moral right to vote at all; since if he does, a vote which is not the expression of a conviction, counts for as much, and goes as far in determining the result, as one which represents the thoughts and purposes of a life.’

Thus, those members of the electorate who are genuinely apathetic should not be encouraged to vote, and those genuinely concerned to vote should be allowed to do so without fear of intimidation, which means in the privacy of the voting booth.

Perhaps, current voter apathy in Britain will start to be reversed when its laws cease to be imposed by diktat from Brussels as European Directives.

We can only hope and pray, therefore, that, when the British electorate is asked whether the government should sign up to the European Constitution, the referendum will be conducted by means of the ballot box and not through postal voting.

Posted by David Conway at 02:02 PM | Comments (0)

November 29, 2004

Patriotism and History

It’s well worth reading a piece by Amanda Craig in the Sunday Times in which she criticises the disjointed teaching of history that is now typical of our schools, public and private. Children are taught a bit about the life of the medieval peasant, before skipping to a module on Hitler’s Germany or life in the trenches in World War One, but not presented with the continuous story of the emergence of their country from the earliest times.

History should be taught as an effort to encourage patriotism – not turning a blind eye to our faults as a people or past events that were seen as mistakes at the time or look like mistakes now – but offering a complete narrative of how the struggle for liberty took place in this land. It is an inspiring tale that will encourage love of country and a greater willingness to serve the common good and provide mutual support for one another when it is needed.

Posted by David Green at 07:59 AM | Comments (0)

November 24, 2004

What do yobs have to do with global terror?

Tony Blair appears to have used the Queen’s Speech to ‘steal a march’ on the Tories by making Labour appear the party of law and order in the run-up to the next election. The speech contains no fewer than 32 bills which will give the government unprecedented powers to intervene in people’s lives. These bills cannot all be passed before the next election – expected to be in May 2005 – hence the suspicion that some of them are largely window-dressing. However we can be sure that at least some of them, such as the controversial proposal to introduce identity cards, will be revived in the next session of parliament, should Labour win the election.

The government justifies these new intrusive measures by referring to the spread of global terrorism and the yob culture which is disfiguring many communities – as if these things naturally go together. In fact, they are totally separate issues, demanding different policy responses.

The war on terror is so incredibly complex that it is very difficult to know what, if anything, the free nations can do effectively to protect themselves against international terrorism, whilst remaining free. It may be the case that we have to surrender some of our traditional liberties, if the intelligence we receive is credible, and not manufactured by Downing Street, like the carefully leaked story about the ‘plan’ to ‘attack’ Canary Wharf.

But the yob culture is quite different. Not only is it an indisputable reality, but we have no need of any extra measures to counter it, because we already have sufficient laws on the statute books to deal with it. Unfortunately, they are not being enforced because the police are not interested in what they call low-level crime. They prefer to concentrate on more serious crime, ignoring the evidence that graffiti, vandalism and yobbishness create the sort of threatening environment in which serious crime is more likely to take place. The Broken Windows theory of criminal behaviour has been tried, tested and proved in the USA, but in Britain we seem determined not to learn from anyone else.

David Cameron, the Conservative Party’s policy co-ordinator, has accused the government of giving us ‘a police state without the police’. It is easy to follow his argument. You never see a policeman on the beat nowadays because they are too busy tearing around in cars, sitting in the station filling in forms or hanging around the courts for trials that have to be abandoned for procedural reasons. We need more police, but we also need to have them better deployed. As long as the present culture prevails in the criminal justice system, and as long as the police remain as ineffective as they are, it gives the government the perfect excuse to introduce new measures like identity cards which erode our traditional liberties in favour of political control. To politicians of all parties, this probably seems like the ideal outcome.

Posted by at 03:49 PM | Comments (1)

November 18, 2004

We're pretty sure there were no store loyalty cards in 1984...

At a speech yesterday to drum up support for the government’s controversial identity card scheme, David Blunkett claimed that the real threat to people’s privacy comes from store loyalty cards:

The Home Secretary said that the public needed to wake up to the fact that personal information they supply to retailers and banks is far more detailed than the personal information that will be collected on the ID card database.

"It is time people got real about what is happening to them," he said. "A lot of information about where people shop and who they bank with is valuable business information and is sold on to other companies."

Launching a broadside against concerns over the privacy of personal ID data, Blunkett argued that if the public was happy to disclose a wide range of sensitive data to private companies, it should not be concerned about disclosing data to the government, which is more tightly regulated.

Yes, loyalty cards have a lot of information on them, but that information is put to use not only for the companies but also for the consumer. By knowing more about its shoppers, the store learns how better to accommodate its clientele. Presumably, everyone wins.

Of course, you may still find the idea of a store tracking your shopping habits a bit creepy, and decide against signing up. What Mr Blunkett ignores in his argument is that when you walk into Boots or Marks and Spencers, and they ask you if you would like to sign up for their loyalty card programme to become a preferred customer, you can simply say, ‘No thanks’. If the Home Office gets its way, when the state starts demanding you pay for the privilege of receiving these ID cards, ‘no thanks’ will not be an option.

Posted by at 04:23 PM | Comments (0)

November 08, 2004

The Nightmare from which the BBC Claims to Have Awoken Us … Continues

Those domiciled in Britain are obliged to pay an annual license for the privilege of being able to watch any television in that country. The revenue raised from this license fee goes to fund the BBC which justifies its privileged position by claiming its news and current affairs of the highest quality and both well-informed and impartial.

Over the past three weeks, the BBC has broadcast a three-part documentary series entitled, ‘The Power of Nightmares’. Designed to rebut the idea that the West faces any orchestrated threat from an Islamist terror organisation, the series claimed the idea of such a threat to be a neo-conservative myth, deliberately manufactured to fill the public with enough dread to enable its manufacturers to succeed in a cynical and repressive political power-play which threatens civil liberties in the West.

The documentary series might have been correct in denying Al Qaeda is akin to a regular army with a central chain of command. However, any suggestion the West does not currently face an orchestrated terror campaign from Islamic fundamentalists who take their inspiration, if not marching orders, from Osama bin Laden, must be rejected. This is something, sadly, events that have taken place in Holland since the screening of the final part of the BBC series have revealed.

Sunday’s newspapers contain chilling accounts of the brutal murder at the hands of Islamic terrorists of a Dutch filmmaker who had had the temerity to make a documentary critical of Islamic attitudes and practises towards women.

What makes this murder so chilling, and why it discredits the BBC’s documentary series, is that several Dutch politicians have simultaneously received death threats from Islamists who have declared anyone in the West who speaks out against their religion or otherwise offends them to be fair-game for similar treatment.

You might not need a central chain of command to orchestrate such hit-squads. Disaffection with the West combined with a merciless disregard for the sanctity of human life will suffice. We in Europe seem in line for the start of an Islamist terror campaign which, if it happens, will have all the qualities of nightmare – save for being real!

Rather than the idea of an Islamist threat to the West being only a neo-con nightmare that lacks any genuine basis in reality, it is rather the BBC who are guilty of attempting to induce the British public to dream there is no such threat. It is time for the British public to wake up to just what poor service its state-funded broadcasting service is currently providing it in return for the TV licence. It is time for them to call on their political representatives to think again about renewing the BBC's Charter.

Posted by David Conway at 04:36 PM | Comments (4)

November 03, 2004

Inciting Intolerance

In a Guardian article entitled ‘Words that inspire killer deeds’, Gareth McLean tries to associate moral persuasion with threats of violence. Rocco Buttiglione, the former candidate for the EU Commission, said that homosexuality was a sin and, thereby according to Mr McLean, helped to create an atmosphere in which homosexuals could be murdered. So too does Sizzla, the Jamaican singer, whose songs include lines such as, ‘Kill dem battyboys’ and ‘I kill sodomites and queers, they bring Aids and disease pon people’.

But this claim fails to distinguish between moral persuasion and violence. Moral persuasion rests on the assumption of moral equality, the founding principle of Western liberalism. It assumes that all are capable of choosing right from wrong. It enjoins people to change. It assumes an inner life, and a thinking mind open to the influence of others. The moral criticism of a Mr Buttiglione is made in the spirit of the Christian cliche, ‘Hate the sin, love the sinner’. Such criticism is a great leveller, implying that all are equal in the sight of God and bear a responsibility to do the right thing.

Sizzla is inciting violence and should be dealt with according to law. There is no comparison with moral criticism grounded in the assumption of moral equality.

Why does the author try to blur the difference between the two when our whole heritage of liberal-democracy rests on settling differences, however strong, through discussion rather than violence? In Gareth McLean’s view, every criticism of a type of behaviour is an incitement to hatred. Yet, if he is right, then his own criticism of Mr Buttiglione, and anyone who agrees with him, is also an incitement to hatred. In truth, refusal to distinguish between moral criticism and violence is an excuse for violence against people who voice non-violent, merely persuasive, criticisms. It is a rationale for aggression – these moralists deserve all they get. Perhaps this attitude explains the intolerance of the majority of the European Parliament.

Posted by David Green at 05:40 PM | Comments (0)

October 28, 2004

John Locke Died 300 Years Ago Today

John Locke, the great defender of the English Revolution of 1688, died 300 years ago today. Click here for an explanation of his contribution by Professor David Conway.

Posted by David Green at 02:11 PM | Comments (1)

October 27, 2004

Why the BBC's Charter Should not be Renewed

‘Accurate, impartial and independent journalism is the principal way we support informed citizenship. Our journalism and editorial values are the cornerstone of the BBC’s remit and constitute a core rationale for public funding.’

So runs a statement on the opening page of the introduction to a submission by the BBC on behalf of the renewal of its Charter entitled,the BBC's Contribution to Informed Citizenship .

The statement carries a clear corollary the corporation seems willing to accept. This is that the BBC would not merit public funding were its news and current affairs coverage substantially inaccurate, partial, or unduly influenced by outside pressure or interference.

So long as news agencies remain staffed by mere mortals, all news and current affairs coverage will, on occasion, be less than fully accurate. In the present context, therefore, all the BBC’s claim to accuracy in its news coverage can amount to is that, at best, it never knowingly misinforms the public by broadcasting falsehood or withholds what it knows to be true and germane to any issue. At a minimum, this would require it to seek to verify its sources before broadcasting any contentious or controversial claim, as well as broadcast all information in its possession relevant to any issue.

Likewise, for its news coverage and current affairs broadcasting to be ‘impartial’, the BBC would need, in reporting contentious issues about which there were substantial differences of informed and educated opinion, to go out of its way to avoid taking sides. This would require it to be willing to report and provide coverage of all contending viewpoints, neither deliberately suppressing nor expressly or tacitly privileging any.

Finally, for the BBC’s news and current affairs coverage to be truly ‘independent’, its editors and journalists would need to be unyielding to any direct or indirect pressure from government or other outside bodies to tailor the issues it reports on and how it report on them.

In tendering for Charter renewal, the BBC clearly believes, or wants everyone else to believe, its news and current affairs coverage possesses all these attributes. That its coverage does is a claim it constantly reiterates throughout its submission. Mere repetition of it, however, does not establish its truth.

To establish the accuracy, impartiality and independence of its news and current affairs coverage, what the BBC needs to do is address and rebut the claims of those who deny its coverage is accurate, impartial, and independent. Nowhere in its submission does the BBC mention, let alone attempt to answer, the numerous and well-documented charges levelled in recent years against the accuracy and impartiality of its coverage and comment on such issues as the country’s relations with Europe, immigration and asylum-seeking, the Middle East conflict, and the War in Iraq.

These charges have all been in the public domain for so long that the BBC has little room to plead ignorance of them. To do so would simply be for the BBC to reveal a degree of professional negligence so profound as to warrant the forfeiture by the public of all confidence in its news-gathering abilities.

The BBC seems unable or unwilling to acknowledge there is a serious case for it to answer concerning the accuracy and impartiality of its news and current affairs coverage. Alternatively, if, having seen there is such a case, the BBC chooses to leave it unanswered, simply proclaiming the contrary instead, it equally forfeits its entitlement to enjoy the nation’s trust. Why should the BBC be entrusted, let alone the nation forced to pay, for its providing news and coverage of current affairs, when the corporation is unwilling to address serious charges against its impartiality and accuracy?

As such, the document constitutes a damming piece of evidence of the BBC’s unfitness for having its Charter renewed. Rather than, as intended, spelling out the positive contribution it makes to informed citizenship, its submission only reveals how far short the BBC falls from achieving this aspiration. Its submission, thus, inadvertently supplies those called upon to decide whether to renew its Charter with evidence of its unworthiness of Charter renewal. Let it stand as a permanent testament of how manifestly unfit the BBC is in its present form for renewal of its Charter.

Posted by David Conway at 09:17 AM | Comments (1)

October 20, 2004

Should Gambling be Regulated?

An unusual coalition against reform of the gambling law has emerged. The Daily Mail is running a campaign but will not have expected support from Polly Toynbee in today’s Guardian. The main thrust of her argument was that deregulation will increase addiction. She also reminds her readers of the experience of Atlantic City in the USA. It was hoped that the introduction of gambling would bring about economic regeneration, a hope that the British Government shares. But, if you drive to the gambling district of Atlantic City, you drive through the same slums that were there before the casinos opened. Moreover, there is even evidence that the casinos have driven out local leisure-related businesses. The free drinks that are liberally dispensed to encourage gamblers to go further, the free or cut-price food, and free shows make it impossible for rivals to survive for miles around.

Gambling is an issue, like drug addiction, that probes the frontier between classical liberalism and libertarianism. Libertarians are inclined to argue that the government should ‘get out of the way’ and let people do as they wish. For them, controlling gambling is an example of the nanny state. However, the control is not so much being exerted on gamblers but rather on people who exploit their weakness. The big profits are in the slot machines where, in a heady atmosphere, punters pull the handles or press the buttons as many times a minute as they can. For many, their mood is a bit like that of a motorway driver who knows he is too tired to carry on safely, but nevertheless presses on to his destination. In other contexts it is a human attribute that leads people to overcome diversity and persevere regardless of hardship.

Gambling corporations have become adept at exploiting such human inclinations to the point of addiction, encouraging people to part with money they and their families often can’t afford to lose. It is a legitimate use of law to regulate organisations who exploit the weakness of other people for monetary gain. Banning gambling altogether would be going too far, but putting limits on the number of outlets and the size of the winnings is sensible, given human nature as we know it.

Posted by David Green at 03:45 PM | Comments (0)

October 15, 2004

Identity cards

Liberal Democrat MP Mark Oaten has criticised the Home Office for advertising for a marketing manager for ID cards before the legislation to introduce them has even been presented to parliament. Even worse, the advertisement on the Home Office website makes it clear that the successful candidate ‘will take responsibility for all aspects of positioning and promoting ID cards and ID card services to its customers and stakeholders. During the passage of the Bill, this will include communications with ministers, MPs and others.’

First of all, it is by no means certain that the legislation, should it be introduced, would pass. There is widespread concern over the extent to which identity cards will undermine our traditional notions of the freedom of the individual from state control, and this concern is cross-party. Secondly, it is worrying that a ministry is hiring someone who is clearly going to be lobbying for a controversial bill, on which the Home Office is dead set, but about which a lot of other people have doubts. Is this an appropriate use of public money in a democratic system?

Governments are always keen on new legislation, because it gives the impression that they are doing something. Whether or not the legislation actually solves the problem it is intended to address is another matter. In this case, identity cards are being promoted as a measure to counter crime, international terrorism and illegal immigration.

The fact is, we already have good laws on the statute book to deal with these issues, but they are not enforced. The criminal justice system has been tilted so far in favour of the criminal that it seems he is the Home Office’s ‘customer’ (to quote from the website), rather than the law-abiding citizen. But this could easily be remedied, without passing any new laws. We just have to decide to enforce the ones we have. Terrorism and illegal immigration (which are linked) could also be dealt with by a firm and decisive policy to take back control of our borders.

It would be preferable to try these expedients first, before we decide to increase the powers of the state over us, knowing how these powers are likely to be abused.

Posted by at 11:55 AM | Comments (2)