Mark Gollop

The Iron Legacy

2012-01-24T14:53:00.000-08:00

The legacy of Margaret Thatcher has been given much media attention as of late. There are possibly two factors helping to make this so. Firstly, it will soon be the thirtieth anniversary of the Falklands War. Secondly, the big-screen movie The Iron Lady as played by Meryl Streep.

The film has had no shortage of critics, particularly upset at its focus throughout of a now frail elderly lady suffering with dementia and speaking to her husband, Denis, as if he is close by (but actually now dead) and reminiscing back to pivotal moments when she was a powerful and formidable presence in British and international politics.

I don't actually agree with those critics. She was undoubtedly as both Prime Minister and Leader of the Conservative Party, such a dominating figure for so long and made a big impact on the political and economic life of the UK, which we still feel today. She moved the goalposts significantly in terms of the post-war consensus and New Labour in government was to embrace her free market economic doctrine - at least that is they did not reverse hers and John Major's privatisation programme. However, even the giants of history and the world stage are not invincible and images of health and mental prowess are just relative. Having lost my mother to dementia several years ago, I for one am glad that the film has highlighted that no-one, including someone of the stature of our first woman PM, is immune from the effects of this debilitating condition. In the case of Margaret Thatcher, this is figurative of the irony of an iron image. It is only for as long as it lasts.

No one can doubt that she did indeed have a will of iron. She would have had to. She fought very hard to become an MP in the 1950s at a time when the Tory Party was dominated by privileged and misogynistic men. Both as a women and the daughter of a Grantham grocer, she was sneered at and had all kinds of obstacles put in her way. She later rose to Cabinet rank in the Heath Government and after his demise, became Leader of the Opposition and went on to win three general elections and serve as Prime Minister for over eleven years. I was still a teenager when she entered 10 Downing Street and had just entered my thirties when she left. That is how long it was. You could even argue that she was the ultimate feminist as she proved how a woman could go to the very top and stay there

Love her or hate her, it took some woman to do all that with such odds stacked against her. But it was as Prime Minister that the iron would truly be tested. She knew what she wanted to do and in which direction to take the country, even when there were deafening cries from many quarters to change course, including from within her own party. And when events in the early years suggested it made sense to do so and she faced defeat at the next general election, she refused to budge declaring, "You turn if you want to. The lady is not for turning."

Being a leader at that level is a lonely place to be. This was especially so in 1982 when Argentina invaded the Falkland Islands - a British dominion. In the movie there is one scene where the highest ranking naval officers ask for her decision about what to do regarding the Argentinian cruiser, the Belgrano, because although at that point outside the exclusion zone, it could very well have been about to lead a pincer movement against several British ships. She looks up and says, "sink it." It was a controversial decision, but it may well have saved a lot more lives than it cost. What would any of us done in her position at the time? We may know more later this year when Cabinet papers are released under the thirty-year rule.

Margaret Thatcher's tenure of office is associated with several crucial events, decisions and images - good or bad, depending upon your point of view. Here are just some: The fight against inflation, high unemployment in the early years, Brixton and Toxteth riots, the Falklands War and the decision to sink the Belgrano, the Miners Strike, privatisation, deregulation of the City and financial services, the sale of council houses and flats, home ownership, share ownership, good chemistry with President Reagan and Soviet leader Gorbachev, 1980s economic boom, poll tax fiasco, rising gap between rich and poor, rising interest rates, "No, No, No" to European Monetary Union, the fall of the Berlin Wall, the collapse of communism and the end of the Cold War, and her final demise instigated by big figures in her own party (Messrs Heseltine, Howe etc).

The image Mrs Thatcher liked to portray of herself, as did her supporters, was that she had 'rolled back the frontiers of socialism' and reversed the country's terminal decline. That she had brought good housekeeping principles into the running of the economy. This is not as black and white as suggested and there are many shades of grey in the analogy. I have heard it said that the size of the Public Sector Borrowing Requirement (PSBR) was acually higher when she left office than when she entered. And despite some reforms, the behemoths of the welfare state and the NHS remained in tack.

For someone whom her many opponents were prone to label a Right-wing ideologue, several pieces of legislation came into being under her watch that for the so-called 'progressive' liberal fraternity and lawyers were and are regarded to this day as landmark developments, while the scourge of commentators in newspapers such as the Daily Mail and Daily Express, many of whom would otherwise hold Thatcher in high esteem. These included the Police & Criminal Evidence Act 1984, The Single European Act 1986 and the Children Act 1989.

While known for moments of showing kindness and empathy, she perhaps lacked vital skills for man management with regard to her Cabinet and which were later to contribute to her downfall. The film portrays her appalling treatment and belittling of Sir Geoffrey Howe in front of his Cabinet colleagues, as other dramatisations of the Thatcher years have previously done. These cannot be far from accurate and after years of staying quiet publicly, it was Howe's resignation speech in the House of Commons in 1990 that alluded to his shoddy treatment by Thatcher and by saying that the time had come for others "to consider their response to the tragic conflict of loyalties with which I have wrestled for far too long," he was effectively suggesting that key figures consider challenging her for leadership of the party and the country. His speech was a mortal blow, Michael Heseltine declared his candidacy and although he was to fail in his bid, the rest is history. A lesson here for all of us. Bully and belittle a mild-mannered man for too long and one day he might turn on you with devastating consequences.

What type of society did we become as a result of her years in office? She is said to have once declared that 'there was no such thing as society.' She has since said she was misunderstood on that, but there seems little doubt that in seeming to assert the individual more than the concept of community, Britain does now seem a more aggressive and selfish place than it used to be. Manners and consideration towards others is lacking and often absent. This is in stark contrast to George Orwell's description a very long time ago of the British as civil, orderly and well mannered. Is it because of capitalism and the free market? Not necessarily. It goes much deeper than that.

However, the capitalism so rampant now is a monopoly version where a few very large operators dominate markets - banks and utility companies are particular culprits - and where the few are awarded excessively massive pay packets with bonuses while so much of the population struggle to make ends meet. I like what Charles Moore, former editor of the Daily Telegraph, suggested when he rightly said that capitalism is meant to be for all and not for just a few to grab all the spoils. I would argue that the best form of capitalism is what I would call 'social capitalism.'

Models of social capitalism would be the John Lewis Partnership (which includes Waitrose) where all employees are part of a profit share scheme. So they have more incentive, can feel they really are part of and valued by the company, and receive a share of the profits at the end of each year. The better the profits, the more they receive. A good model for banking is the Co-operative Bank where depositors and borrowers effectively own it, in contrast to other banks where it is the shareholders. In another instance, it could be groups of workers operating as co-operatives where each gets a fair share of the proceeds rather than just the one or a few at the top getting it all. From British industrial history, excellent examples include those companies run by Quaker families such as Cadburys in Birmingham and Rowntrees in York where not only were such firms famous for manufacturing chocolates and sweets, but they provided good-quality housing for their employees and facilities for their local communities. Sadly, one is now owned by Kraft and the other by Nestle. The ethos that made these firms great has no doubt long since died.

It may well be that by freeing up the market, so to speak, Margaret Thatcher may have intended and hoped that as well as producing goods and services that people want, it would also be about meeting social need instead of the expectation that the state would be there to do it. But what has instead happened is that self-serving monopolies predominate, with a few individuals excessively enriching themselves, rather than a multiplicity of small and medium-sized enterprises.

Divisive figure indeed Margaret Thatcher was. You loved or loathed her, but she made the world of politics colourful. She was in her own way a radical and she changed the whole basis of debate. She not only changed the Conservative Party but also effectively changed the Labour Party, as the arrival of Tony Blair was to so confirm. Will we get another like her? Is the country ready for another round of handbagging?! Quite possibly not.

A Tale of Two Dead Leaders

2011-12-20T08:44:00.000-08:00

In the last few days and in the space of 24 hours, the deaths of two men who had led their countries were announced. Other than having being heads of state, it is impossible to see anything in common between them.

One had run his country as a tightly-controlled, impoverished, militaristic, brutish, totalitarian, prison-camp state. Since its foundation in the 1940s, it has been ruled through a family dynasty and is said to be the world's last Stalinist regime. The other, in contrast, had been a playwright and a dissident against another communist tyranny, courageously campaigned with others for freedom and democracy, was imprisoned and constantly harassed by the secret police. After that awful regime finally collapsed in 1989, he reluctantly became his country's leader. What a world of difference between Kim Jong-il, dictator of North Korea, and Vaclav Havel, the first president of the new Czech Republic, as it became known. And Slovakia can also thank him for his part in it becoming a new nation state and democracy.

There is a clear distinction in how the two men have been mourned. One image is of crowds gathered in Pyongyang weeping and wailing without ceasing because for anyone to stop before others might be seen as insufficient sadness at the passing of the 'Dear Leader' and, therefore, not the required level of manic devotion to the regime. Who outside of North Korea is lamenting Kim's death? As one TV commentator suggested, scenes like these were right out of a George Orwell textbook.

As for the other deceased leader and unlike Kim, Vaclav Havel truly deserved the title of statesman. There is sadness and tears at the news of his death, but also total respect for his memory and how through sheer courage he played a key role in helping to bring freedom from tyranny to his people. He was undoubtedly an inspiration to so many around the world. Not only a politician and national leader, but a great thinker. How many political leaders these days can be granted such a compliment? Perhaps not many.

It goes without saying which one deserves the glowing obituary.

Please Let Us Have a Referendum, Mr Cameron

2011-10-21T12:19:00.000-07:00

Following a petition presented to Parliament, a vote is scheduled in the House of Commons this coming Monday as to whether or not the British public are to be given a referendum on remaining in or opting out of the European Union. There are suggestions that the Government will impose a three-line whip requiring Conservative MPs to vote against the motion.

The Government has pledged to allow parliamentary debates and votes on any issue where a petition has gathered 100,000 signatures, and the EU is one issue that so many people feel strongly about. This on the face of it looks like a government with democratic credentials. But it can only have them if it not only debates the petition, but allows a free vote in Parliament and if a majority of MPs vote in favour of the motion accordingly, then take the obvious next step. Three-line whips come from heavy-handed, insecure and authoritarian – not strong - leadership. After all, David Cameron made noises when in opposition about making government more representative of the people. Don’t they all?

One significant example of this was when as Leader of the Opposition, he tapped into an undercurrent of concern about the EU and promised us a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty if he became Prime Minister. This treaty would mean yet another significant transfer of sovereignty from the UK to the EU. But when member states ratified the treaty, he changed his mind as I feared he would. Now it sounds like he is panicking about this latest Commons vote and perhaps trying heavy-handed tactics to get his MPs to vote against the motion, despite there being many Conservatives who are Eurosceptic and strongly in favour of a referendum. They are after all representatives of the people living in their constituencies. All Mr Cameron has offered as a sweetener is the possibility of a referendum in the next Parliament on taking back some powers from the EU. I am not going to hold my breath.

Those calling for a referendum are not confined to what some might think of as the usual suspects – those disparagingly mocked as Europhobes and xenophobes because they happen to be sceptical of the EU or want to pull out altogether. It is not just Eurosceptic MPs, who are both on the Conservative and Labour benches, and UKIP. No, there are voices coming from the pro-EU side as well calling for a referendum. Labour MP and former Europe Minister, Keith Vaz, argues very strongly for it as he is confident the British public would vote in favour of staying in. And before the last election, even some prominent Liberal Democrat MPs were arguing the case for it.

What is the Prime Minister afraid of? If anything, this could all work to Cameron’s advantage. If he were to announce a referendum for sometime in the next few years, it could significantly strengthen his hand in negotiations with the EU to get back powers for Britain and the ability to make a lot more decisions over our own affairs. Politically, it could also work to his advantage. To announce a referendum would make him appear as courageous, bold and serious about greater accountability to the electorate, and could mean a lot in terms of votes.

But I fear he going to go the way of Tony Blair in promising much and then not delivering on the issues that really do matter to people. It brings to mind a parody of a famous 1980s hit song, but renamed Camerchameleon. Maybe Cameron would go a lot further if he could and make big changes needed, but his party is in coalition with the Liberal Democrats, the most pro-EU party, and they constantly seem to have the foot on the brake. Perhaps there are also powerful voices within his own party and other elite figures whispering in his ear. Few of us know what conversations political leaders have behind the scenes that cause them to backtrack from their pledges.

We are now in a very different place to when Britain last held a referendum on Europe in 1975. We had joined what was then known as the European Economic Community or Common Market just over two years previous. Back then it was sold on the basis of being a club for which membership would bring economic benefits to the UK, but not really impact on national sovereignty. That was what Edward Heath, the PM who took Britain in, led us to believe. The majority were persuaded to vote in favour, but little did they realise the behemoth it would become 30 to 40 years into the future.

It costs us the taxpayer a lot to be part of and impacts on our shopping bills. It has also stifled us with endless regulations, directives and red tape that permeate into every aspect of what we do and how we live, not to mention the bureaucracy to monitor it all and the criminal levels of financial waste. It lacks democratic accountability and means that so many new laws are enacted into our own legal system from the EU without any debate in our own Parliament to which we have elected MPs to represent us. This is surely scandalous as it makes a mockery of why we go to vote at the polling station on election day.

I have said in previous blogs that if we take this big step and hold a referendum it could lance the boil representing an ugliness that persists in the British body politic. I myself would vote to withdraw from the EU but if the majority voted to stay in, well then so be it. At least we would all have had a chance to have our say and can move on from there.

So please Mr Cameron let us have our say. We are not children and we can make a grown-up decision about something as important as this. If we do vote in favour of withdrawal, well look how well Switzerland and Norway have done outside it. And what is to stop us trading with EU member countries as they surely would want to with us?

Dawkins' Lack of Faith

2011-10-11T12:44:00.000-07:00

Richard Dawkins is normally robust in his promotion of atheism. With many books, including bestselling The God Delusion, television series, TV interviews with big-name presenters like Jeremy Paxman, topical discussion programmes and his plans to set up an atheist free school under the Govenment scheme to encourage independent schools within the state sector, we would assume that he is definitely not backward in coming forward.

Yet, despite several attempts to persuade him, Dawkins has persistently refused to take part in a public debate with the American Christian philosopher, William Lane Craig, who is visiting the UK. He is the author of thirty books and known to be a formidable debator. Sam Harris, another well known atheist, once referred to Craig as "the one Christian apologist who has put the fear of God into many of my fellow atheists."

Dawkins is not the only prominant atheist refusing to debate with Craig. Guardian columnist and president of the British Humanist Association, Polly Toynbee, also pulled out of an arranged debate in London with Craig saying she "hadn't realised the nature of Mr Lane Craig's debating style." Yet, Toynbee has appeared on many TV programmes over the year expressing her views in a forthright manner. Responding to her cancellation, Craig said: "These folks (atheists) can be very brave when they are alone at the podium and there is no one there to challenge them. But one of the great things about these debates is that it allows both sides to be heard on a level playing field and for the students in the audience to make up their own minds where the truth lies."

What of Dawkins himself? This is not the first time he has refused to debate with other figures promoting the existence of God, including highly respected and eminent scientists who believe in the reality of a deity behind intelligent design. On this occasion, he has been criticised as being afraid by another fellow atheist and philosophy lecturer, Daniel Came: "The absence of a debate with the foremost apologist for Christian theism is a glaring omission on your CV and is of course apt to be interpreted as cowardice on your part."

It was ironic that Dawkins' response to the criticism was to say "I have no intention of assisting Craig in his relentless drive for self promotion." That is surely a bit rich. Is this not what Dawkins has been doing for such a long time in promoting himself as a high-profile spokesman for the atheist cause?

Dawkins is undoubtedly an intelligent and articulate man. A zoologist by profession, he has devoted so much of life through his many writings, broadcasts, interviews and lectures arguing the case for there being no God. If he has done all this, surely he would jump at an invitation to debate in a public forum with an opponent who is clearly no simpleton, but like him highly articulate, except he is prepared to stand up and assert the Christian viewpoint. Surely Dawkins wants to proclaim his faith - and atheism is a type of faith - and seek to win the arguement, or at least put a convincing case.

Do the likes of Dawkins and Toynbee actually fear exposure of flaws in their own case? They must surely lack confidence in their own 'faith' to throw aside an opportunity for such a debate. But what is highly disturbing is that it is the likes of Dawkins who want faith, belief in God and any teaching that even hints at life originating from a supernatural being to be banned outright in the education system. Woe betide any university lecturer or school teacher who simply wants to discuss or debate it. To merely suggest that evolution teaching could be based on flawed science could these days land such professionals in a lot of trouble and affect their job prospects.

I have wondered if deep down Dawkins secretly doubts what he publicly professes. I distinctly remember watching an episode of a TV series he presented a few years ago. He held a lump of soil in his hand and spoke with awe about the richness and abundance of life existing within it. He appeared to describe it as something so wonderful and mysterious as if to transcend our human understanding. It sounded like he was almost admitting to a higher power. I am a Christian and very strongly disagree with Dawkins. But I would have respect for him if he was both prepared to publicly debate with people such as William Lane Craig and also allow those of us who believe in God as creator of all life to promote and freely express what we believe in all forums. Voltaire's famous maxim springs to mind: "I may detest what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it."

I don't necessarily agree with Craig on everything, but I for one welcome it when anyone is prepared to publicly challenge the prevailing atheistic and humanistic hegemony.

Quotes for this blog were obtained from an article at www.reasonablefaith.org
For recommended reading I suggest The Dawkins Delusion by Alister McGrath (SPCK Publishing, 2007)

Why Health Bill Amendment Must Not be Aborted

2011-09-01T12:49:00.000-07:00

There is no topic of discussion more emotive than abortion and feelings are very strong on both sides of the argument. But it has to be said that a lot of anger and intolerance does seem to be especially directed at those who oppose abortion and even at those who while agreeing with a woman’s right to choose, believe legislation is needed to restrict it.

Such is the case at present with the amendment proposed to the Health Bill currently going through Parliament, which has been put forward by Conservative MP, Nadine Dorries. She is arguing very strongly that the minimum time for an abortion be reduced from the current 24 to 20 weeks. In addition, her aim is to include in the Bill the requirement that advice and counselling services for those considering abortion are independent, unbiased and give genuine choice. At present, such services are provided by groups such as the British Pregnancy Advisory Service (BPAS) or the Marie Stopes clinics, both of which receive considerable NHS funds to carry out abortions and would therefore have an incentive to counsel in favour of termination. Under current legislation, there is no requirement on doctors or pregnacy advice services to provide the impartial help that Ms Dorries is advocating.

Ms Dorries is in favour of right of choice and also believes the Abortion Act 1967 was right, but argues that because of advances in medical technology, it is possible for a foetus to survive at a considerably earlier stage than a few decades ago. Yet, she has been subjected to a campaign of vitriol, hate mail and even death threats from pro-abortionists, some of whom you would imagine to be intelligent, articulate people. So who are the real fundamentalists and fanatics here? It is not those opposed to it for humane reasons or those who was it restricted.

The campaign to restrict abortion is not at all one confined to, as we are so often misled to assume, Right-wing fundamentalists with a religious axe to grind. Far from it. Ms Dorries' amendment is supported by veteran Labour MP, Frank Field, so it is cross-party. Nadine Dorries also speaks from bitter personal experience. In an article she wrote for the Daily Mail (31 August 2011), the MP recalls when she was a young nurse in a hospital many years ago and was asked to assist in an abortion. The terminated foetus was placed in a bedpan covered with a cloth, and she was asked by the nursing sister to carry it away for disposal. On the way she removed the covering and noticed that the foetus was still alive, gasing for breath and moving its body. Concerned, she went back to the sister to inform her and see if something could be done, but lacking any sensitivity and empathy, the sister abruptly told her to dispose of it. The memory of this had a marked effect on her.

But we are not here talking about something that is no more than a biological blob in the womb. We now know a lot more about the unborn child than we did when the Abortion Act 1967 came into effect. From very early on this is a developing human being with a heartbeat, blood flowing through it veins and functioning organs. There is also now ample evidence that a termination is not a neat and simple process and a woman’s troubles end there. A very high percentage of women who have had abortions suffer significant psychological trauma and feelings of guilt. Dorries refers to such a study from the British Journal of Psychiatry in her article.

Why can't we have a cool, calm and intelligent debate on this subject without being shouted down? I recall my university days 30 years ago when I was an active member of an anti-abortion campaign group. I remember then the shouting and aggression one would be subjected to in debates where we tried to make our views known using well thought-through and considered points of argument. As in a university, which is supposed to be a place where both sides of an issue are allowed and debated in a lively but orderly manner by supposedly intelligent and educated people, so is the case these days in any forum where the subject is debated. There seems to be several instances where if you hold a viewpoint counter to whatever happens to be the current orthodoxy, even if it is one you hold with sincerity, conviction and is argued intelligently, you will be labelled something amounting to a term of abuse – climate change denier, xenophobe, Europhobe, homophobe etc – and be denied the opportunity to put your point across without being talked over or shouted down. The same goes for abortion. Woe betide you if brave enough to go into any gathering and try and explain why you are opposed to it or even if wanting nothing more than to restrict it.

But this is an issue that needs to be openly and rationally debated. When a young Liberal MP, David Steel, introduced the private members bill that became the Abortion Act 1967, the intention was to stop the illegal backstreet abortions and to permit a termination only if a doctor was satisfied that to proceed with the pregnancy would seriously harm the health of the patient. However, in the 44 years since, the definition of harm to the woman’s health has been more and more widely interpreted way beyond the original intention of the Act. This can include anything amounting to emotional distress as opposed to actual physical harm.

So we now have the unenviable situation of around 200,000 aborted foetuses annually. It is frightening to think of the numbers of human beings lost since 1967 with the added loss in terms of contribution they could have made to society. There are also enormous financial costs to the NHS funded by the taxpayer and the long-term emotional costs to the women who have had abortions. In addition, there is often considerable pressure, overt or subtle, put on nurses in the NHS to agree to assist in terminations with adverse prospects for their careers should they opt out, even where on grounds of conscience. This is unfair and unreasonable.

Nailing my colours to the mast, I am opposed to abortion, as is my wife who is a nurse. If anything is a human right, it is surely the right to life. However, and being pragmatic, I believe Nadine Dorries’ proposed amendment is a significant move in the right direction. There are a lot of people in society who would agree with her and she should be supported for her courageous stand.

The Looting of Truth & Free Speech

2011-08-17T13:55:00.000-07:00

The historian, David Starkey, has provoked a storm of controversy following comments he made on the BBC Newsnight programme last week with regard to the rioting and looting that took place in several cities. He described how white chav culture had become black. Highly explosive in this age of political correctness.

His comments were jumped on not only by the others being interviewed alongside him on the programme, but some prominent media figures. Two of these were on Twitter. Piers Morgan called Starkey a “racist idiot” and said it would be goodbye to his media career. The BBC’s business editor, Robert Peston, said that his “nasty ignorance is best ignored not worthy of comment or debate.” Both are wrong. We as a nation traditionally believe in free speech (what was fighting the last world war about?) and we should be grown-up enough to discuss all points of view in a civilised manner, even the most controversial.

It is true to say that Starkey could have chosen his words more carefully, and some of his comments sounded like sweeping generalisations that played right into the hands of his critics. However, he was not attacking black culture per se. He actually meant a particular version he referred to as Jamaican patois – a form of street slang English, which he described as false and now being used by a generation of young white, as well as black, youth and causing many citizens to now feel they are living in a foreign country. It forms the lyrics of many rap songs and is identified with being anti-social, aggressive, violent, anti-authority, anti-education, criminal behaviour and gang culture.

Rap songs have included extremely misogynistic lyrics describing women as bitches and about violence, including killing of cops. The vile word nigger has appeared in such songs but because the lyrics are written and sung by black artists, those who would normally scream about racism or sexism if from a white person, and demand tough action accordingly, remain strangely silent.

Another example of the hypocrisy shown by many of those holding to a so-called 'progressive' liberal post-modernist viewpoint is that while they will attack anyone showing the slightest hint of what they regard as racism, they will stay silent or even nod approval of anyone associating white English working-class culture with skinheads, bigots, racists and even neo-Nazis. It seems ok to make generalised assumptions about one group, but not raise carefully thought through and well qualified points about another.

But the victims often most directly affected by the rioting and looting, as was the case of the disturbances of thirty year ago, are hard-working British Afro-Caribbean people with shops and businesses who lose their source of livelihood. When business premises are burnt to the ground, workers lose their jobs and income. Neither was consideration shown to ordinary people living in looters’ own communities who hid terrified in their own homes when the madness was in full swing. And it is hostility towards the value of learning and against law and order that betrays Afro-Caribbean children by effectively denying them the encouragement they need to succeed in life and become solid citizens contributing to the enrichment of our society.

This is not about blatant, deliberate racial discrimination. Children from South Asian and Oriental backgrounds consistently perform well in our schools, often better than white children. And while there may well have been elements of racism within police ranks at the time of the Brixton riots in 1981, even Ken Livingstone, former Mayor of London, has acknowledged that the police have gone a long way in building good relations with the West Indian community as a whole since. Closing the door of opportunity comes about due to anti-social attitudes, the result of wrong values passed from the older generation, absence of father figures to guide young males, and the reluctance of the ruling elite or liberal intelligentsia to address the very issues that are holding back young Afro-Caribbeans.

I for one am glad that we are a more tolerant society than we were 43 years ago when Enoch Powell made his Rivers of Blood speech. However, it is true to say that our experiment in multiculturalism is not only the wrong approach, it does not make for an integrated society and instead makes it more divided among ethnic and religious lines. Rather than eradicating racism, it actually reinforces its expressions from all groups towards others. And it is not just the preserve of whites. Suppressing free debate on the subject will not make the underlying problems go away. Instead, it will just play more and more into the hands of extremist elements with their perverse agendas.

Perhaps because of the terrible events of last week, it really now is time for some plain speaking. We owe it to the Afro-Caribbean citizens of our country who only want a better life for themselves and their children. That is after all what their forebears came to the UK for from the West Indies in the 1950s and 1960s.

Media Emperor Has No Clothes

2011-07-15T15:23:00.000-07:00

When the Soviet empire collapsed from 1989 to 1991, it happened because the fear that citizens had long held of the authorities evaporated in a way that woodland fires spread in a drought. Seemingly all-powerful, immovable edifices collapsing like a house of cards when their long hidden vulnerability is exposed. Rupert Murdoch’s News International conglomerate is in its own way the latest example due to the phone hacking scandal. How the mighty have fallen.

Murdoch may not have been a despotic tyrant who imprisoned, tortured and executed enemies, but his power and influence was such here in the UK - a country of which he held no formal citizenship - that governments feared getting on his wrong side and opposition parties tried to woo him so that his newspapers – The Sun, News of the World, The Times and The Sunday Times – would throw their weight behind them. An ambitious opposition leader with an eye firmly on 10 Downing Street, with the whiff of power in his nostrils, the polls behind him, but if Murdoch’s papers were against him, the prospects of being asked by the Queen to form a government and then cross that long coveted threshold at No 10 would likely slip from his grasp.

Neil Kinnock certainly found that out in the 1992 General Election. The polls predicted a Labour victory with a small majority. But then there were a few factors causing things to change. Firstly, there was the infamous Sheffield rally that looked like a premature victory celebration – too presidential and razzmatazz – with Kinnock sounding like a rock star shouting “alright” several times. That probably put off a lot of potential voters. Secondly, shadow chancellor John Smith’s tax proposals that the media and Conservatives were able to convince voters would hit middle-income earners. Finally, the Murdoch papers played their part. On election day, The Sun’s headline was this: “If Kinnock wins today, will the last person to leave Britain please turn the lights off.” It had a picture of Kinnock's head transposed in a lightbulb. When John Major was confirmed as firmly back in No 10, The Sun took the credit with the headline, “It was The Sun wat won it.”

Having suffered four consequetive elections defeats, Labour became pragmatic and decided it had to find a way to embrace Murdoch rather than regard him as the enemy. And who could blame them? Alistair Campbell persuaded Tony Blair early on he had to get the Murdoch tabloids on side if he was to ensure victory at the next election. So soon after his election as Labour leader, Blair flew all the way out to Australia with Campbell to meet the big man and his executives. That tells you the power of Murdoch for the prospective prime minister to fly half-way around the world to get him on side. And with Blair ditching re-nationalisation altogether, sounding tough on law and order and embracing the Thatcherite economic reforms, Murdoch was won over, The Sun declared it would back Blair and New Labour, as it became known, won a massive landslide in the 1997 General Election. As was the case with Margaret Thatcher, Blair also enjoyed a long tenure in Downing Street with Murdoch's newspapers declaring their support at elections.

Throughout the long years of New Labour in government, it was often said that major policy decisions would not be announced until the temperature with the Murdoch empire was tested first. It was rumoured that he, his executives or newspaper editors would often be told about proposed policies or major news events relating to the Prime Minsiter before members of the Cabinet. This could be speculation, but perhaps not surprising if true. Even a government with such a huge electoral mandate was eager not to get on the wrong side of News International.

Gordon Brown continued to do what he could to keep Murdoch’s media empire on side, but was not to be successful. The Sun declared during the 2009 Labour Party Conference that it was ditching Brown and backing David Cameron. Because Murdoch was a man known for backing winners, the Conservatives would have been given good reason to think they would win 2010 General Election with a reasonable majority. However, News International was shown to be not totally infallible because as we all know, the Conservatives fell short of an overall majority and had to go into coalition with the Liberal Democrats.

But as we are now discovering, Rupert Murdoch and News International were not invincible. And whereas it had built its fearsome reputation on uncovering scandals, it was to be brought to its knees by a very big one. Live by the sword, perish by the sword goes the old adage. It has been known for some years that elements within or hired by the News of the World, and possibly other papers, had been hacking into the mobile phones of celebrities and royals. While the public if asked would have said this is unethical and immoral, they shrugged their shoulders and still bought the newspapers because deep down they still loved the salatious gossip and scandal. And when it was politicians who became the victims, people especially felt little sympathy, particularly with the expenses scandal fresh in their minds.

But when it emerged that the News of the World had been hacking into the mobile phones of murder victims and their families – Milly Dowler, Holly & Jessica and the 7/7 bombing victims – there was a widespread sense of revulsion and outrage. This could not have come at a worse time for Murdoch with his bid for the total takeover of BSkyB awaiting Government approval, and looking like it was almost in the bag. In the Westminster village, fear and trepidation evaporated as politicians on both sides lined up to condemn News International, demanding that the BSkyB deal be stopped and that Murdoch, his son James and former News of the World editors, Rebekah Brooks (now NI chief executive) and Andy Coulson, be held to account. No doubt, there were many MPs with scores to settle. With all the bad publicity, BSkyB’s share prices were tumbling and Murdoch took the decision to shut down the News of the World. He has since called off the BSkyB bid and there are rumours he may sell off the rest of his newspaper stable. It was as if the scales had come off eyes with the realisation that the media emperor had no clothes, so to speak as if to parody the famous Hans Christian Andersen tale.

New revelations have come out day after day, and not all about the hacking of mobile phones. Former PM, Gordon Brown, expressed outrage that his son’s medical details and his own bank records have been accessed. Rebekah Brooks is alleged to have said to News of the World staff when the shutdown was announced that there was worse to come. And now there are concerns on the other side of the Atlantic that mobile phones of 9/11 victims may also have been hacked. Bearing in mind Murdoch’s extensive business interests in the United States, the potential outcome would surely be catastrophic.

He has called off the BSkyB bid, but has far from ruled out making another attempt at it when all the rubble and dust has settled. I for one find it very hard to imagine that such an attempt can ever be successful. I could be wrong, but the current breed of ambitious politicians with an eye on the ultimate prize would surely see it as an electoral liability to court the Murdoch empire. I long felt that he held an unhealthy amount of power and influence over the political system of a country of which he held no formal citizenship. Perhaps his decline can only be good for our democracy – what’s left of it.

PS I have just heard on the TV that Rebekah Brooks has resigned as News International chief executive and that Rupert Murdoch has issued a formal apology to Milly Dowler's family, which will appear in tomorrow's nespapers.

Broken Promises, Backtracks & U-Turns

2011-06-14T02:39:00.000-07:00

When in opposition, the Conservatives made a pledge that if elected that they would conduct a review in response to calls for an inquest into the mysterious death of Dr David Kelly, the UN weapons scientist and inspector. His body was found in woods near his Oxfordshire home in July 2003. There was renewed hope that so many unresolved questions may at last get answers. But after much deliberation, we have sadly just been told by the Attorney General, Dominic Grieve, that no such inquest will now be held and so the original suicide verdict will therefore remain unchallenged.The files on this case are once again shut and put away indefinitely. Is this another example what makes us so cynical about politicians, whatever their party? Yes, it seems so.

When Dr Kelly's body was found, the political atmosphere of the time was highly charged in the wake of the controversial decison by then Prime Minister, Tony Blair, to send British forces to take part in the invasion of Iraq along with our American allies. Blair and his communications chief, Alistair Campbell, were being accused of duplicity in the form of the so-called "dodgy dossier," which compiled with the help of key figures in the intelligence services, claimed that Saddam Hussein was stockpiling weapons of mass destruction (WMDs), posing a threat to other Middle East states and also to the West, particularly if al-Qaeda could access to them. Hence, justification for the invasion.

The WMDs were not found and when BBC Radio 4 journalist, Andrew Gilligan, suggested on the programme from his 'source' that the dossier had effectively been "sexed up," pandemonium broke out in 10 Downing Street and Alistair Campbell in a state of blind rage went on a crusade against the BBC. Blair's inner circle were determined to identify and expose this source. When it emerged to be Dr Kelly, this private and unassuming man was subjected the full glare of the media spotlight and a grilling by the parliamentary Foreign Affairs Committee, and it was at first widely believed that the inevitable strain put upon him must have led to his decison to take his own life. But the big unanswered question remains: Was it suicide?

I don't want to go into a detailed analysis of this case. However, a lot of questions remain unanswered and which the Hutton Inquiry failed to address. These include as follows: (1) The small amount of blood being considerably less than what would be expected if a wrist is slashed, as well as the type of knife found. (2) The amount of co-proximal he took was said to be less than what would have been fatal. (3) The positioning of his body, his wrist, the knife used and a bottle of water at the scene. (4) The fact that he had only just booked a flight to Iraq, which someone who has decided to commit suicide would be highly unlikely to do. (4) Dr Kelly was a committed adherent to the Ba'hai faith which forbids suicide. (5) Is it not standard procedure for an inquest to be held where a death occurs in suspicious circumstances? This is where a coroner has the power to summon witnesses, which is not the case with a public inquiry such as Hutton. The big question is this: Did Dr Kelly commit suicide or were there sinister elements actively seeking to bring about his demise? For a detailed discussion about motives, bizarre occurances and unanswered questions, I recommend reading The Strange Death of Dr David Kelly by Norman Baker MP (Methuen Publishing Ltd., 2007). Whatever the truth - and I am not one to readily jump onto conspiracy theory bandwagons - we the British public continue to be kept in the dark.

There were several other key issues which nudged me in the direction of the voting Conservative at the 2010 General Election for the first time ever, but which have been either dropped or kicked into the long grass. There were even worrying signs when still in opposition. I will go through some of these.

1. As Leader of the Opposition, David Cameron pledged to hold a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty if elected because of plausible concerns about the further yielding of our national sovereignty to the EU. This was dropped after member states governments had signed up to it. We the public were denied the right the vote on such a major issue concerning our autonomy as a nation.

2. Prior to the General Election, the Conservatives talked seriously about revoking the Human Rights Act 1998 and creating our own UK Bill of Rights. This appears to have been put on the back burner indefinitely.

3. The Tories in opposition pledged a much more robust approach to law and order and a significant increase in prison places. Justice Secretary, Kenneth Clarke, has got into a lot of trouble and attracted the wrath of the media after proposing to half the sentences for serious criminal offences should those to be tried plead guilty. This clearly goes against the principal of natural justice that punishment should fit the crime. Realising the scale of public outrage, and because it contradicts the image the Conservatives have long portrayed of themselves as the party of law and order, Cameron has thankfully had to order a retreat and leave Clarke hanging out to dry, so to speak. But surely these proposals were agreed in Cabinet in the first place.

4. The Conservatives also agreed to, and were initially supported by their Liberal Democrat partners in the Coalition, the proposals put forward by Health Secretary, Andrew Lansley, for major reforms within the NHS. In particular, that of GPs being budget holders and buying care for their patients from hospitals and providers, including the private sector, operating in a competitive market. This could mean a more efficient use of resources and help provide a better quality of care. But anxious about about how the public may react to such reforms, possibly because they have not been explained as well as they could have been, and due to pressure from Nick Clegg and Lib Dems within the Government, Cameron has effectively put such reforms on hold or has insisted they be significantly watered down. Is the sacred NHS cow to be left without much significant reform for another generation? And another cabinet minister is left hanging out to dry.

5. There was also Communities Secretary, Eric Pickles' robust assertion early on that he would require those local authorities who had adopted fortnightly rubbish collections to return to doing so weekly. This is what he declared at the time: "It’s a basic right for every English man and woman to be able to put the remnants of their chicken tikka masala in their bin without having to wait a fortnight for it to be collected." Nothing seems to have changed on this and if Mr Pickles has so insisted, the councils concerned don't appear to be taking any notice. There are strong suggestions in the media that it is about to be dropped. Is he powerless to act or has the Government been put off by cost implications? Whatever, this is a big matter of concern to multitudes of council tax payers who have to wait a fortnight to have their bins emptied, with their rubbish piling up and the foul smell of rotting thrown-away food. We all simply want our rubbish collected weekly. That is what we expect from paying high levels of council tax. If a populist politician like Eric Pickles can fail to deliver on a promise regarding a grassroots issue such as this, what faith can we have in politicians generally?

I do hope that welfare and education reforms put underway by Iain Duncan Smith and Michael Gove are also not watered down or abandoned altogether. However, nothing would surprise me.

One worrying matter concerns the case of Gary McKinnon. He is the Asperger's syndrome sufferer who the US authorities want extradited to stand trial for hacking into the NASA computer network several years ago. There are legitimate concerns that he would be unable to cope with extradition and would be at a high suicide risk because of his mental health condition. But because of the extradition treaty the Labour Government agreed with United States in 2003, which seemed overwhelmingly weighted in favour of the latter, it did seem until they lost power that there was little the last Government would do to stop Mr McKinnon's extradition.

Both the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats protested about what they regarded as a gross injustice and argued that should he stand trial, it should be in this country instead. However, since coming into government over a year ago, both parties have become strangely silent and snippets of information have come out that they might not now stop Mr McKinnon's extradition. This really would be the final straw for me.

The problem for the Conservatives is that they fell short of gaining an overall majority at the last election. As is the inevitable problem with coalitions, they are often being held back from what they, their MPS, their party members and supporters want and what voters elected them to implement because they are sharing power with the Liberal Democrats. There are also a range of powerful vested interests nationally and internationally who can and do make it very difficult for any government to actually make happen what they previously intended. The unfortunate effect this has on democracy is that what people perceive as broken promises, backtracks and u-turns means our faith in politicians to make the real difference we go to the polling stations for just gets dimmer and can disappear.

Blind Spot on the Left Side

2011-05-08T04:01:00.000-07:00

Mention camps, mass slaughter, ethnic cleansing, slave labour, brutality, totalitarianism altogether under one exceptionally nasty regime in the 20th century, the likelihood is that many people will say Nazi Germany under Hitler.

There exists an abundance of literature and films about the Holocaust where the Nazis worked and massacred millions, mainly Jews. Yet, there has it seems been relatively little depicting the Soviet Gulag where under one the most monstrous tyrants history has ever produced, many millions also suffered and died. Books by Alexander Solzhenitsyn, who died last year, have made some impact in the West with his books The Gulag Archipelago, Cancer Ward and One Day in the Life of Ivan Desinovich, but we have not had blockbuster movies on the scale of Schindler's List portraying life in the Gulag.

There have been several books published in recent years describing in detail the brutal realities of Stalin's terror, and which have gone some way towards redressing this imbalance. Anne Applebaum's Gulag: A History of the Soviet Camps (Penguin, 2004) and her latest book Gulag Voices: An Anthology (Yale University Press, 2011) for example, are rich anecdotal evidence of men and women - both victims and oppressors - describing in great detail the network of Soviet camps following the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917 and its inherent brutality and absence of humanity.

Labour camps and the exiling of prisoners existed previously in Czarist Russia, but was lenient by comparison to what was to come after the Revolution. Stalin, himself sentenced to exile in Siberia, expressed outright contempt for the then penal system - not for being too brutal, but for its 'toothlessness.' He confirmed this by escaping no fewer than five times.

The Bolsheviks under Lenin wasted little time in setting up a penal system designed not so much as a system to punish and correct criminals such as murderers, rapists and thieves, but to deal with political opponents and counter-revolutionaries - White Russians, Mensheviks, Trotskyists, socialists, social democrats, rightists and even those Bolsheviks who had fallen foul of Lenin. The regime created a new form of slavery whose purpose was hard labour as a means to an economic end. The first such camp was created on the Solovetsy Islands in the White Sea.

The Gulag system set up by Lenin was brutal enough. But Stalin determined to go much faster and further after his rise to power. His paranoia was so strong that his secret police, the NKVD (later to become the KGB), were given licence to arrest anyone, or whole groups, including women and children, whom he saw as an actual or potential problem or did not like at a particular time. With Hitler, it was mainly the Jews, but also Gypsies, homosexuals and the mentally disabled. During the Great Terror of the 1930s and then during World War 11, Stalin ordered mass arrests of Poles, Balts, Chechens, Tartars and many other ethnic groups; Kulak peasants who resisted forced collectivisation of agriculture, and any Soviet citizens whom his twisted, psycopathic mind deemed as 'enemies.' Throughout the USSR, regional NKVD units had quotas to meet and trumped up all sorts of excuses to arrest or shoot hundreds of thousands of innocents.

A person could be as loyal a Communist Party member and Stalin supporter as ever possible, yet still be arrested because related by blood to an accused counter-revolutionary or be under suspicion due to previous travel to the West. It was as if these were stains that could never be scrubbed off. Such a person could be transported thousands of miles in a cramped raliway carriage to any one of a vast network of camps that by the 1930s had sprung up in remote regions of Siberia, northern Russia and Kazakhstan. Life in the camps was nasty, brutish and short. Food and clothing were inadequate; many prisoners had to work from dawn to night-time in very harsh conditions, sometimes in temperatures of minus forty, with sentences of twenty five years not uncommon. Many died due to the harsh conditions or were shot by the guards. In the camp pecking order, 'politicals' were at the bottom and despised by both the guards and the 'criminals.'

Following Stalin's death in 1953, a thaw in the Gulag system meant release for hundreds of thousands of political prisoners with Krushchev's rise to power, and as a process of de-Stalinisation permeated throughout Soviet society. However, following Krushchev's removal in 1964, the Brezhnev era saw an emergence of neo-Stalinism and the use of camps to punish a new generation of prisoners known as the Dissidents, some of who names, besides Solzhenitsyn, became well known in the West - Bukhovsky, Sharansky, Sakharov etc. It was under Gorbachev that the Gulag finally came to a long-awaited end.

Despite ample evidence of this state-sanctioned evil, great shame focuses on the Western left-wing intelligentsia, who from the 1930s onwards had a blind spot to these atrocities in the Soviet Union as if they were not happening, while calling for a crusade against Hitler and fascism generally. Stalin's many apologists on the Left either overlooked the widescale terror, or justified it as an unfortunate necessity that 'enemies' had to be dealt with in order to create the great society and brave new world.

This same blind spot, for example, long romanticised the justness of the Republican cause in the Spanish Civil War of the 1930s fighting against the fascism of General Franco's Falangists. Anthony Beevor's book about the war describes a very different reality where atrocities were not an uncommon occurance on the Republican side (a disparate alliance of various leftists, anarchists and other groups), heavily leant upon from Moscow and NKVD elements present in Spain, many on their own side were executed. In fact, there were some who feared for their lives that they even changed sides and went over to Franco's forces. In the 1960s and 1970s, there were also some people on the Left who eulogised the China of Mao Tse Tung and the Cambodia of Pol Pot, both of whom were responsible for deaths of countless millions in pursuit of their inhuman social experiments.

Sadly, ignorance or turning a blind eye is historically not the preserve of the Western Left. An infamous example occured as a consequence of the Yalta Conference in 1945. In order to keep Stalin as an ally in Hitler's defeat, Churchill and Roosevelt agreed to the forcible repatriation of Soviet citizens who had fled Stalinist terror (including more than 20,000 Cossacks), meaning execution for many. For more on Allied treachery, see my blog Poles Apart.

Now that the Cold War and the USSR have long ceased to exist, a dark legacy continues to hang over modern-day Russia. Despite the creeping authoritarianism of recent years, there may now be something resembling democracy and accountability. But unlike the Truth Commission in post-Apartheid South Africa, any openess permitted in Russia is not enough to face up to its past. 18 million Soviet citizens are estimated to have passed through the Gulag network between 1929 and 1953 when Stalin died. Yet, there have been no Nuremburg type trials for those who inflicted such mass death and suffering. Many of those who ran the old system were later pensioned off to quiet retirement or lucrative private sector work. Former communists have and continue to serve in governments throughout the former Soviet empire. Ex-President and current Prime Minister, Vladimir Putin, served as an officer in the KGB and once joked about being a former Chekist (The Cheka preceded the NKVD and KGB).

Sadly, unlike post-war Germany, there seems to be an unwillingness persisting in Russian society to openly acknowledge the crimes committed in their name and one man in particular ultimately responsible. It would be a healthy sign of an emerging democracy if it were to be otherwise. Surely if there is something the 20th century in particular taught it is what happens when a few seek to impose an ideology, combined with a personality cult, on any society - particularly one as diverse as the former USSR. And it still lives on today in North Korea. It is a lesson for us in the West who so easily take our freedoms and liberties for granted.

Can IDS Slay the Welfare Behemoth?

2011-02-19T03:51:00.000-08:00

As I write, the Secretary of State for Work & Pensions, Iain Duncan Smith, has just published the Welfare Reform Bill to be presented to Parliament. It has been described as possibly the biggest shake-up of the Welfare State since its setting-up by William Beveridge towards the end of World War 11. If it does succeed in being so, it is something that is long overdue.

What Beveridge intended as a temporary safety net while the able bodied were unemployed but seeking work, has become an ever growing monster of Stalinist proportions costing the British taxpayer some £90 billion a year. Cost is of course an overwhelming factor, but there is another. Beveridge said the objective of the 'cradle to the grave' system of social security benefits he created was to tackle the 5 great evils: Want, Disease, Ignorance, Squalor and Idleness. It is the last one of these that the State spends a phenomenal amount of money encouraging, although not intentionally, rather than eradicating. And there is surely no way that Beveridge would ever have envisaged that here we are in the 21st century, more affluent that we have ever been, yet unable to rid ourselves of a social security system with so complex a myriad of benefits and regulations that officials themselves often find hard to unravel, and so costly as to eat into so much of the public coffers.

Previous governments have attempted and failed to radically reform of the social security system, including those prime ministers and governments who got landslide electoral mandates. Margaret Thatcher is remembered as the fearless Iron Lady who overcame the might of the trades unions, the Argentinian junta to recapture the Falkland Islands and privatised state industries and utilities. Other than some odd changes, even she backed away from a massive overhaul of the system.

When New Labour swept to power in 1997, Tony Blair appointed Frank Field (himself an expert on social security) as Minister for Welfare Reform with the brief to "think the unthinkable" to tackle the ever escalating welfare bill. It seems that when he did just that he was thwarted by Chancellor of the Exchequer, Gordon Brown - who himself once ironically said that work was the best form of welfare - and Field was out of government a year later. Welfare reform was again kicked into the long grass and all we got was some tinkering rather than fundamental change.

But could things be different this time with the Conservative-led Coalition now in office? There can be no better man for the enormous task of welfare reform than Iain Duncan Smith. Despite being so ruthlessly removed as Leader of the Conservative Party in 2003, and unlike certain deposed Tory leaders of the past who spring to mind, IDS did not appear to sulk or bear a grudge. Instead, he devoted his talents into the setting up of The Centre for Social Justice, a much respected think tank committed to finding ways to help the poorest and most needy members of society to overcome the poverty trap. IDS is a compassionate man much committed himself to doing so now he wields the political power necessary to bring about reform.

As mentioned above, social security benefits consist of many types, are complicated and often act as a disincentive to claimants seriously seeking employment. And I do not include those you are genuinely seeking work, but finding it difficult for all sorts of reasons. It is unfortunately the case that someone can be little or no better off if they go from social security into a low-paid job. Rather than helping the poor, it all too often traps them. Social security benefits (such as income support and job seekers allowance), housing benefits and tax credits are all administered by different offices run by central and local government. All this makes the system disjointed and very expensive just to run itself.

Central to the proposed reforms is to have one generic benefit known as Universal Credit. The first aspect of it is to consolidate the current income support, job seeker allowance and housing benefit into one simple payment. The second and crucial aspect is to give significant encouragement to claimants to seek work. It will do this by allowing a claimant to keep 35p in every pound from their benefit on top of their pay when they start work, and over and above what they would have otherwise receive on benefit, whereas they lose out under the current benefits system. This disregard would begin to taper off at a certain level of income increase. It will make it pay to come off sole reliance on benefit and go to work. The proposed welfare reforms will cost initially to set up - IDS has himself estimated around £3 billion. But could be much more cost effective in the long run and really make work pay compared to a life of welfare dependency.

Personally, I would like to see welfare reform go much further as it has successfully elsewhere. In the USA during the 1990s, the state of Wisconsin and New York City not only transformed social security such that it was very proactive in encouraging claimants to seek work, but introduced workfare schemes that meant claimants had to actually work for their benefits. This would involve claimants engaged in various publicly aided works to improve the local environment. Looking at the state of some parts of our cities and towns, I believe we would all benefit by such schemes in this country. It would be a much better use of taxpayers' money and give those out of work back their sense of self respect.

It also needs to be said that there are other things the government can do to show it is serious about being on the side of the poorest in our society. Firstly, raise the tax threshold for those on low incomes so that such people either don't have to pay tax, or pay at a much lower rate. Secondly, look to close tax loopholes exploited by those already very wealthy, target such money towards taking the least well off out of tax liability and explore ways to clampdown on tax evasion, which the country loses a lot more from than it does benefit fraud and creates a shortfall which the rest of have to make up for from our own taxes.

Will IDS be successful in his attempt to reform the Welfare State? Unlike previous governments who stated their intention to do so, but either failed or quietly dropped their plans, we are at long last seeing a serious attempt to actually do something on a large scale rather than the usual tinkering around the edges. If the bill gets through Parliament without significant compromises and gets itself onto the statute book, only time will tell if we do witness a fundamental transformation of such an antiquated and horrendously expensive system.

The Right to Vote No

2011-02-13T02:40:00.000-08:00

It was welcome to see our Parliament last week assert what independence it still has. This was to vote overwhelmingly against the European Court of Human Rights' ruling that the British government should grant prisoners the right to vote in elections.

David Cameron recently said that it makes him sick in his stomach that prisoners should be granted such a right. Realising the weight of opposition to the ECHR's ruling by the mass of both public opinion and backbench MPs from all sides, he had to be seen to be taking some sort of tough stance, even if he and his cabinet realise that in the end, one way or another, that the ECHR and the European Union will always have the final say. Both are separate from each other, but have together exerted ever increasing power over how this country is run. In the case of the latter, this is thanks to the decision pushed through Parliament in 1972 to make our own national law subservient to that of the then EEC or Common Market (ready for our entry on the 01 January 1973). Did the Prime Minister of the time, Edward Heath, know more than he let on about what direction this supranational body would take in the decades ahead? Were we told the whole truth?

One of the many reasons that I (for the first time ever), like so many members of the British public fed up with what the New Labour years did to the country, made the decision to vote Conservative in last year's General Election was their pledge to replace the Human Rights Act 1998 with a UK Bill of Rights. However, I started to worry even before the election that Cameron was going to backtrack on his promise to get tough with the EU when he abandoned the proposal to hold a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty. And so far this backtracking has sadly continued with one pledge after another being abandoned now his party are in government and in particular, the one to withdraw from the European Convention on Human Rights and replace the legislation that went with it. There are two important issues that last week's vote brings up.

Firstly, should prisoners have the right to vote? If someone has wilfully chosen to commit a crime, be that robbery, burglary, grevious bodily harm or taking another's life, they have without a doubt forfeited the right to participate in the democratic process. This is along with losing the normal rights and liberties of the rest of us who have abided by the law. Common sense dictates this and most of the public and their representatives in Parliament know as such. So who are an international clique of officials who meet in a closed room in Strasbourg, and are not accountable or have any democratic mandate, to think they can impose a ruling that we in Britain have to comply with, even if our own democratically elected Parliament has overwhelmingly rejected it?

Secondly, this brings up the whole issue of our membership once again of the European Union. What I find sickening is that most of the legislation incorporated into our legal system is not even debated in our elected Parliament. It is imposed from on high due to directives or treaties which we all too often in this country gold plate, despite the supposed British instinct towards Euroscepticism (see my blog Shackled by Stealth). The one redeeming feature is we have so far, thank goodness, not signed up to the euro. This gives us more scope to tackle our own crippling budget deficit, unlike Ireland and Greece. Other than that, we have surrendered far too much of own national sovereignty. If our own Parliament votes against a proposal, such as giving prisoners the right tovote, true sovereignty would ensure that it would not see the light of day. That is if this insititution in any way represents the will of the people.

At least citizens of some other EU states get the opportunity to vote in referendums regarding treaties or whether or not to join the euro. Other than the referendum we had here back in 1975 on whether or not to remain in the Common Market, as is was known back then and when we thought it was just a trading block bestowing certains advantages for membeship, we are never given the opportunity to have such ballots. It is time for us as a nation to face this issue head on.

The big problem for the Conservatives and Cameron as Prime Minister is they did not get an overall majority in last year's election. What ever Cameron might wish to do, and however much he might want to go down in history as a leader who really did make a difference, his party is shackled and emasculated by forming a coalition with the Liberal Democrats. Despite only presently having current poll ratings of 10 per cent, Nick Clegg and his party are passionately pro-EU and supportive of its institutions. So if Cameron wants to take a tough stance and say no to the EU, or give the British public the right to vote on whether or not to relinquish important powers, he is held back by the Lib Dems who may threaten to walk out and bring down the Coalition. Perhaps with their low standing in the polls, he should not be afraid to call their bluff.

One way forward would be to pull out of the European Convention on Human Rights and revisit the proposal to create our own Bill of Rights. Human rights are not universal because a small and remote elite so happens to declare them as such. There is presently too much of an overbalance towards so called rights and away from what common sense and natural justice tells us are responsibilities.

But one way to really lance this boil once and for all at some point in this Parliament would be to hold a referendum on whether or not we should remain a member of the Eurpoean Union. I like what Patrick O'Flynn suggested in his column in the Daily Express yesterday (Saturday, 12 February). That would be for David Cameron to announce that Britain will hold such a referendum within 3 years. This would strengthen his and the government's bargaining position with the EU in the time beforehand.

What our own political elite needs to realise is that we the public are not children, there to be patronised and told we don't understand these complex issues. Please give us the once in a lifetime chance to make a very grown-up historical decision that will determine this country's future. After all, Norway and Switzerland have proved they can run successful economies and trade with other countries while remaining outside the EU. I am sure we can too.

Indefatigably Hypocritical

2011-01-24T13:53:00.000-08:00

The inclusion of George Galloway and Alistair Campbell on last week's BBC Question Time was bound to be the equivalent of fireworks if the subject of Iraq came up. I cannnot help but comment upon Mr Galloway's blatant hypocrisy on this issue.

With Tony Blair's second appearance before the Chilcot Inquiry into the Iraq war last week, the former Respect MP demanded on the programme that Blair be charged as a war criminal for the Iraqi deaths that resulted from the 2003 invasion and that he be tried by the International Criminal Court in The Hague. He also referred to Campbell, the Downing Street communications chief at the time, as Blair's "Goebbels" and accused him of having blood on his hands, and said he should face trial alongside his former boss.

Yet, this was the same George Galloway who in 1994, then as a Labour MP, went to Baghdad to meet Saddam Hussein. While standing before the Iraqi dictator, Galloway infamously said, "Sir, I salute your courage, your strength and your indefatigability." Under this man's reign of terror, ethnic cleansing was underway well before the term was ever invented. Over 100,000 Kurds were killed or dissapeared while their villages in Iraqi Kurdistan were being completely destroyed. Remember the gruesome television footage of the bombing of Halabja in 1988 when weapons containing poison gas killed around 5,000 villagers. I cannot forget the sight on my TV screen of so many bodies, including small children and babies lifeless on the ground, some clutched by their mothers. Then there were as many as 50,000 Iranians killed by chemical weapons in the Iran/Iraq war of 1980-1988 (in which around a million altogether from both sides died pointlessly). Then there could be far in excess of 100,000 Iraqi dissidents and Shia Arabs who died, plus around 1,000 Kuwaitis who died following the 1990 invasion by Iraqi forces. And these figures surely fall well short of describing the total death toll linked in some way to Saddam's rule.

On another visit to Baghdad in 1999, Mr Galloway met Saddam's psychopathic son, Uday, a man renouned for taking pleasure in the murder, beatings, rapes and torture of many, and whose bloodcurdling reputation was such that he even made his father look moderate by comparison. The MP began his meeting with Uday, "Your Excellency, very nice to see you again." Then there followed some light hearted chat about how his host had lost some weight and looked well. But later on in the meeting, Galloway disturbingly pledges his support by declaring to Uday, "I would like you to know that we are with you to the end." Surely by then Galloway must have been aware of Uday's reputation as well as Saddam's own genocidal record. How could he not have done?

So once again back to the matter of Blair and President George W Bush linking together to plan the invasion of Iraq in 2003. Perhaps Blair did stretch the truth and beyond in declaring to Parliament that Saddam had stockpiled weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) that posed a threat to the West. True to say that they have never been found, although that does not mean they have to date not been successfully hidden away somewhere. It is also true to say that while there was a plausible case for the invasion, and I believed at the time there was, the coalition powers were criminally negligent in failing to carefully plan for the inevitable chaotic aftermath of the invasion and the rebuilding of Iraq. A very high price was paid in Iraqi and coalition military lives for failure to do so (see my previous blogs Weapons of Mass Deception and The Ghost of Tony Blair).

I was no fan of New Labour as previous blogs attest. But George Galloway is wrong to describe Tony Blair as a war criminal. He cannot possibly be put in the same category as the likes of Himmler, Ratko Mladic or Iraq's own 'Chemical Ali,' or heads of state or statelets such as Slobodan Milosevic and Radovan Karadzic. Yes, Blair should be held to account for decisions he as Prime Minister took leading up to the invasion, but what if he truly believed he took the right decisions, for the right reasons based on the intelligence and advice available to him at the time? He better than anyone knows the truth of his own motives.

PC Selective

2010-11-18T03:02:00.000-08:00

This blog is not about a quirky police officer or a rap singer. It is a discussion about political correctness, which has permeated into every aspect of modern life referring to race, gender, religion and sexual orientation. One casual comment here or there made unthinkingly can land you in a lot of trouble. What was originally all about protecting against prejudice has become a modern scourge provoking incredulity and outrage amongst the public and the media, and often with much justification. Yet, PC seems selective in favouring certain categories while ignoring others - one in particular, as I will explain.

There is now legislation in place to prevent incitement to racial, religious and homophobic-based hatred. You could be prosecuted and even receive a custodial sentence. But Christians are the one category who seem to be excluded from the net of PC protection. Stand-up comedians such as Bill Bailey and Ricky Gervais have made audiences laugh by mocking Christian belief and scripture verses, often in an acidic and poisonous manner. Are there any protests from sections of the 'progressive' liberal intelligentsia? Are there arrests and prosecutions, regardless of complaints of offence caused or that comments made by these comedians are an incitement to religious hatred? Absolutely none of it. Yet, I can think of one prominent TV personalty who got into serious trouble when she made some humorous remark about Wales that most right thinking people would regard as no massive deal. And this is just one of a great many examples.

Yet, the rules seem to apply very differently with regard to Islam. Whenever do you hear such comedians mocking Islam or verses from the Koran? You never do and maybe it is because they fear being targeted in a violent backlash or fatwa from angry Muslims. But Christians are very easy and soft target to direct their humour. There is a strand of Islam that advocates the stoning to death for adultery and homosexuality, and former Mayor of London, Ken Livingstone, once shared a public platform with a prominant radical Islamic cleric who had been known to express such views. Yet, those who hold to a left-of-centre, 'progressive' liberal viewpoint on a range of issues, as does the former Mayor, seem to be strangely silent when radical Islamic groups are shown to demand medieval type punishments for behaviour that PC normally claims to protect - even when what the protestors advocate would otherwise be regarded by PC supporters as repulsive; or demonstrate against British soldiers who put their lives on the line in Afghanistan, or at a recent Remembrance Day parade where we honour the dead of both world wars; or such as the demonstration in London a few years ago where the most vile obscene words, such as 'death to infidels,' were displayed on placards in response to a Danish cartoonist's depictions alleged to insult the prophet Mohammed. I must emphasise that most Muslims in the UK are law-abiding and would have nothing to do with such actions.

Were such demonstrations stopped and lots of people arrested for inciting religious hatred? Accept for a few cases, the police often seem reluctant to intervene. You are more likely to get into trouble for protesting against such demonstrations. Imagine if groups of Christians marched peacefully with law-abiding intent carrying placards demanding say the rights of Christian B&B proprietors the right on conscience grounds not to permit gay couples to share beds in their establishments; or for the law on abortion to be repealed in support of the right to life of the unborn; or the right of teachers to discuss creationism or intelligent design as an alternative point of view to, and not instead of, evolution. Such would be dismissed by sections of the liberal intelligentsia as the meanderings of ignorant, unenlightened people, or there would be calls to ban such marches for causing offence, or for those who take part to lose their jobs, or that the police should make arrests.

We hear a lot these days about Islamophobia or homophobia, as if just merely expressing an intelligently thought out alternative point of point or asking questions indicates you have some sort of psychological defect. Yet, I hear no mention of such concepts as Christophobia or Judeophobia, for that matter, particularly when swastikas are daubed on tombstones in Jewish cemetries. Over the years the media have rightly brought to our attention atrocities suffered by Muslims in Bosnia and Kosovo. Yet, whenever do they draw our attention when Christians are the victims of communal violence as in Nigeria and the Indian sub-continent, or blatant persecution as in the former Soviet Central Asian republics, Iran, Eritrea and so many other countries? Or China where there has been a phenomenal growth in Christianity, but where millions have to express their faith 'underground' because the authorities brutally clamp down on it. Where is the outcry in the 'progressive' liberal media?

Is it because Christianity is identified with white, eurocentric and British imperialism? Just as PC supporters seem to think and act as if racism cannot come from anyone but white people, or that whites can be victims of racism, so Christians are wrongly not seemingly considered as also vulnerable to discrimination. I remember a few years ago when on TV the news mentioned race riots in Birmingham, but for several days would not say from whom and to whom. It turned out to between Afro-Caribbeans and south Asians. If whites had been instigators, it would have undoubtedly been reported in the first instance. So when the French government recently banned the wearing of the burka in public, there was outrage among 'progressive' liberals in the UK about a breach of human rights and civil liberties. Yet, again the same such people are strangely quiet when employees are dismissed from their jobs for wearing small Christian artifects. Where is the outcry of human rights being breached?

Finally, there has been a growing tendency in social policy to apply a form of discrimination in order to discourage charities or bodies who receive any public subsidies from applying Christian-based 'spiritual' teachings to their clientele. Up and down Britain, such groups have been warned by local authorities or government agencies that if they don't remove the 'christian' or 'spiritual' aspect, their subsidies will be withdrawn, regardless of the tangible benefit these groups have brought to those they help. One example is Teen Challenge, a Christian charity that has a proven track record of helping drug and alcohol addicts. Yet, the Welsh Assembly has ceased public funding because the charity will not remove the 'spiritual' aspect from their rehabilitation programme. This is a disturbing trend and one set to worsen.

With regard to all forms of discrimination, I would definitely not wants to return to casual racism, for example, or other isms I remember from when I grew up in the 1970s, and in the decades before that when vile examples were commonplace on B&B vacancy signs. Anything such as that should never be even remotely legal. I am glad to be living in a more liberal minded and tolerant society than existed in my living memory. However, there has to be a balance to allow for free speech and an expression of different points of view. Political correctness has brought about a pernicious new puritanism that wrongly and stupidly closes much of this off, using the heavy sledgehammer of poorly thought-through legislation. If active moves are made to counteract discrimination, then it should be seen to apply equally to all sections of society. PC is grossly overbalanced in favour of some categories while seeing to allow and encourage intolerance and discrimination towards others - Christians in particular. Hence, it has created the conditions for Christophobia to thrive.

Where is the Acceptable Face of Capitalism?

2010-10-24T11:34:00.000-07:00

My favourite film of all time has long been Oliver Stone's 1987 epic Wall Street. Made during the 1980s stock market boom, and now looking rather dated, it portrays capitalism at its most raw, ugly and Darwinian. I therefore could not wait to see the long-awaited sequel, albeit 23 years after the original, Wall Street - Money Never Sleeps. To understand the context of the sequel, we need an overview of the original.

The great anti-hero of Wall Street is Gordon Gekko (played so brilliantly by Michael Douglas) and the surname well suits the reptilian manner he conducts business. Gekko is a highly sophisticated corporate crook who would sell his mother. He specialises in buying up failing companies, stripping their assets and then selling those parts off at a huge profit. He says at one point in the film, "I am not a destroyer of companies, I am a liberator of them." Yet, he shows no regard to those who through much sweat built them up or the many who worked for them. If so many thousands lose their livelihoods, it's a tough world.

The famous quote from Gordon Gekko speaking to a meeting of stockholders that has become immortalised is this: "The point is, ladies and gentlemen, that greed, for lack of better word, is good. Greed is right, greed works. Greed clarifies, cuts through and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit. Greed is all it forms; greed for life, for money, for love, knowledge has marked the upward surge of mankind." Gekko is a man who does not take prisoners. In his world, if you don't make the grade, you end up as food for the birds.

The hero - a bad guy and turns good guy - is Bud Fox (played by Charlie Sheen) who feels stuck in a rut working on a Wall Street trading floor. He hero worships Gekko and desires to become his protege. Fox does his homework to find out about Gekko's indulgences and what makes him tick. Realising it is Gekko's birthday, Fox finally manages to make his way into the great man's grand office with a gift of his favourite cigars. But with a foot finally in the door, will he have what it takes to stay there? Gekko takes some persuading as Fox puts several options of companies ripe for takeover, none of which appeal. That is until Fox drops the great bombshell. The airline Fox's father (played by his real life father, Martin Sheen) works for, Blue Star, is in deep trouble and going down the pan. Gekko immediately see the potential with eyes gazing like the predator he is. This is illegal insider trading, and Gekko, not yet knowing that Fox's father is an employee, asks how he knows. "I just know," responds Fox.

Now in the clutches of Gekko, the big man knows that Fox could be very useful to him. In return, Bud Fox stands to make some very serious money. But it is to come at a very high price in terms of his relationship with his salt-of-the-earth father, friends and his own moral integrity. His father very quickly sees Gekko for what he really is, and Bud Fox eventually comes to see how he has sold all and what matters down the river. He also realises that Gekko is a big con and how he himself has been duped by the man. Fox does the honourable thing and reports Gekko to the authorities for insider trading. Although Fox knows he also faces prison for the same reason, co-operating with the authorities in bringing Gekko to book could significantly minimise his own sentence. As for Gekko, he faces a very long time in jail, just like the real life charlatan of the time, Ivan Boesky.

Fast forward more than two decades to the sequel. The year is 2008 and the world is in the grip of the credit crunch. Banks are going to the wall all over the place. At the start of the film, it is 2001 and Gekko who has aged with time, grey, bearded and thinner is handed over his possessions on departure from jail, including the famous brick-sized mobile phone from the first movie. But if you expected that his long stretch of incarceration had mellowed Gordon Gekko, you are going to be dissapointed. The plot is highly elaborate, so I will try and summarise as best I can.

Gekko sees himself as a financial guru warning the financial community that the ever-expanding speculation bubble will burst anytime soon. This prophecy is set out in his book Is Greed Good?, which he promotes through lectures and TV appearances. Jacob 'Jake' Moore (played by Shia Lebouf) is engaged to Gekko's estranged daughter, Winnie (played by Carey Mulligan), who blames her father for the drug addiction and suicide of her brother, Rudy.

Jake works for Keller Zabel, a major New York investment bank. The veteran head of the bank is the ageing Lewis Zabel (played by Frank Langella), a man whom Jake regards as a mentor. Jake is at odds with the board over his insistence that money should be invested in a project to create an alternative source of energy.

But as the credit crunch really begins to bite, the seemingly invincible Keller Zabel is on the verge of collapse. The board seeks a massive multi-billion dollar bailout from the U.S government. Bretton James (played by Josh Brolin), the bullish head of rival bank, Churchill Schwartz, seeks the removal of Lewis Zabel and the takeover of Keller Zabel through false rumours and the offer of an insultingly low share price. Zabel does not get the support of his board when he needs it. Sadly, Zabel stands down, is a broken man and commits suicide by jumping in front of a train on the New York subway. Jake is distraught when he learns of his mentor's death while watching the news on TV.

Unbeknown to Winnie, Jake seeks out Gekko after a lecture he gives promoting his book. This follows from a TV interview of Gekko that Jake had seen, but which Winnie had abruptly switched off. He informs Gekko that he intends to marry his daughter. Eager to reconcile with his daughter, Gekko agrees to do a trade with Jake. Gekko will exhange information so that Jake can destroy Bretton James whom he blames for his mentor's suicide. For Gekko it would be revenge because of the part James, who was once a close business associate, played in having him sentenced to jail all those years ago. It was not Bud Fox who finally nailed Gekko, it was Bretton James. And it was James who had actually profited from the collapse of Keller Zabel. Jake will work with James for the time being, but choose the right time to bring him down.

Having painstakingly rebuilt some sort of relationship with his daughter, Gekko draws the attention of Winnie and Jake to the sum of 100 million dollars in a Swiss bank account he set up for Winnie when she was born. Gekko's plan is that the money will be withdrawn in Jake's name, supposedly to avoid any criminal proceedings that Winnie could face in the USA for unpaid tax. The money is entrusted to Gekko so that it can be legitimised and as proposed, invested in the alternative energy project that Jake desires. But Jake and Winnie are soon to find that the money does not arrive. It turns out that Gekko has 'borrowed' it and scarpered off to London where he has used this money to build up a business venture there.

Yes, it seems Gekko is back, possibly to his bad old greedy ways. Nevertheless, he turns the 100 million he has stolen from his daughter into a billion dollars and returns the 'borrowed' money to her. Jake and Winnie had separated for a time, but reconciled and have made Gekko a grandfather. He has also has got his revenge on Bretton James whose final downfall he engineered together with Jake. The overall plot is considerably more elaborate than I have described. I have just written the basic thrust of it.

Oh, and whatever became of Bud Fox? He makes a very brief appearance in the film when he bumps into Gekko at a grand charity dinner. He went on to run the Blue Star airline, built it up and sold it off, enabling himself to retire early as a multi-millionaire. Seems he had the last laugh - well, until the concluding part of the movie anyway.

This blog is largely a film review, so how would I compare the sequel to the original? I have to say that I prefered the original. The plot was much easier to follow and it was rich in lines such as "greed is good" that were both easy to remember and of substance. I have watched Wall Street many times, and could happily watch it again and again. I am not so sure I could say the same for the sequel, although I am sure to watch the DVD when it is released. It could also be the fact that the latest release came so long after the first one - 23 years in this case. I found the same for The Godfather trilogy. I still enjoy watching 1 and 2 released in 1972 and 1974 respectively. The third Godfather was not released until 1990 - 16 years after the previous. I never enjoyed that one the same as the other two.

What do the two Wall Street movies say about capitalism? It is clearly shown as at its most brutal, ruthless, dog-eat-dog and Darwinian - survival of the fittest. It takes no prisoners. Greed in itself is not good - Mr Gekko, you were wrong about that one and it became your undoing! If it means the very few become excessively rich at the expense of people's livelihoods, businesses that some have built up from nothing and as happened to so many low-income households through the American sub-prime market, people are evicted from their homes, that is immoral and unacceptable. It was because of the greed of bankers in the UK and USA throwing caution to the wind that the banking system almost collapsed and we taxpayers have had to bail them out with billions of pounds and dollars, so putting our economies trillions in deficit. We and our children will pay for this for many years to come.

But we must not throw the baby out with the dirty bathwater representing the ugly side of capitalism described above. Some form of free market is by far better than any economy based on centralised state control. History has proved that time and time again. Good capitalism is that based upon the intent to create a product or service that benefits citizens, desires to maximise a return, but does so with a social conscience. A model for this is that of famous names such as Cadburys in Birmingham and Rowntree's in York who, driven by their Quaker values in the 19th century and thereafter, not only produced the enduring and popular chocolate and sweet brands, but provided high-quality housing and social facilities for their employees. They produced, got a very high return and put back generously into their workforce and local communities.

There are other models today of good practice in how a company's employees are made to feel valued. I think of such names and Mark & Spencer and the John Lewis Partnership, which includes Waitrose. The JLP runs a profit-sharing scheme for its employees who are regarded as 'partners' in the business and so entitled to a share of the annual profits. They are also democratic in giving staff a say in how the company is run. Such a model inspires staff loyalty and commitment, and this can only have a positive outcome. No one can say that these companies do not have an enduring record of success. And there other models as well, such as co-operatives where an enterprise in run and profits shared by those who work at shop-floor level. There are some very successful such enterprises in the UK. I recommend to read Red Tory by Phillip Blond (Faber & Faber Ltd., 2010), which describes such ways of applying social capitalism. A Red Tory is how I like to describe myself.

The moral of this blog is that capitalism with all its many imperfections is that it will from time to time produce real life versions of Gordon Ghekko and Bretton James. It is not that we can stop such individuals emerging and being opportunistic. However, the ideal versions of them are ones that are entrepreneurial, have the ability to create something of value, make high returns but who really do with honourable motives, ethics and selflessness give something substantial back to their communities and society. Such individuals and their enterprises, as well as their reputations, will then stand the test of time.

Poles Apart

2010-09-08T12:19:00.000-07:00

History is a fascinating subject, but is often presented in a distorted and one-sided manner that we so often fail to get the complete picture. Certain figures are depicted as giants of men who couragiously stood up to evil and changed the course of history. It goes without saying that Winston Churchill and Franklin Roosevelt were pivotal in finally overcoming Hitler and the might of the Third Reich and at great human cost. But in overcoming one tyrant, they did so with the help of another tyrant who many could plausibly argue was an even worse one, if that were possible - Joseph Stalin.

The standard version of history we were taught from school days was that in 1930s Europe faced a growing threat from Hitler and a resergent Germany. Memories of World War 1 and the frightful number of casualties it created were still very vivid. In 1938, the Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain, felt that the best policy was to contain and make peace with Hitler. Czechoslovakia was effectively sacrificed on the altar of peaceful co-existence in the hope that no other country would be invaded. Hence, the Munich Agreement and Chamberlain's famous quote as he waived the famous piece of paper on his return to Britain: "Peace in our time."

The prevailing version of history states that Hitler reneged as his forces began their invasion of Poland in September 1939. Chamberlain felt he had no option but to give an ultimatum for German forces to withdraw from Poland or Britain would go to war. This did not happen, so World War 11 began. Seen as not up to the enormous task facing the country, Chamberlain was replaced as Prime Minister the following year by Winston Churchill as Britain faced relentless bombing by the Luftwaffe. 'Cometh the hour, cometh the man,' goes the famous maxim. That he was prepared to stand up to Hitler regardless of the cost is without dispute. But the truth had a dark side as well.

What really went on behind the scenes, but which until recently was not common knowledge is described by Laurence Rees in his superb book World War 11 Behind Closed Doors (BBC Books, 2009). It starts in 1939 when Stalin entered into a non-aggression treaty with Nazi Germany. This was effectively a marriage of convenience between two ideological polar opposites. For all his bullying of neighbouring states and mass repression of his own citizens, such as during the Great Terror of the 1930s, Stalin feared invasion by Germany and did not want to go to war with Hitler's forces. Both countries had a mutual interest in Poland, and following the infamous Nazi-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact agreed by Molotov and Von Ribbentrop (the two foreign ministers), Germany and the Soviet Union carved up Poland between them and confirmed a mutual boundary line through the country.

The German invasion of Poland from the west was the reason Britain declared war. Yes, the German invasion of Poland was quick, ruthless and brutal, and Polish forces were no match. But so was the Soviet invasion of the eastern part. Red Army soldiers and the NKVD did not hesitate to throw their weight around - forcibly entering homes, staying in them without being invited, stealing food and occupants' belongings, arresting people for all sorts of assumed offences, resulting in many being deported to remote areas of the Soviet empire thousands of miles from home. Such people suffered inhuman conditions and many died. Probably the the worst atrocity was the mass execution of over 20,000 Polish officers in the forest at Katyn near Smolensk in 1940. The mass graves were ironically discovered by the Germans in 1943. Until Mikhail Gorbachev allowed the records to be opened up in the 1980s, the Soviets had always denied this mass crime, claiming the Poles were actually executed by the invading Germans in 1941.

It was Hitler's reneging on the non-aggression pact that changed everything. Codenamed Operation Barbarossa, 4.5 million predominantly German troops swept through large areas of the western Soviet Union in the first few months after the invasion began on the 22 June 1941. They were initially so successful that with the Red Army being totally overwhelmed by superior German military technology and fighting prowess, the Stalin regime seemed on the brink of collapse. Infact, at one point German forces were within 20 miles of Moscow.

But as Napoleon found out, and one reason why Bismarck once suggested never attempt to invade Russia, Hitler really was to bite off far more than he could ever chew. With the unforbidding Russian winter and its endless geographical expanses, plus the determined resistance of the Red Army reinforced by units of fearless and ferocious fighting men transferred from Siberia, the Germans were beaten back. With supply lines getting longer and thinner, mechanised military equipment and weaponry inoperable due to temperatures falling 30 to 40 below zero, plus German soldiers without adequate winter clothing, losses were very heavy. Early on in the campaign senior German commanders urged Hitler to authorise the ample supply of winter clothing to the front, but he refused it on grounds that his forces would overwhelm Moscow before the winter and that to agree to their requests would only encourage defeatism.

The German army were to recover and achieve success again in the spring and summer of 1940, and rather than focus on Moscow, they advanced towards the Volga and the nearby oilfields. But it was at the Battle of Stalingrad that the tide really began to change in favour of the Soviet Union. This battle was fierce and losses heavy on both sides. It was long, ugly and grinding with endless hand-to-hand fighting. The local population face starvation and many resorting to killing and eating domestic animals and rats to survive. And it was also to be another harsh Russian winter, which meant that many German soldiers froze to death, if they were not killed by bullets, along with the stoicism of the Red Army, that the great long push started shifting in the other direction. It was at the tank battle at Kursk that the Red Army was now gaining supremacy, particularly with the awesome T-34 tank whose wide tracking were able to perform better than the German Tiger tanks on the Russian terrain and snow.

With a resurgent Stalin gaining the upper hand on the Eastern Front, it was in order to bring about the demise of Hitler that Churchill and Roosevelt were prepared to a deal with the great monster himself. In 1942, the two Western leaders together confirmed the Atlantic Charter which affirmed the principals of freedom of speech, liberty and the right of countries to determine their own destinies. Churchill was also adamant at that point that Poland should return to its boundaries as they existed before the Soviet invasion. But this was to be compromised in order to get Stalin on side, even though they must have been aware of the millions he had killed in his own country and how he had by force taken the Baltic states, eastern Poland and part of Finland. Stalin had asserted in meetings with Churchill in Moscow that any post-war settlement must involve the Soviet Union retaining and keeping that part of Poland it had taken after the Molotov-Von Ribbentrop agreement in 1939.

It was also as Churchill and Stalin were getting to know one another that another act of gross inhumanity occurred: that of the forced deportation of nearly 200,000 Tartars from their homeland in the Crimea to a remote and inhospitable region of Uzbekistan several days journey away. Like the Germans did to the Jews, the NKVD forced men, women and children, young and old onto cattle wagons. Many died in appalling conditions. What were the reasons for Stalin ordering this? Because some Tartars collaborated with the German invaders. No allowance was made for the fact that many Tartars had fought bravely in the Red Army. It was one of several instances of Stalin's policy of ethnic cleansing.

Stalin was get his way with regard to Poland as confirmed with Churchill and Roosevelt as part of the Big Three conferences of Tehran and Yalta. The two Western leaders agreed not only to make plans for a Second Front whereby Allied forces would invade mainland Europe from the French coast, but that the part of Poland taken by the Stalin's forces in 1939 would cease to be Polish and be part instead of the Soviet Union. Charming as many found him to be when dealing with on a personal level, Stalin proved not to be a man of his word and one who had duped the West with regard to the post-war future of Eastern Europe. Sadly, the Western Allies were to betray the Poles in the process.

Betrayal is very much the approriate word to use in how we came to treat the Poles. Britain went to war because Germany invaded Poland. Yet, we did not take the same stance against Stalin for invading the eastern side of the country. Hundreds of thousands of Poles had bravely fought with the allied forces throughout the war. Some were pilots with the RAF during the Battle of Britain. Yet, Churchill was now telling leaders of the free Polish movement that they should accept Stalin's demands and concede the disputed territory, arguing that it was predominantly occupied not by Poles, but by Ukrainians. Poles who had so fought felt betrayed and that promises to them had been broken. In one confrontation mentioned in the book, Lieutenant General Wladyslaw Anders, commander of the Polish 11 Corps in the British army, said to Churchill, "Our soldiers fought for Poland, fought for the freedom of their country. What can we their commanders, tell them now? Soviet Russia, until 1941 in close alliance with Germany, now takes half our territory, and in the rest of it she wants to establish her power." Churchill reacted angrily blaming the Poles for not accepting the eastern border issue earlier and then the ultimate insult after all the Polish sacrifices he told Anders, "We have enough troops today. We do not need your help. You can take away your divisions. We shall do without them." (p349-350)

Sad to say that Anders was proved right. Stalin got what he wanted in not only establishing the pre-1941 eastern boundary, but in getting a 'friendly' government in Poland and several East European countries, all coming under the crushing heal of communism. And as the Red Army advanced westwards, many atrocities and abuses accurred, including the widespread rape of German and Hungarian women. As for Poles who had fought with the Allies, the message seemed to be once the war was over to 'go home, we don't need you anymore.' Many saw little option but to return to Poland knowing it never became the free land they had fought for, and it was forced to become one of several Soviet satellite staes for decades to come. Poles were also conspicuous by their absence from the VE parade in London.

It was the rise of the Polish free trade union, Solidarity, in at the beginning of the 1980s, and its campaign against repression and for greater freedoms, that set the scene for the fall of communism nearly a decade later. Despite Solidarity being outlawed by martial law imposed by General Jarulzelski, the wind of change could not be held back indefinitely. The first real taste of freedom that Poles, East Germans, Hungarians, Czechs, Slovaks, Romanians and Bulgarians got was when the Iron Cutain and the Berlin Wall finally collapsed in 1989. This was when World War 11 actually ended for so many, long after it did for us here in Western Europe.

There were never any Nuremburg-style war crimes trials for Stalin's henchmen for atrocities such as Katyn. Soviet communism under Stalin was no better than under Hitler's Nazis. Human life was cheap to both. On top of the 27 million Soviet military and civilian deaths caused by the war, Stalin had many millions killed either because they were out of favour with him or or to meet quotas. He also established the brutal Gulag network of prison and labour camps. One high raking British official serving in Moscow said, "we really came to think that Stalin was worse than Hitler, if that were possible. I mean, it's like one devil being blacker than another." (p394)

It was in a cruel twist of irony this year that the plane carrying the Polish President and much of the country's elite to the site of the Katyn massacre for a 60th anniversary commemoration event crashed in a forest near Smolensk, killing all on board. In contrast to the extremely brutal atmosphere in 1940 when a significant part of the Polish elite was eliminated, the current Russian government not only agreed to host the commemoration, but offered to assist in any way it could in the crash investigation. Both were confirmation of its desire for a new era of friendly relations with Poland.

Since Poland became one of the new member states of the EU in 2004, large numbers of Poles have come to work in Britain. They are all too often unfairly depicted as undercutting British workers and offering cheaper services as plumbers and builders. But no one can say they are unwilling to work hard, and as the this article has so vividly described, Britain really does owe the Polish people a debt of gratitude.

Football Needs to Come Home

2010-08-08T01:45:00.000-07:00

This is my first blog of the Cameron era, but it is not about politics. "Phew, thank goodness for that," I hear you say. No, this is about the present state of what is rightly or wrongly referred to as the national game.

As the new soccer season gets underway, it is sadly a pretty safe bet that one of the so-called top four clubs will yet again hold the Premier League trophy aloft next May. Over the last decade it has passed back and forth between Chelsea, Manchester United and Arsenal. The team who wins in the end is one of those with the greatest financial clout because they have access to the resources to buy top international players. I heard a very interesting interview yesterday (07 August 2010) on the BBC Radio 4 Today programme with veteran TV celebrity chef, Delia Smith, who is also a majority shareholder of Norwich City, newly promoted to the Championship Division (the current second tier of English football). She was not discussing the best way to boil an egg but the state of soccer in this country, and I wholeheartedly agreed with what she said.

Smith lamented the warped priorities who run football. How the FA are willing to pay England manager, Fabio Capello, £6 million a year while small clubs like Chester City are allowed to go out of business. She added that in the days of the old Football League of 4 divisions, it was the best team who won the trophies. Now it is all about money and it is the team with the lucre to pay the sky-high transfer fees and 7-figure salaries for the top players. The smaller clubs much lower down the pecking order often struggle to survive or face going to the wall altogether.

In a bygone age, the local football club was a key component of the local community and a reflection of it. Talented boys would grow to play for the local team and go on to become local and even national legends accordingly, such as the late Bobby Moore. Yes, some did go elsewhere at a young age to play for big name clubs. The great Manchester United team of the 1960s had George Best from Belfast, Bobby Charlton from Newcastle and Dennis Law from Scotland, but amongst players who were local. You cannot altogether shut out market principles from football. However, coming back to the present, clubs such as Arsenal and Chelsea have not only ceased to refelect their local communities, but have effectively ceased to be English clubs except in name only. But for the a John Terry, Frank Lampard or a Theo Walcott here and there, these and other top clubs are predominantly made up of expensively purchased and paid multi-millionaire already well established players from overseas.

The implications are very serious for our national game and could go some way in explaining why our performance at the top international level is at best mediocre or cringingly poor, as in the recent World Cup. So many very talented British teenangers with potentially great futures do not get a look in. Developing talent takes time, patience and investment. How else do you develop the Wayne Rooneys and David Beckhams of the future? But sad to say that as billionaire plutocrats and oligarchs, like Roman Abramovich, take over the big clubs and make them bigger, they demand a quick return on their investment. Hence, clubs then become full of expensive celebrity names from overseas.

Let us not forget that Manchester United came to dominate English and European football under Alex Ferguson in the 1990s because of their famous youth programme. It was through this scheme that the likes of local talent such as Paul Scholes, Nicky Butt, the Neville brothers and also David Beckham, who although from London had always wanted to plan for Manchester United, later came to be household names. While not as extensive as the likes of Chelsea and Arsenal, Manchester United nevertheless followed the same trend in recent years and had a growing number of top overseas players, such is the insatiable drive for success.

There are clubs now in the second and third tiers who in living memory came to dominate ou national game. I think of Leeds United and Nottingham Forest. There were others such as Coventry City and Southampton (whom I support) who while not ones to win the league, were in the top division season after season, and did each win the FA Cup in 1976 and 1987. Now such teams as these four face a long uphill battle to get back into the top flight. Then there are a great many other clubs who while having a strong loyal local support base, seem endlessly stuck in a rut because they simply do not have the money to pay for talented players and facilities. And even those clubs who do finally make it to the Premier League often struggle to stay there and it has been said they stand to lose some £20 million when relegated. I think of the likes of Watford, Burnley and Derby County. Will Blackpool survive more than a season in the Premiership? This is all a national scandal.

A root and branch shake-up is urgently needed to ensure equity across the board from top to bottom so that all clubs get a fair crack of the whip. There is a lot of money sloshing around, but it is too concentrated among a very small number of clubs who have the means to buy success. And what is the purpose of the FA if it can't ensure that the large number of clubs, many of whom face constant struggle, get access to the resouces it needs. And all needs to be done to ensure that our own pool of national talent is given every opportunity and chance to develop and become players, possibly later going on to play for the national team.

Remember the famous anthem for the England team way back in Euro 96, Football's Coming Home? Well the big trophies are never going to come home while the national game carries on as it is.

The Ghost of Tony Blair

2010-04-28T11:47:00.000-07:00

If you enjoy political thrillers, as I most certainly do, The Ghost is well worth watching. It is based on the novel with the same title by Robert Harris, a former TV journalist whose previous best sellers include Archangel, Fatherland and Enigma.

The Ghost is a story about a charismatic former British Prime Minister, Adam Lang (played by Piers Brosnan), who as premier led the country into a controversial Middle East war. Having left office, he is now on the lucrative lecture circuit and looking to publish his memoirs. Does this remind you of anyone in particular? This starts out as a thriller with the mysterious death of Mike McAcra, the ghostwriter chosen to write the Lang memoirs, off of Martha's Vineyard in Massachusetts. Was it because he knew too much? A replacement (played by Ewan McGregor) is called upon by the publishers to complete this daunting task in just a few weeks.

As the plot develops, Adam Lang is forced to remain in exile on Martha's Vineyard while staying at his publisher's residence there. This is because he has been called upon to testify before the International Criminal Court in The Hague, and faces arrest if he steps outside of the United States. Lang had been accused by his former Foreign Secretary, Richard Rycart (played by Robert Pugh), of complicity in the torture of terrorist suspects by the CIA, which included the practice of waterboarding and transporting of such captives for incarceration in Guantanamo Bay.

What may have led to McAra's suspicious death was what he had uncovered hidden in the original manuscript Lang himself was supposed to have put together, and was about to disclose. Once the new ghostwriter had himself discovered the dark secrets, he was likewise in danger. The plot is more elaborate than I can describe here, but has a very dramatic climax both for Lang and his ghostwriter, and a very bizarre link with Lang's wife, Ruth (played by Olivia Williams). I am not going to say what actually happens at the end. You need to see the film or read the book, or both.

Is Adam Lang modelled on Tony Blair? Robert Harris, who himself was once a supporter of Blair and New Labour in the early years and is a friend of Peter Mandelson, has never confirmed or denied it. However, there are some parallels with the Blair premiership and in particular, the ongoing controversy over the war in Iraq. Enoch Powell once said that "all political careers end in failure." Blair will be remembered more than anything for the perceived failure of Iraq as Margaret Thatcher was for the Poll Tax.

In his book The End of the Party (Penguin/Viking, 2010), Andrew Rawnsley describes the great failing of Tony Blair that in his eagerness to support the Americans in invading Iraq and toppling Saddam Hussein, was to not get vital guarantees from President Bush with regard to the aftermath. The invasion was the relatively easy bit. The post-invasion period would involve the arduous task of rebuilding the country and a peaceful transistion to democracy. Well it was supposed to.

There were romantic notions among neo-conservative hawks within the Bush administration of jubilant Iraqis greeting their American liberators as they entered Baghdad and throwing flowers onto tanks, just like Paris in 1944. What instead happened was that the country descended into unimaginable chaos, death and destruction. The then U.S. Defence Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, said, "we don't do nation building." This said it all. The American civil authority in Iraq in the immediate aftermath dismantled the military, police and civil administrative infrastructures, and refused to listen to experienced senior British diplomats and other figures of substance who warned of the serious consequences of doing so. Sadly, they were proved right. This left large numbers of Iraqi men without any means to support their families, and into the vacuum came Sunni, Shia and Ba'athist insurgents. Shootings and bombings created carnage on a daily basis and basic public utilities, such as the electricity and water became almost non-existent (see my blog Weapons of Mass Deception).

I personally supported the case for the invasion in 2003. I wanted to see the back of the ruthless tyrant, Saddam Hussein, who for a quarter of a century had murdered countless thousands of Iraqi citizens - Arabs and Kurds, and had started wars in the region. How many millions from within and beyond the borders of Iraq had pointlessly died? I therefore felt the cause was just, even if it had not got formal UN backing. Not that I thought the UN could claim the moral high ground after its neglectful record in Rwanda and Bosnia. Nevertheless, the failure to plan thoroughly for the aftermath of the invasion was a costly mistake of huge proportions on the part of the American-led coalition. Had Tony Blair succeeded with this aspect of the whole venture, how so different his legacy could have been.

As for The Ghost - the book and the film, we must not of course forget that whatever can be read from the plot, it is fiction.

Looks Could Kill

2010-04-26T11:39:00.000-07:00

The live television party leaders' debates have brought a colourful dimension to the General Election campaign. Questions get asked of how the each leader will deal with certain issues as Prime Minister, and it is interesting both to see what answers they give and they interact with each other. In a sense, this is a welcome development in what has seemed like a rather lacklustre campaign. And yes it has boosted Nick Clegg's prospects like nothing else could.

Because we now live in a 24-hour media age, image is seen is seen as the crucial element, more than anything else, that wins or loses elections. The potential for television to swing elections started with the famous Kennedy versus Nixon American presidental debate in 1960. JFK came across as youthful, handsome and visionary while Nixon, who had been Vice-President for almost two terms, looked gaunt, unshaven and uncomfortable. Kennedy won the election by a narrow margin, but the TV debate is said to have been what clinched it.

Image, through how a prospective leader looks and applies verbal skills, may well be an important feature. But if it is the reason why people vote to the exclusion of other factors, this has potentially serious implications for democracy and the type of government we end up with. Tony Blair is a very obvious recent example.

Up until the 1997 General Election, Tony Blair came across, as Kennedy did in his day, as this young, dynamic, visionary, telegenic leader in contrast to John Major whose appeal was much diminished after the many long years of Conservative government, which looked tired, uninspiring and sleaze ridden. This despite the fact that by 1997, the public finances were in a healthy state and the economy was booming. Blair seemed to offer a new style of politics and won the election by the biggest post-war landslide. He of course went on to win two further elections with healthy majorities. But did people vote because they knew what New Labour's policies were or was it because Blair looked good on TV and on campaign posters?

A consequence of the New Labour years is we are considerably less free than we were 13 years ago (see my blog Manifesto of the Silent Majority Party). As I mentioned there, more than 4,300 new criminal offences have been created, pursuits long lawfully engaged in have been banned and we are said to be the most surveilled citizens in the western world, while failing to tackle the criminality that really blights the lives of the law-abiding and most vulnerable. And the country's public finances are now in the worst state in living memory - even worse than when Denis Healey, as Chancellor of the Exchequer, had to go cap in hand to the IMF in 1976.

And so I come here to Nick Clegg. He has undoubtedly performed well in the live leaders' debates and is, so it seems, on course to hold the balance of power in a hung Parliament after the 6 May. On the TV screen he has come across as youthful, passionate and offering a different type of politics from the two 'old' parties, and this has massively boosted the Liberal Democrats' poll ratings. However, beware. Is this boost due to Clegg looking good on the TV screen or because of his party's policies? I heard of a survey last week of people who were persuaded to vote for the Liberal Democrats, but did not have a clue when asked if they knew of policies the party stood for. Are people aware that they are the most pro-EU, for example, of the main parties and perhaps take a more 'liberal' line on some criminal justice and social issues that a lot of voters for the party would not approve of.

In the last few days, Nick Clegg has made public his demands for working with the party with most seats in a hung Parliament, such as reform of the voting system. There be merit in this, depending on your point of view. But by so blatantly making such a demand, and as David Cameron said today, Clegg could effectively hold the country to ransom, despite still coming third as for number of seats. This could turn out to be a tactical error on Clegg's part and maybe the bubble will burst. Harold Wilson once said that "a week is a long time in politics," and there is still ten days to polling. But just to reiterate the old saying: Be careful what you wish for - or vote for!

Intelligent Design, Not Random Chance

2010-04-17T12:07:00.000-07:00

When I look at any object, such as the watch on my wrist, it is obvious that intelligent design is what made them what they are and not some random unanticipated incident. Just as the meal you eat did not arrive on your plate due to a bomb explosion at the local Tescos. Big bangs, whatever the scale, create chaos rather than order. So does not this logic apply to the amazing complexity of all life forms - humans, in particular?

To suggest that someone or something greater than ourselves created life is to be ridiculed as if you are ignorant and unenlightened. It is as if how can you believe in a God as creator of all things when science has 'proved' that it all began with the Big Bang in the universe and that all life forms on Earth originated from a biological soup? That life evolved from one type into something else. So that what eventually became humans started as some creature that came out of water, developed arms and legs, enabling it to climb trees, later to become a primate (such as a monkey or ape). Then the mass of body hair came off, the spine became fully vertical and thus became human.

This is regarded and taught as fact by the scientific and educational establishments, the media and other influential voices, and the alternative point of view is not even given a look in. Most prominent among these are the biologist, Richard Dawkins, author of the best selling The God Delusion, and the journalist, Christopher Hitchens, author of God is Not Great. Both are radical atheists who take a very intolerant view of anyone who believes in a transcendant being greater than themselves. Dawkins has even refused to debate in the media with other scientists, eminent in their respective fields who believe in the concept of intelligent design. Such people are labelled and dismissed as creationists and regarded as having not earned the right to be taken seriously enough to be debated with. Creationist is used as a term of abuse as if such people are ignorant, wide-eyed, redneck fundamentalists from the American Bible Belt.

Yet, I noticed when watching a documentary made by Dawkins on Channel 4 several months ago, how when he was describing the abundant life at work in a fistful of soil he was holding, he spoke with such wonder at awe at this process. It was as if he was speaking of some great force at work transcending our human understanding, although he would of course deny the supernatural element.

I myself believe in God. Although I am no scientist, I look at the shear complexity of living things and how they are formed, so well ordered that each part of them serve a partucular function, and my own logic tells me that an intelligent being must surely be behind all this. Otherwise, we are left relying on zillions of random chances in zillions of different circumstances. And why are not species not developing into other species before our very eyes? I cannot see monkeys or other primates still changing into human beings. What has undoubtedly happened over thousands of years is that species change in order to adapt to changing environmental and climatic conditions, but that is something different.

If a flawed human being can design the watch on my wrist or the car I drive, how much more can a highly intelligent supernatural being design the very brains that can themselves design gadgets and machines we use? Whether it is the human brain and body down to some insignificant blade of grass, the complexity and order is such that it far surpasses the intricate workings of the most sophisticated modern computer.

Figures such as Dawkins would argue that scientific evidence proves Charles Darwin's theory of evolution as irrefutable. But science has itself been subject to having its theories and assumed facts being subject to critical analysis and then being refuted as new evidence has emerged. That is how science and medicine has advanced to the extent it has since the 19th century. But science is not and can never be sufficient to analyse that unseen dimension of the spiritual realm, which in its infinite scale is way beyond the human brain to contemplate.

But sadly, children are not taught in so many of our schools that there may be another theory as to why life exists. The supernatural is treated as not to be even mentioned. Evolution, despite what its many influential proponents say, has not been proven beyond doubt and never can be. Yet it has the monopoly on how life forms developed is taught. Who really are the bigoted fundamentalists? Not Christians like me who believe that children should be taught about the other possibilities and then encouraged to make their own minds up.

Manifesto of the Silent Majority Party

2010-03-17T09:48:00.000-07:00

In his 1997 election victory speech, Tony Blair said it was "a new dawn, is it not?" It was as if Britain faced a bright new future under New Labour. And if Blair's previous famous soundbites such as "tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime" and his 3 priorities of government as "education, education and education" were to be actually implemented, then perhaps the future may well have been brighter. The reality has far from lived up to that.

13 years on, Britain is far less free, increasingly shackled as a consequence of New Labour's misguided belief that legislation is the way to change or ban the way people behave and think, while being totally ineffective in curbing the crime and anti-social behaviour that really blights the lives of law abiding people. Add to this the massive growth of the state and the fact that the country is close to bankruptcy, the New Labour years, considering the scale of their election victories, are one big lost opportunity to really transform Britain for the better. The Blair years were seen as a period of consistent economic prosperity, and Gordon Brown as Chancellor of the Exchequer took credit for it and asserted that it was "no more Tory boom and bust." But it was a false prosperity propped up by unprecendented levels of borrowing and indebtedness.

Many books have been written about New Labour Britain. One superb book that really exposes the underbelly of the Blair/Brown years and the extent to which the country has gone bonkers is Not With a Bang, But a Whimper by Theodore Dalrymple (Monday, 2009).

The following quotation from the book sums it up for me: "The Zeitgeist of the country is now one of sentimental moralising combined with the utmost cynicism, when the government's pretended concern for the public welfare co-exists with the most elementary dereliction of duty. There is an absenceof any kind of idealism that is a necessary precondition of probity, so that bad faith prevails almost everywhere. The government sees itself as the engineer of souls (to use the phrase so elequently coined by Stalin). Government thus concerns itself with what people think, feel and say - as well as trying to change their freely chosen habits - rather than with performing its one inescapable duty: that of preserving the peace. It is more concerned that young men should not smoke in prison or make silly jokes to policemen (such as the young man in Oxford who jokingly told a mounted police officer that his horse was gay) than that they should not attack and permanently maim their elders and betters" (p.110).

The main political parties are competing for what they regard as the centre ground. The real centre ground as occupied the the British public is some distance away from that of the political elite. We may get a change of government on the 06 May, but no real change in the direction of this country over the last few decades. I therefore propose a manifesto that represents real change and one that could win an massive support if offered to the British public. It needs to be simple and focus on a small number of priority issues that really could make a difference. Here are just a few of them below.

1. Probably the biggest modern scourge for most law-abiding people is violent crime and anti-social behaviour. Despite the range of powers available through legislation, and the option to use Anti-Social Behaviour Orders (ASBOs), it is as if politicians, the judiciary and the police seem to be less effective in tackling these evils that blight the lives of so many people. Because of endless targets imposed on the police, they are often more likely to clamp down rigorously on offences that most of us would regard as hardly worth of second thought, such as the one above where a person makes a comment in jest about a police horse, while behaviour that threatens the physical well being of citizens is not tackled with such vigour because of the commitment required to do so. A major disincentive is that the whole process of arresting just one person can take several hours, including the amount of paperwork involved. Even where prosecutions are successful, sentencing is often paltry compared the seriousness of the violent offence, and too many offenders only serve part of their sentence.

In his autobiography The Outsider (HarperCollins, 2002), Keith Hellawell, former Chief Constable of West Yorkshire Police and later government drugs czar, recalls when he first became a police officer some 50 or so years ago. He mentions that abuses did take place in police interview rooms, but that a better service was provided to the public by the police back then. That was in the days when most communities and even villages had a local police station and police officers were out walking the beat. They knew their communities and who the local villains were. Those days are sadly long gone. We tend nowadays to only see police officers race past in their patrol cars, or we don't see them because they are at desks in increasinly remote police stations (or more appropriately, headquarters) dealing with paperwork and filling in forms. We need to get the police away from their desks and the pointless targets, out of their patrol cars and be present out on our streets and in our local communities acting as a deterent to crime and anti-social behaviour. That is what we pay our taxes for and that is what the public want. Why have TV series about policing of a bygone age such as Life on Mars - despite some of DCI Gene Hunt's excesses - and Heartbeat proved so popular?

Additionally, there is a case for zero-tolerance policing covering all types of offence. So not tolerating grafitti or littering, for example makes the more serious violent offences less likely to happen. This worked well in New York City after introduced by Mayor Rudolph Guiliani in the 1990s from when crime fell dramatically in a city once notorious for its murder rate. It was also introduced by a senior police officer, Ray Mallon, here in the UK in Middlesbrough in the same period, and likewise the crime rate fell significantly. He was sadly removed from his post, regardless of protests from a locally supportive public, on what later turned out to be spurious grounds. He later left the police and is now the elected Mayor of that town. There is entrenched resistance to it here among senior police and political circles but if something is proven to work, why not use it?

2. This brings me onto the subject of sentencing. Natural justice to most people would surely decree that the punishment should surely fit the crime. If someone commits a violent criminal offence that results in a victim being injured, maimed for life or worse, deprived of their right to life, then the sentence should be severe. It should be such that it acts as a deterent to the offender to re-offend or to other potential offenders. Sadly, this is happening less nowadays and it is as if we have lost the whole concept of punishment. Sentences are often way too short and made much shorter again because of early release. Perhaps it is because the prisons are full or to keep costs down. Well the answer is either to build more prisons or release the many who are in for relatively minor offences such as non-payment of fines. It is surely not beyond our wit to recoup fines by attachment to earnings or benefits. We need to get back to no-nonsense tough sentencing. There is too much focusing on prisoners' human rights. Surely as a law-abiding citizen, my human right to walk in any public space without the threat to my physical safety should prevail.

So talking of punishment fitting the crime, should capital punishment be re-introduced? When it was abolished in 1965, the deal as understood was that a life sentence for murder really would mean life. This is no longer the case. What a judge will call life can these days actually mean a convicted person being released well before their natural life ends. Many will regard capital punishment as barbaric, but surely if you cold-bloodedly take a life, the message a civilised society should give is that it values an innocent life so hightly that you forfeit your own. And anyway, it is arguably more cruel to lock someone up in a prison for the rest of their days. This is not some crazy right-wing approach. A former American President much admired by 'progressive' liberals, Bill Clinton, was willing to apply the death penalty for murderers when he was Governor of Arkansas.

3. New Labour has shown a zeal like no other government in history to legislate in order to make or ban people from behaving or thinking in a certain way. Since coming to power in 1997, they have created around 4,300 new offences - amounting to nearly one new offence everyday, and many of these go from the sublime to the ridiculous. Just to give a few examples: 1. failing to nominate a keyholder to switch off your burglar alarm while you are away; 2. setting off a nuclear bomb (I thought that was a wind-up when I read that, but is actually true!); 3. to sell or offer a game bird killed on a Sunday or Christmas Day; 4. selling a grey squirrel; 5. failure to attend a hearing by a bus lane adjudicator; and 6. failing to have a licence for a church concert (for which you can go to jail). This government has brought in 50 criminal justice bills, whereas there used to be about 1 per decade.

We are now absolutely bogged down with far too much legislation, much of it from EU directives that have not been debated in Parliament. By stealth we have got to a position where the state now intrudes into every nook and cranny of our lives where it has no business doing so. Particularly sinister is the use of anti-terrorist legislation to stop tourists innocently taking pictures of historical buildings; or local authorities, likes ours here in Poole did in one well publicised case, to spy on parents to check if they really do live in the catchment area for a sought-after school. And talking of local authorities, many are putting gadgets in bins to monitor the rubbish people throw out. The old East German Stasi would be impressed.

It may not yet be Stalin with a secret police and the Gulag network , but George Orwell's 1984 no longer seems a million miles away. Is it any wonder that the police are increasingly ineffective in fighting real crime when they have all this nonsense and triviality to deal with? I therefore propose one more piece of legislation: a consolidating Act of Parliament to scrap all but the most essential offences of these 4,300. Perhaps there are a lot more laws and offences from before 1997 that could also be reversed. I want tough law and order, but I also want to live in a free society.

4. I propose a counter-cultural revolution to sweep away political correctness, along with the industry it creates in diversity monitoring, targeting, compiling of statistics, compulsory training (which is a requirement if you work in the public sector, as I did for many years), and the related publicly-funded co-ordinator type jobs seen advertised in the Public Appointments page of The Guardian. What is it about words, which in themselves do not cause offence to those whom others perceive as victims, but which someone in Whitehall or working for QUANGO decides must be changed to a different word or phrase with a different meaning? Before you know it, you find yourself being told that a word you have used and thought nothing of is one you should not or cannot use anymore. Except for what really could incite hatred and violence, we should not have to fear words. We should also not have to be afraid of expressing points of view we ourselves hold or hearing those we strongly disagree with. The old maxim: "I absolutely loathe what you have to say, but I would be willing to fight and die for your right to say it" underpins the spirit of democracy and a free society.

The modern orthodoxy is that you must accept and not question multiculturism - that all cultures and customs are equally valid, even where they result in behaviour that would provoke outrage among 'progressive' liberals if practiced within white British society. It is as though proper open debate is closed off because to raise any valid questions concerning multiculturism could mean being labelled racist, which many thoughtful people fear. I would not want a return to the casual racism so common in the 1970s. The colour of a person's skin or cultural traditions is not and should never be an issue. If someone has made Britain their home, is prepared to work and contribute to our society, and abide by our laws, then what is the problem? I am not a multiculturalist. I am a monoculturalist. Rather than deter racism, multiculturalism actually promotes it by effectively encouraging ethnic and religious groups to remain segregated within their own enclaves and practices, and also to think of themselves as victims within the dominant white society rather than in fact being free of the constraints they or the generations preceding them escaped from in the lands of their origin. It also does not encourage ethnic groups to learn the language of the host society - hence the illogical situation of public services spending millions of taxpayers' money to provide information in a multiplicity of languages because there are so many who cannot or will not learn to speak English.

Monoculturalism says this is Britain with its own laws, customs and history and when you choose to live here, you are accepting as such. It also asserts that while all blatant discrimination should be unlawful, it promotes a colour-blind approach to the provision of essential services. You simply deal with the person on the basis of not what they are, but what their need is. I would be absolutely slated by the anti-racism lobby for saying this, but this is the most effective way to overcome racism. From the Huguenots (French Protestants) in the 16th Century, the Jews in the 19th to South Asian and Chinese immigrant families in the 20th, Britain has benefited by their hard work, business acumen and willingness to assimilate into our society.

5. A root and branch reform of the social security system - possibly the biggest of the great welfare state Stalinist behemoths. It supports a large proportion of the UK population in being unproductive at huge public expense. Incapacity Benefit, for example, is one that has been particularly open to abuse by people who are declared unable to work on dubious grounds. Yet, successive governments have shied away from radical reform of the system. Margaret Thatcher, who overcame trade union power and privatised state monopolies, only really tinkered with the system. On becoming Prime Minister in 1997, Tony Blair appointed Frank Field (an expert on social security) as Minister for Welfare Reform and told him to "think the unthinkable" on tackling welfare dependency. However, his attempts to implement the "unthinkable" were blocked within government and he lost his job a year later. Yet, where there is sufficient political will, radical change can happen. In the 1990s, the American state of Wisconsin and New York City under Mayor Guiliani implemented programmes with the aim of getting claimants off welfare and into employment as quickly as possible, and also workfare schemes so that those still in receipt of social security had to earn it by doing socially useful work. This could take the form of clearing graffiti and tidying up public spaces. There is a need for this approach here in the UK.

6. Public services such as health and education are too controlled from the centre - Whitehall. It is obvious from several other European countries that Social Insurance systems, whereby citizens take out private health insurance plans, but the state provides subsidies directly or indirectly through tax relief, seems to provide a superior quality of health care provision compared to that of the NHS. However, assuming the British are still not ready to go down this route, the running of NHS trusts and hospitals should be decentralised to the local level where provison occurs, so they can decide how to spend their own budgets to meet need as applicable at local level.

Same for schools, who again should be able to make decisions as to their own needs and how best to spend the money they are allocated without interference from central and local government. Many the ridiculous and pointless targets should cease so that teachers can get on with the job they joined the profession to do. In addition, any provider, whether groups of parents, charities or companies should be encouraged to set up 'free' schools within the state sector as has proved successful in Sweden (see my blog Gove For It). They also have a voucher scheme which enables a parent to buy a place for their child at a school of their choice with a voucher provided by the state. This should be available in this country so that parents can choose school places for their children in both state and independent sectors. It would encourage schools to compete and drive up standards to the benefit of children. One last point about education, while I would not necessarily want to see an absolute return to the approach in schools of many years ago when lots of abuses of authority did take place, the balance of discipline should go a long way back in favour of teaching staff so that pupils know there could be serious consequences to their actions, and that teachers can know they themselves face no action where they have to apply physical restraint on violent children.

7. One New Labour policy I thought really was a move in the right direction was that of directly-elected mayors who unlike the ceremonial mayors in most towns, actually do have executive powers. Sadly, only 11 of them have been created for such large towns such as Hartlepool, Doncaster and Middlesborough where it has proved both successful and popular with the local population. And unlike as is the case with MPs, MEPs and even local councillors, people actually know who their elected mayor is. These individuals really do seem to make a difference to the localities they represent, particularly those who are independent of the large party machines. Stuart Drummond in Hartlepool, for example, was a call centre worker and became famous in the news when he stood for mayor in 2002 dressed as a monkey mascot. Nevertheless, he was elected much to the disdain of the onlooking Peter Mandelson, but the outfit masked the serious politician he was to become in office. And he must be doing something right as he has been twice re-elected and is said to have made a significant difference for the town in terms of the local environment and combating anti-social behaviour.

Not only should we have locally elected mayors all over the UK, I believe we should apply this democratic principle to other senior officials such as police chief constables. It is the norm in the USA and would make such officials accountable to their local communities and more sensitive to their concerns. The Conservatives have proposed to set up such a system if they win the forthcoming General Election. It will be fiercely resisted, but it could go some way to improving law and order in the public's eyes. Power devolved to the localties and democratic local accountability does work. Look at the success of Switzerland as a democracy and in its economy.

Finally, we need to lance the boil once and for all with regard to our membership of the European Union, an issue that has caused so much division in our political system and across the nation. Our political leaders continually fail to be honest with the British people about what it costs us financially to be part of the EU and the lack of democratic accountability which means endless laws, directives and regulations that stifle our freedoms. Therefore, the answer is to give the people a referendum as to whether or not we should stay in or come out of the EU altogether. Not with regard to one treaty or another. A simple yes or no. I know where I stand and how I would vote (see my blog Shackled by Stealth).

We cannot go on deluding ourselves that everything is just fine when it is not. We deserve a better quality of life, and I am not as such talking materially and financially. I am talking mainly of the social environment we live in. The main political parties have repeatedly failed in government to address the fundamental issues that make our lives that more unpleasant. If anything, and as I discussed above, they have in many ways added to the unpleasantness. But as Theodore Dalrymple says in his book regarding one of the topics focused on in this blog, and is very much part of this reality: "the failure of the state to protect the lives and property of its citizens, and to take seriously its duty in this regard, creates a politically dangerous situation, for it puts the very legitimacy of the state itself at risk, The potential consequences are incalculable, for the failure might bring the rule of law itself into disrepute and give an opportunity to the brutal and authoritarian" (p.120-121). I could have covered several more topics in this piece, but blogs are not meant to go on for ever. Sorry it was so long!

Shackled by Stealth

2010-03-01T12:28:00.000-08:00

Nigel Farage, MEP and former leader of UKIP, made a pointed verbal attack at the new European Union President, Herman Van Rompuy, while he sat awkwardly in the chamber of the European Parliament. It is worth a watch on YouTube.

Here is a partial transcript of what he said: "I don't want to be rude. Who are you? I'd never heard of you, nobody in Europe ever heard of you. I have no doubt that it is your intention to be the quiet assassin of European democracy and of European nation states." (BBC News online)

Farage's comments were particularly undiplomatic when he referred to Van Rompuy as having the "charisma of a damp rag," compared him to a "low-grade bank clerk," and said he came from "a non-country" - Belgium. As expected, Farage was subjected to howls of outrage in the chamber for his tone of speech and discourtesy to the EU President, and he has since been fined. Yes, some of these comments were below the belt, but maybe reflect a sense of frustration, alienation and anger felt by many of us, like me, who are both sceptical and opposed to the EU project. A sense that the train on the track to political and economic union is inevitable and you have to accept it, whether you like it or not.

When Edward Heath as Prime Minister signed our entry to what was then known as the Common Market in 1972, citizens of the UK were very much led to believe that we were simply joining a trading block that would bring economic benefits to the country. It was on this basis that the majority voted to stay within the Common Market in the referendum of 1975. Had the electorate known back then that the ultimate goal would be political and economic union, much of which has happened already, the outcome may well have been very different. Did our political leaders back then, who advocated our membership, know more than they were willing to let on and therefore mislead us?

My case against the EU and for withdrawal of our membership is as outlined below.

Firstly, the EU is a top-down, undemocratic monolith which is seeking to impose a one-size-fits-all system. Probably most of the laws and regulations which stifle so much of our lives come out of the EU in endless directives, along with the many requirements that come from treaties (Maastrict, Nice, Lisbon etc) and conventions. These have affected everthing from fishing rights to the weight of fruit and vegetables. Then there are legal millstones around the neck of our legal system such as the Human Rights Convention (which the Labour government ratified soon after winning the 1997 general election). And when our membership was made statute by the UK Parliament in 1972 to take effect from 01 January 1973, our legal system became subservient to EEC/EU law. So this means our politicians have little option but to enact EU law into our legal system. A lot of these will not have been debated in Paliament, making the very politicians we elect powerless and ineffective. The prosecution of Sunderland greengrocer, Steve Thoburn, in 2001 for using imperial weights rather than metric is one of many cases that come to mind. Is there really any point in electing our politicians if this is the case?

Secondly, our membership of the EU is costing us billions of pounds in contributions. How much is this impacting on what we pay for our groceries, and what are we really getting in return? The most prosperous countries in Europe, such as Norway and Switzerland, have thrived outside the EU. Those strongly in favour of the EU will imply that we cannot survive outside, but this is surely a lie. If we withdraw from membership, we can still trade with EU countries, and trade on our own terms with the Commonwealth and the rest of the world. We would then have funds freed up to spend on our own essential services.

Thirdly, real democracy is about devolving power to the local level, and electing very senior local officials, such as police chiefs, as is done in the USA. The EU mitigates against power and decision making being from the bottom up. Look at Switzerland, which is one of the best examples of participatory democracy in the world and where power is devolved to self-governing cantons. They also hold referendums on a whole range of important issues. The fact that no citizen in the EU voted to elect Herman Van Rompuy as president, or was given the opportunity to do so, says it all about its democratic credentials.

Finally, it is disturbing to notice tha if you declare yourself as anti-EU, you are labelled as anti-Europe. And it is amost regarded as taboo or a psychological flaw as would other labels so readily cast around these days such as xenophobic, racist, Islamophobic, homophobic and climate-change denier. Yet, being anti the institution of the EU is not the same as being anti-Europe. It is still possible to admire the cultures, customs and traditions of other European countries (I admire the French way of life, its food and wine etc.) So that makes me very pro-Europe. I am just anti-EU. Look at the Swiss again. In referendums they have held regarding membership of the EU, the overwhelming majority have voted to stay out. Yet, they are among the most well travelled and best educated of people in the world.

If we are to lance this boil once and for all, we need to hold a referendum on whether Britain remains in or comes out altogether, and even some Liberal Democrats, who are the most pro-EU of the political parties, have advocated we hold a referendum. On this they are right. We are in a very different place compared with 1975 when we last had one. It is unfortunately the case that mainstream parties and politicians will not seriously confront this divisive issue. It is as if there is this "we can't talk about this in front of the children" approach. And all too often the political elite in the EU and this country treat us as if we are children.

This then leaves many of us with strongly held views on the EU with little option but to vote for parties such as UKIP. It is all too easy for many politicians and the liberal intelligentsia to dismiss them as the lunatic fringe, but there are factors they overlook. UKIP is a non-racist and non-xenophobic party simply campaigning for Britain's withdrawal from the EU. In the party's candidate lists in previous elections, there are many of south Asian or other overseas descent. And interestingly, one of their MEPs is Marta Andreassen, who is of Argentine-Spanish origin. She was chief accountant to the EU until she was sacked for uncovering and drawing attention to the huge amounts of financial waste. How more broad-based and inclusive can a political party get?

If you care about democracy, liberty and this country's right to determine its own destiny - whether opposed to the EU project or in favour of it - the points above should be seriously thought about. This is not a left or right issue, but what best serves the interests of this country. I know where I stand.

PS: One book I recommend that is well researched and is rich in information is The Great Deception by Christopher Booker & Richard North (Continuum, 2005). It has recently been updated following the Lisbon Treaty. Not for the faint hearted!

Gove For It

2010-02-17T10:48:00.000-08:00

I love general elections and have voted in all of them since 1979. Yet, despite a deep and passionate interest in politics, I have always tended to be one of the 40 or so per cent of the electorate who are floating voters. By and large, I vote for parties and candidates depending on particular issues of concern or interest to me. Education could well be one such crucial deciding issue for me in the forthcoming election.

Education policy in the post-war period has been a series of good intentions, but often far from good outcomes. Too much botched reform and meddling from governments of both parties, and too much control from the centre, have caused the state system to fail in meeting the needs of so many young people. Around 30,000 16 year olds leave school with no qualifications at all (The Times - 08.02.08.). Could Conservative proposals turn this supertanker around should they win the General Election?

The man likely to become the Secretary of State for Children, Schools & Families in a new Conservative administration is Michael Gove. Aged 42, and a former Times journalist who became an MP in the 2005 election, Gove is a man of great talent and has declared that he did not go into politics not to make his mark.

His flagship proposal is to free up the planning laws so that groups of parents, charities and private-sector providers can set up new schools and receive financial support from government in doing so. It really could be parental choice like we have never known before. Crazy idea? After all, we are so used to an almost Stalinist form of control and endless targets from central government, that the idea of anyone other than the usual agencies setting up schools sounds like a recipe for chaos. But if what is now the norm in Sweden is anything to go by, this idea is certainly not crazy and could open up some exiting possibilities.

Sweden has long been a country much admired by those of a left of centre viewpoint because of its strong social democratic and 'progressive' culture. Yet, its education system is now one which has proved so successful that a prospective new government of the centre right in here in Britain are keen to adopt a similar version. What makes it so appealling to the Conservatives is that despite its renouned welfare system, Sweden has gone down the route of the 'free market' in state education provision.

It only takes a spark to get a fire going. What was not expected to make a significant impact when implemented in 1992, has created a revolution. The Swedish planning laws were relaxed so that groups of parents, voluntary and private-sector bodies could set up new schools. In addition to this, and something the British Conservatives have yet to wholeheartedly embrace, Sweden introduced a voucher scheme.

These vouchers represent are provided to parents by their municipalities and represent a per-child cost of a school place. Parents can use the vouchers to choose a school as they desire. Since 1992, this has particularly included places at schools that have been set up by groups of parents and others. Vouchers were originally proposed way back in the 1950s by veteran American economist and free market guru, Milton Friedman. They were also advocated here in Britain by Rhodes Boyson (later to become a Conservative minister) in the 1970s when such an idea would have been truly regarded as wacky. Now they are a subject of serious debate.

Conservative proposals are not quite as radical as the Swedish system, both on vouchers and with regard to new free schools being able to generate a profit. A lot of the new schools in Sweden operate on a non-profit basis. However, schools are permitted within the system to run on a profit-making basis, and many have been created to do so. The profit motive in any public service such as education is one that makes the left shriek in horror, but in Sweden it has enabled such providers to meet demand and therefore plough profits in either expanding existing schools or setting up new ones. However, while the Conservatives are not proposing profit-making schools, the one plus compared to the Swedish model is that central government would provide the start-up costs for the new schools.

It is not that it is legally impossible to set up free schools within the British state system. In fact, the government of Tony Blair did allow for the creation of academies by private-sector companies and groups of parents. The first such school in the UK was the Elmgreen School set up by a group of parents in 2003 in the London Borough of Lambeth. More such schools are under development. The big problem here in the UK are restrictive planning restrictions and consequent lack of adequate sites. Conservative proposals will seekn to change this.

There are undoubtedly positive aspects about our current set-up here in the UK and many good schools. But a series of well-intentioned, but mistaken decisions by governments over the last 40 to 50 years in education have led to the far from adequate situation today. With hindsight, for example, it was a major error instigated by Labour Education Secretary, Anthony Crosland, in the 1960s and followed through by his successors, including Conservative, to close down or change the status of so many grammar schools. Rather than lead to a much more egalitarian system, as comprehensivisation was supposed to, it effectively blocked a major ladder of opportunity to so many bright children from working-class homes.

What has instead happened is that there are in any town or city a limited number of places at a limited number of reputable state schools. Demand significantly exceeds supply, but it places affluent middle-class families at a considerable advantage. How? Because they are more likely to have the financial resources to buy homes in the catchment areas of the good schools. It means their children are more likely to be offered school places, but it creates property-price inflation and means that those without the means often cannot get a look in. The middle-classes are also at an advantage in terms of knowlege and verbal skills to negotiate their way through the administrative hurdles.

In any market, whether it be for cars or baked beans, the system seems to be able to meet consumer demand. There is clearly a market for quality schooling for our children, but this particular market is not meeting that demand. Michael Gove's proposals could go some way in not only meeting that demand, but pushing up the overall quality of schooling. In Sweden, the success of free schools has meant that the nearby municipal schools have striven to improve their quality in response. Whether or not Gove will get the opportunity is still open to question. As I write, the Tories poll ratings are said to have slipped into hung parliament territory. We shall know in a few months.

Weapons of Mass Deception

2010-01-29T10:44:00.001-08:00

I begin this blog on the day that former Prime Minister, Tony Blair, testified to the Chilcot Inquiry into the Iraq war and his decision to send British forces in 2003. Many of the people who supported the decision to invade Iraq, among them politicians and journalists, may with hindsight be thinking that this was a big mistake, as do those who opposed it all along.

They justified their original support that 18 months on from the 9/11 attack, and the threat to Western security posed by Al Qaeda, benefit of the doubt should be granted to President George W Bush and Tony Blair when they argued beforehand that Saddam Hussein possessed stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction (WMDs), and that some of this were being supplied to Al Qaeda terrorists.

I was one of those who supported the original decision to invade, although have at times since wondered if it was a mistake. But before assuming what I really do feel, do read on. While I was wary of Blair's sincerity on many issues, I assumed that when he spoke of a threat from Saddam, he had unique access to intelligence information the rest of us did not. It is easy to forget the fact that before the 2003 invasion, any right-thinking and normally rational person discussing the outcome of the first Gulf war in 1991 lamented the decision of the American-led coalition not to go all the way to Baghdad and finish the job.

Nevertheless, while everyone's wish to see the evil dictator toppled was actually achieved, unlike in 1991, the aftermath has been much more bitter than sweet. There has been considerable loss of life among coalition troops and particularly Iraqis of all walks of life, and serious concerns also about British troops not being adequately equipped for the task expected of them. There is also the long-looming question as to whether Bush and Blair, eager to go to war, pushed the WMDs case knowing it lacked substance. After all, it is said that WMDs have never been found hidden away in remote locations in the Iraqi desert. Does that mean they never existed at all?

There is an interesting book about Saddam Hussein and his downfall that has surprisingly received very little attention considering the author's proximity to that seat of power, yet puts some highly thought-provoking points. It was written by Georges Sada entitled Saddam's Secrets: How an Iraqi General Defied & Survived Saddam Hussein (Integrity, 2006). Georges Sada was an Iraqi air force general and advisor to Saddam, He was not an Arab or Muslim, but an ethnic Assyrian and a Christian. He was also not a member of the Ba'ath Party - usually essential to getting on in Saddam's Iraq. He rose to seniority having proved his exceptional skills as a MIG fighter pilot and knowledge of the functioning of military aircraft, and not as a yes man to well-connected people. When one off-the-cuff remark in front of Saddam could cost your life, keeping his integrity would have required subtlety and professionalism of the highest order. He was often prepared to tell Saddam the bitter truth about the lack of capability of Iraq's forces in comparison to those of say Israel or the United States, whereas others would tell him what he wanted to hear. He even defied the order of Saddam's son, Qusay, to execute captured coalition pilots in the first Gulf war on grounds of being in breach of the Geneva Convention. Saddam himself agreed to accept. Sada believes the decision to invade Iraq was right. But what does he say about the mysterious WMDs?

It is commonly asserted that no WMDs were found because Saddam had no such programmes to pose a serious threat. Sada argues otherwise. He claims that shortly before the 2003 invasion, Saddam made clandestine deals through high-ranking Syrian officials to hide WMDs at top-secret sites in Syria by use of a front company to transport the materials in large trucks across the border. Whether or not coalition sources have ever had suspicion of sites, is unknown. However, if true or ever revealed as such, it would have massive implications for the debate. Is Sada not better qualified than most to comment on this controversy? Will mysteries such as this ever be documented in the Western liberal media? The only time I have ever seen Georges Sada's observations being seriously discussed was in a blog by columnist and author, Melanie Phillips (see http://www.melaniephillips.com/ - 12.04.2006.) Otherwise, the overall debate seems one sided.

Maybe the invasion was technically in breach of international law. But then so was the liberation of Kosovo in 1999, probably saved a great many lives and that ultimately led to the downfall of another despot, Slobodan Milosevic, and the emergence of democracy in Serbia. And how many times was Saddam in breach of UN resolutions on weapons inspections? Perhaps the invasion was, on the other hand, morally right, but that it was the aftermath that became the great disaster and lost opportunity.

The then US Secretary of Defence, Donald Rumsfeld, said "we don't do nation building." The dismantling of the old military and security infrastructure, and the consequent masses of men left with no money but families still to feed, created a vacuum which the Sunni, Shia and Ba'athist insurgents were willing to fill, and that has made Iraq a dangerous place for both civilians and coalition forces. This is what turned the whole venture into a foreign policy disaster. Added to this was the lost opportunity to go all the way to Baghdad back in 1991 and bring Saddam's reign of terror to an end. How many lives might have been saved and how different the situation could have been, we will never know. Sada laments about both failings in the book.

What we must not forget is the record of the fascist Ba'athist rule of Saddam: The aerial chemical attacks on Kurdish villages such as Halabja in 1988 where around 5,000 perished, including children; chemical warfare against Iranian soldiers in the Iran-Iraq war of 1980-88; the destruction of the Marsh Arabs' way of life in the south; the persecution of the majority Shia Arabs, and the invasion of Kuwait in 1990. While Saddam wanted to portray himself as the father and saviour of the Arab peoples, no one killed and persecuted Arabs such as he. At least there is now an attempt at building some semblance of a democracy, although time will tell if it ultimately triumphs.

Maybe the initial cause was right and just, but the total lack of planning for the peace was poorly thought through, or barely at all, so consequently a massive failing. If so, the political leaders in Washington D.C. and London let the Iraqi people, their armed forces and people down.

Who Really Was Soccer's Greatest Manager?

2010-01-11T03:37:00.000-08:00

Blackburn Rovers manager, Sam Allerdyce, was reported as saying the top premiership clubs will shun British names to manage them, such is the demand these days for instant success. Look at what has happened in recent years at such clubs as Chelsea and now Manchester City, who have just appointed Roberto Mancini as manager, where millions are pumped in and foreign star players are bought in. He also believes that Manchester United will recruit their next manager from abroad when Sir Alex Ferguson steps down. How different was the world of football when Brian Clough was the country's highest profile manager.

Brian Clough was undoubtedly one of football's most colourful and controversial managers. Brash and a maverick, he was never afraid to speak his mind and ruffle feathers, whether it was players, other managers and even the booards of clubs he managed. To get some feel for how the man operated, I recommend watching the movie The Damned United, which was released last year and has Brian Clough played by Michael Sheen.

I grew up in an era when the game contained lots of larger-than-life characters and pitches were often muddy and waterlogged. It was a time when play was dirty - both in terms of mud and tackles - and players, even the big stars, did not get anything like the stratospheric levels paid these days. In addition, even the top English clubs had very few or no foreign players. Contrast Arsenal when they won the double in 1971 consisting entirely of players from the British Isles to a first team squad today where I can only think of one player from this country.

The main focus of The Damned United, however, is not Clough's many successes, but the one time in his career when he failed. It covers the 44 days in 1974 when he took over as manager of the then league champions, Leeds United. This was the team of big players such as Billy Bremner, Norman Hunter, Johnny Giles, Peter Lorimer, Paul Madeley etc. Clough and the players simply did not gel and there followed a string of poor results. In fact, the atmosphere was said to be so bad it could be cut with a knife. There was bad history between Clough and Leeds United - in particular, his criticisms of his legendary predecessor, Don Revie, and of the team's notorious ugly and dirty style of play, as he saw it. The film flicks back to 1968 when Clough was manager of the lowly then Second Division club, Derby County, and as being the beginning of his antipathy towards Leeds United.

Derby County were drawn with then First Division Leeds United in the F.A. Cup Third Round. The film shows Clough as at that point in awe of Don Revie, aware that both men were originally from Middlesborough. He prepared to give Revie and Leeds a warm welcome when the team arrived at Derby's ground. Sadly, and so it seemed to Clough, Revie snubbed him and Leeds won 2-0 after playing with their renouned dirty tactics. However, the film's account of these events may well be incorrect, so there is need to be careful in how much basis is attributed to them. The film then infers that after this Clough was motivated by such a powerful grudge towards Revie and Leeds that all stops would be pulled and new players would be signed, even if the club could barely afford them, in order to win promotion to the First Division and hence, surpass Leeds United.

History subsequently moved in Clough's favour as he not only won promotion to the First Division the following year, but Derby County went on to become league champions in 1972. However, despite his celebrity status and popularity with the Derby fans, his capacity for speaking his mind got him into trouble with the Derby County board and he was sacked as manager, much to the anger and incredulity of the fans.

In 1974, Leeds United were looking for a new manager after Don Revie was appointed manager of the England team. Despite a brief spell as manager of Brighton & Hove Albion, Clough never really wanted to stay in the south and when approached to become the new manager of Leeds United, and despite all he had previously said and felt about the club and its manager, he could not resist the challenge to manage the country's biggest club. His assistant, Peter Taylor, with whom he had had a successful partnership at Derby County, stayed behind to manage Brighton.

But Clough and the Leeds players did not gel. A film's portrayal of real life events can sometimes be distorted, or get certain nuances incorrectly. However, The Damned United shows Clough introducing himself to the players on the training ground telling them that whatever medals they had won, were not done so through fair play and should be thrown in the bin. Such comments, if ever said at all, were not going to endear him to players who had achieved so much under his maligned predecessor. It all went wrong from there. Leeds United lost their first game against Liverpool in the Charity Shield at Wembley when captain, Billy Bremner and Kevin Keegan were sent off after a vicious scuffle. Several poor results later and his inability to win the respect of the players, Clough was sacked by the Leeds board.

It seemed that Don Revie had the last laugh. There was the famous appearance together of both managers on a Yorkshire TV programme when both men really had it out with each other. But did Revie really have the last laugh? Well, not at all actually as history would reveal. Revie's tenure as England manager lasted just a few years and he went off to manage in the Middle East, but relatively little was heard of him from then on. As for Clough, he took over as manager of another provincial English club, Nottingham Forest. He took them to the stratospheric heights of the league championship and twice as winners of the European Cup. This was achieved with the help of Peter Taylor, who rejoined Clough as his assistant manager. The two men seemed to achieve success when they worked together, but not so when separate, as was the case during Clough's Leeds spell.

Clough achieved all this with some bought players, but largely by bringing out the best with the players he had already. It was not done with the budgets that successful clubs have today, or by buying in well-established expensive star players from abroad. And clubs such as Derby County and Nottingham Forest were not big names or achieving when he took them over. How all that would change within a few years at both clubs. On that basis, and with the help of Peter Taylor, Brian Clough was at leat one of the very greatest managers this country ever produced. And thank God for mavericks!

Holy Abused

2009-08-22T10:26:00.000-07:00

I am half Irish and have visited Ireland many times. Not only is it a beautiful country, but the people are the most hospitable, generous and friendly I have come across. I would happily go there anytime. However, the beauty of a country and its people can hide a darker and hidden side, one that was simply not discussed or acknowledged. The taboo subject was child abuse and in particularly that carried out by a class of person whose job was one of exceptional trust - Catholic priests.

The extent of clerical abuse is detailed in a very disturbing book by Colm O' Gorman Beyond Belief (Hodder & Stoughton, 2009). He sadly knows the damaging effects having himself been sexually abused and raped by a Catholic priest, Fr Sean Fortune, in the early-1980s. The book not only gives disturbing details of how as a boy, the author was groomed, abused on a regular basis and raped by the priest in Co.Wexford, Ireland, but how he battled with his bishop and the Church hierarchy to accept that they had repeatedly failed to protect him and other abused children by not taking steps to ensure that such priests could not abuse again.

I felt raw rage when I read this book. My first reaction while reading his life story was to ask why the author had not told anyone, particularly his own family, for so long. But then I realised, and as he points out in the book, you have to consider the very nature of Irish society, or any other society, where deference to authority figures had been inculcated for so long.

My late mother grew up in rural south west of Ireland. Although a devout Catholic, I remember her telling us that when she was a little girl, the parish priest was a sort of god figure and that whatever he said was law. Colm O' Gorman mentions in his book that the priestly white collar was always a key to enter any home in Ireland. The Catholic Church has long been a very powerful insitution in the country, owning many of the schools and hospitals. Successive governments would not enact legislation without consulting the Church. So imagine having been abused by a priest, trying to tell parents or other authority figures. It was a subject (along with anything to do with sex) that was totally taboo. And priests being the exalted figures they were as representives of a divine power, who would believe a child making such an allegation? In addition, the fear of being ostracised by family and community would have been a strong deterent. It was the dark secret that was not discussed openly, even if people suspected something.

In recent years, other truths have emerged about the dark past in terms of institutions run by the Catholic Church in Ireland. It was common practice until the 1960s to shut away what were known as 'fallen' women in grim establishments such as those run by the Magdelene Sisters as aptly portrayed in the film The Magdelene Sisters. Such women were those who were deemed to have shamed their families by getting pregnant outside wedlock, or for other reasons, and were just conveniently put away out of sight. Under the reign of terror of a mother superior and her nuns, such women were forced to do what was effectively slave labour washing laundry. Many were subjected physical and sometimes sexual abuse. Another order known as the Christian Brothers are also known to have operated quite brutal practices in the schools they ran up until the 1960s.

I grew up in a more secular society here in the UK during the 1960s and 1970s, but even so it was a world where deference to authority figures or those older than you was still much the norm. Corporal punishment was still in use throughout my school years and what would shock us nowadays was accepted back then as normal, even if we did not like it and hated those teachers who used it. Where I can particularly relate to the book is I was brought up in the Catholic Church and attended a Catholic primary school where I was taught by nuns. I can remember certain figures whose outlook was austere and prepared to use physical chastisement just for getting facts wrong, never mind bad behaviour. And this was in the UK.

In the famous TV comedy series Father Ted, there is one scene where the older drunken priest begrudges a parking ticket and says there was a time priests could have got away with murder. And this was not far from the truth. It was in this unhealthily deferential environment in Ireland that Catholic clergy were able to sexually abuse boys and girls without fear of reproach. And what was the worst that could happen if those abused or their families took the matter to their bishop or higher? Priests were not defrocked or forced to resign from the clergy. No, they were at worst moved to another parish or given jobs, such as managing schools, where they continued to abuse other children.

This was what happened in Colm O' Gorman's case. He found out that the Bishop of Ferns, the diocese in which Fr Sean Fortune had both trained and been a priest, had repeatedly failed to take action when informed that this priest had been abusing boys. As was the case in so many other parts of the world where abuse had eventually come to the attention of the authorities, the Church took action to protect itself and the abusing priests rather than to protect the vulnerable children to whom, as so-called representatives of God, they clearly had a duty of care.They would instead seek legal advice and action, sometimes ruthlessly, to disuade victims from taking the matter further.

Sexual abuse of children within its own ranks is not something that the Catholic Church has only become aware of in the light of recent scandals. It has been in fact aware of such evil activities throughout much of its history. A particularly disturbing development of the lengths to which the Church would go and mentioned in the book was in 1962 when Pope John XXIII set up a law to deal with complaints of priests soliciting sex in the confessional entitled Crimens Sollicitationis. Not only did it impose a high degree of secrecy on those clergy involved, but even on witnesses and victims who could be excommunicated if they broke an oath imposed.

The author is also scathing in the book about Pope Benedict XVI, the current head of the Church. In 2002 when he was known as Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger and a very senior figure within the Vatican (known as the Vatican's Enforcer), he suggested that the child abuse scandals were some sort of grand conspiracy to bring down the Roman Catholic Church, and pointed a finger particularly at the media. And yet, ironically, as Pope he has condemned the 'Harry Potter' novels as being a corrupting influence on the young.

As the book points out, the Catholic Church is a complex organisation with unsurpassed power and influence. Not only is it a religious organisation, but it runs schools, hospitals, charities; it has enormous wealth and is state in its own right with diplomatic missions throughout the world, and it is political. It is highly secretive and for one man to take it on is a formidable task. But this is what Colm O' Gorman did.

It started in the mid-1990s when Sean Fortune was charged and forced to attend court, but he committed suicide while the case was in progress. After a long legal battle, which took several years, and the publishing of the Ferns Report of abuse in the Ferns diocese, the Church had to back down and agreed to a financial settlement of Colm O'Gorman's case and that of so many others. The Bishop of Ferns, Brendan Comiskey, who had failed to deal with many of the allegations in the diocese resigned. The Irish Government pledged to accept and act upon recommendations in the report. Not only in Ireland have there been high-profile cases involving the Catholic Church, but in several other countries, particularly in the United States.

A final point to make is how this issue highlights why it is imperative to have separation of Church and State. Where the two are interwoven, it is as if one part legitimises the unjust actions of the other. Such has been the way for too long in Ireland. The Church (and by this I am not exclusively focusing on the Catholic Church) was in Biblical times and first 300 years after Christ a dynamic body of believers who followed a different way to that of the world. However, it is likely that Church and State as one integrated whole became so when Emperor Constantine established Christianity as a state religion throughout the Roman Empire and created a clerical hierarchy of bishops and priests with a supreme pontiff at the apex, and still retained many elements of the paganism which had prevailed until that point. When this happens, Christianity becomes dangerously compromised. I have always believed that the Church of England should be disestablished for this reason.

This book is about the suffering and torment an individual can endure for many years when sexual abuse, which is not the fault of the victim, is effectively swept under the carpet and not addressed as if it does not exist. It also shows the power of the truth and how this can be a force for change. Perhaps it will from now on ensure that the victims of such abuse described in the book will get redress and that potential victims will not have to suffer it.

Why We Need the Truth About the NHS

2009-08-18T14:42:00.000-07:00

Honesty is not the best policy. Well that is so if you want to get on in politics. And there are self-evident truths in some areas of policy where the truth dare never to speak its name, and no more so on the subject of the National Health Service. You may may be a rising star in your party, but woe betide you if you say what every person of average intelligence knows full well to be the truth.

Such was the case last week with Conservative MEP, Daniel Hannan, who was slapped down by his party leader, David Cameron, after his interview for an American TV channel when he described the NHS as something he "wouldn't wish on anybody." State-subsidised health care is currently a very hot topic in the United States because of President Obama's plans to widen the availability of free health care to the many American citizens unable to obtain private health insurance. The President's proposals have in particular angered many on the Republican Right who have pointed to the British NHS as a failed system, even though Barach Obama is not looking to introduce anything as near to comprehensive as the system we have in the UK.

So why can't any politician speak what they believe to be the truth about a system that happened to be created way back in 1948 by Aneurin Bevan? What is it about the NHS that it has become such a sacred cow that any politician or social commentator gets shouted down, or labelled a right-wing fanatic if he or she dares raise their head above the parapet to suggest that it is a seriously flawed system and that better systems are to be found elsewhere, even in countries with a strong social democratic tradition.

The Conservatives, like New Labour at this point before the 1997 General Election, can smell power. All indications suggest the odds being that David Cameron will be settled into 10 Downing Street as Prime Minister by this time next year. The NHS is one of those fault-line issues that any attempt to have a serious debate about within Conservative ranks will be ruthlessly stamped upon, with Cameron pledging his unswerving support for it. This is because they fear that Labour will accuse them of having a secret agenda to privatise socialised medicine, and because they assume that the British public still have a strong sentimental attachment to the NHS and will punish the Conservatives at the ballot box if there is any hint they will mess about with it.

The consequence of this conspiracy of silence among the main political parties in that we will continue to be lumbered with what is in effect a heavily expensive, top-down, Soviet-era, bureaucratic monolith, operated in accordance with diktats, quotas and targets from central government and monitored by countless quangos. Yes, there are many examples of good-quality, efficient and effective treatment and care. It is also reassuring that the NHS provides zero-cost treatment at the point of usage. However, it is far from free - currently around £100 billion a year - as we all pay a lot for it through taxation and National Insurance contributions. And despite the many extra billions the Labour government put into the system in the last decade, we are not getting the Rolls Royce service we should get for the money.

The stories have been endless in recent years of patients waiting on trolleys for unavailable beds, the MRSA virus spread due to wards not being properly cleaned, operations being cancelled at the last minute for people who desperately need them, or being told that the NHS trusts do not have the funds to pay for them. In addition, for anyone attending hospital for consultation or treatment, or for family members visiting, it can seem as though some NHS staff do not really engage, tell you what you really need to know, or be in possession of crucial information. Personal skills in dealing with people are often lacking and staff can seem disinterested in the patients and family members they deal with. This is exacerbated by there being constant changes of staffing in hospital units or wards from one to day to another, so there is a lack of continuity. We simply do not get the level service that people in other countries would take for granted, and I include the United States where health care is predominantly provided by the private sector.

Take A&E and a personal case, for example. Our daughter recently fell and broke her wrist. We took her to the A&E at our local hospital. It was a hot day, the air conditioning was not working, and the unit was absolutely packed. We had to wait a couple of hours before the triage nurse could see her and then we had long waits for the x-ray and the doctor. It came to a total of 6 hours in all. And our own case is not untypical up and down the UK. The Americans and other citizens in Western world would simply not accept this level of service.

Again, this is partly because our political leaders will not have a grown-up debate about the NHS because they end up throwing labels at each other and scoring political points, even if a politician argues plausibly that they don't want to abolish the system, but make some changes to the way it is run. So whoever is in power, the NHS will continue to consume never-ending billions and still not deliver the level of service it should. We do need to have a proper debate in this country and put the following options as possible alternatives to the current status quo.

Firstly, Social Insurance along the model of several European countries. There are various types of system, but broadly speaking it normally involves citizens taking out a private health insurance scheme from any one of a number of providers, but with partial subsidisation from the state to offset the cost of paying into a scheme and for any medical treatment received. No, it is not cheap, but the quality of care in such countries is known to be very high.

Secondly, one radical proposal came from James Bartholomew in his book The Welfare State We're In (Politico's, 2004). He argues that all form of state subsidy should be scrapped and that we should allow a multiplicity of private and charitable operators to provide health insurance and health care. For example, he says that before the NHS came into existence there were a lot of mutual societies, many operating locally, that were a means for poorer people to save in case they needed hospital care at any time. He reminds us that many of our best known hospitals today were built in such an era and when charitable donations were common.

Finally, we can live with the system we know, but reform it radically in such a way that central government is taken out of the equation altogether, except to subsidise, and that hospitals and NHS trusts become totally self-managing. They would get to manage their own resouces and make their own decisions without Whitehall breathing down their necks. They would also be democratically accountable to their own local communities.

Whatever system is put in place will never be perfect. However, we need politicians willing to make the tough, ground-breaking decisions. We need politicians of intellectual gravitas ready to break the mould. There was a ray of hope this would happen in another area of social policy when Tony Blair became Prime Minister in 1997. He appointed Frank Field as Minister for Welfare Reform and told him to "think the unthinkable" to tackle the ever-spiralling welfare bill. As someone who had taken a deep interest in social security for many years, and knew a lot more about it than most of his contemporaries, Field seemed the right man for the task. Yet, when he did seriously "think the unthinkable," he lost his job and an opportunity was lost. Politicians in any party who are original thinkers, or prepared to speak out against the party line, are often sidelined as mavericks and tend not to make it far up the greasy pole. If they have any hope of doing so, they tend to have to toe the line as imposed ruthlessly by the party whips.

The NHS has indeed been regarded as a sacred cow in this country for far too long. But as taxpayers, and with so much of our money taken from us to fund a flawed system, the politicans we elect and whose salaries we pay owe it to us all to debate this issue in a mature and serious manner. As someone I know has put on his own blog, sacred cows should be slaughtered.

D-Day - Will We Ever Learn?

2009-08-10T12:38:00.000-07:00

I have been reading historian, Antony Beevor's superb latest book D-Day, and if you are interested in military history, and in particular World War II, I highly recommend this one. D-Day, as put into effect on the 5th June 1944, is said to have been the biggest military operation in history, and was fundamental in bringing about the downfall of the Third Reich. It came ar great cost in British, American and Canadian lives, not to mention several other nationalities fighting on the same side and countless French civilians. It also cost the lives of countless German soldiers lives, many of whom did not want to fight if the truth be known.

We are now well past this year's anniversary of the Normandy landings. However, in the last few weeks the deaths of Henry Allingham and Harry Patch, the last surviving British soldiers to fight on the battlefields of the Great War, have been prominent in the news. The horrors of what such men saw and experienced can never be remembered only during anniversaries. Those who have served on the front line in any war lives with the memories and psychological scars on a daily basis, even if, as was the case of the generation who fought in the Great War, they chose not to talk about it. Despite the seven figure numbers of soldiers on both sides who fell in that war, it was as if humanity had learnt little when World War 11 broke out in 1939. The world was about to experience 6 years of carnage and bloodshed.

I have read Antony Beevor' s previous books: Stalingrad, Berlin and War for Spain, all of which I found very gripping. With over 600 pages, D-Day describes the intricate planning of the Allied invasion, the the disagreements and personality clashes between the commanders on both sides. On the Allied side, legendary figures such as Eisenhower, Montgomery, Bradley and Patton - and on the German side: Rommel, von Rundstedt, von Kluge and Model. All famous wars and battles bring out the big personalities, and D-Day was no exception. However, what of the millions of ordinary soldiers on both sides, many of whom were conscripts and who were not names individually celebrated in the history books, but who were still someone's son, brother, husband or father? Tragically, so many of these were never to see their loved ones ever again.

The battle for Normandy, as this book describes in such detail, was one long-hard grind for so many who fought, sometimes taking considerable time to make even the smallest progress. The Allies met dogged resistance from the fanatical Waffen SS divisions, more fanatical and willing to fight to death than many ordinary war-weary Wehrmacht soldiers. There was heroism and there were atrocities - not all confined to the Germans, although there were infamous massacres committed by SS units against both allied and civilian captives, including women and children.

If you do get to read this latest book of Antony Beever, I highly recommend reading both Stalingrad and Berlin. The first one reveals in great detail how the initially successful German offensive on the Eastern Front all took a severe turn for the worse at Stalingrad and because the Germans were insufficiently equipped to deal with the severity of the Russian winter, in which so many of their soldiers froze to death, and the dogged determination of the Red Army to do whatever it took to drive out the Nazi invader. Berlin details the final stand and the death throes of the Third Reich, particularly against the onslaught of the Bolshevik 'barbarians' from the East. Reading all these books reveal the depths of brutality, depravity and ugliness of war; its effects on those in engaged in combat and the misery it creates for civilians eager to do no more than just get on with their lives. For the deluded dictators and potentates, going to war is about building empires and glory for themselves, their followers, their ideology and the nation. For the rest, it means death, injury, hunger, homelessness and suffering.

I believe very much in the concept of the just war. There have been occasions in our history where we as a nation have had to take a stand. However, there are other instances where serious questions need to be asked of the politicians about to send our armed forces into combat overseas, such as is this really going to make a big difference, are we in it for the long term and if so, are we prepared to ensure that our servicemen and women get all the equipment and resources they need? This is pivotal to the current debate about our commitment to the war in Afghanistan. Whatever the reasons, such decisions cannot and should not be taken without much thought and deliberation. I believe that politicians about to take such decisions would do well to read such books as written by Antony Beevor, particularly those who have never had any combat experience.

20th July Plot

2009-07-10T12:09:00.000-07:00

The 20th July this year will mark the 65th anniversary of the failed (although very nearly successful plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler at his Wolf's Lair (Wolfsschanze) headquarters in East Prussia. With Colonel Claus von Stauffenburg acting as the actual assassin, the event was recently portrayed in the the movie Valkyrie, in which Tom Cruise played this character. Many obvious questions come to mind: What was the cost in human lives of this failed attempt, and how might history have been changed if it had succeeded? What does it say about the characters involved?

The plot was put into effect on the July 20th 1944. The tide of the World War II had by then turned very much against Germany, with the Red Army advancing from the East and the Allies moving in from the West. German cities had been largely destroyed by heavy bombing. Germans - both military and civilian - were dying in their tens, hundreds of thousands. And of course the mass slaughter of the Jews and other disapproved categories. Some felt it was time to do something about the very man who had led Germany into the abyss.

Von Stauffenburg and his associates devised an elaborate plot. It involved placing a briefcase containing explosives that would detonate under a big table while Hitler and his senior military officers were assessing the current war situation. The plot was implemented, but did not go exactly according to plan. There are I guess two versions of why this was the case: One version is that another officer present at the meeting unwittingly moved the briefcase slightly from its initial position, and that this small act might have saved Hitler. The second version is that the Fuhrer was saved by Von Stauffenburg's failure to arm a second bomb, as well as being shielded from the briefcase by the heavy oak table. The blast itself was also dissipated through the windows and thin walls (Anthony Beevor, D-Day, Viking, 2009). Whatever the cause of the plot's failure, it had massive consequences for the shaping of history?

While Von Stauffenburg and his associates in the plot wore the officers' uniforms of the Wehrmacht, and therefore served the Nazi machine, they were far from being architypal Nazis. Von Stauffenburg was himself one of a breed of officers from a Prussian aristocratic background raised in a strong tradition of military honour. While serving Hitler, they despised him, his inner circle and the SS who while acknowledged to be an effective fighting machime, were regarded by them as brutes and thugs of the worst kind.

Although to Hitler's fanatical followers, Von Stauffenburg had committed the ultimate act of high treason, he was in fact motivated by a passionate sense of patriotism - a belief that Germany should represent something very different from the brutality and thuggery of Nazism. He had been seriously wounded while fighting in the North Africa campaign, losing both an arm and an eye. It was there he served under Field Marshal Irwin Rommel, who like Von Stauffenburg, adhered to the old Germanic tradition of military honour and professional soldiering. It is believed that on Hitler's orders, Rommel was given the choice of either committing suicide or execution by firing squad because of his alleged links with the July 20th plotters.

Ironically, Tom Cruise played the role of a young naval officer in the 1992 movie A Few Good Men, where he was appointed as part of a legal team to investigate the cover up of the death of a US marine at the Guantanamo Bay base in Cuba. This was long before the base became synonymous with abuses of another kind. It could be said there are a few parallels with Valkyrie and Von Stauffenburg. Here you have a young principled officer taking on a bullying commanding officer played by Jack Nicholson and a system trying to cover up abuses. However, the big difference is that whereas in A Few Good Men the 'system' is part of a democracy where there are checks and balances and some rules of accountability - and the young naval officer is never going to face a firing squad, Von Stauffenburg was taking a principled stand against a tyranny which would certainly mean paying the ultimate price.

We will never know how different the world would have been, and the impact on the war, had the 20th July plot succeeded. Would the plotters have then implemented a successful coup in Germany, overcome Hitler's fanatical followers and loyal forces and made peace with the Allies? Would Stalin have accepted the outcome? There are many unanswered questions, but no one can doubt that Von Stauffenburg and the other plotters went to their deaths as men of immense bravery and courage.

A Broken Destiny

2009-07-04T08:58:00.000-07:00

The undisputable reality in Britain today is that the population by and large are disillusioned or indifferent, maybe hostile about our political system and how we are governed. It is assumed that we have a democratic system with 2 large parties competing and alternating for government. However, it might just as well be to conclude that in reality we have one big mainstream party with a red and a blue wing with a bit of gold in the middle. The two wings may be vying for the so-called centre ground, but it is light years away from the real centre ground of public opinion. This is the focus of Peter Hitchens’ latest book The Broken Compass: How British Politics Lost Its Way (Continuum, 2009).

Peter Hitchens is a columnist with the Mail on Sunday and is well known for his staunch conservative views. No, he is not Thatcherite, free market monetarist, neo-conservative and certainly not the new toryism as represented by David Cameron’s Conservative Party. His conservatism would bring back facets that were discarded decades ago, but which would be well thought through: tough law and order, strict limits on immigration, no-nonsense street-based policing, Britain withdrawing from the European Union and applying its own foreign policy. Although too easily dismissed as a right-winger beyond the pale, Hitchens openly agrees with the left where he feels they have been right: opposition to the Iraq war and privatisation of the railways, for example. And he was himself once an active Trotskyist, so he understands perhaps better than anyone the leftist mindset.

He has little time for the political elite as represented by the main parties. But for a few issues of dispute, a liberal consensus has permeated through the parties so that the change that is really needed will not happen, regardless of whether the majority want it, which survey after survey proves they do – return of capital punishment, life imprisonment to actually mean just that, traditional-style policing and withdrawal from the EU.

The Tories, whom he describes as ‘Blue Labour,’ have embraced the New Labour diversity, multicultural, politically correct ethos and most of the policies implemented since 1997. It is as if they became star struck by Tony Blair, seen him win 3 elections and have wanted to, without admitting it, emulate him thinking this is the way to win the so-called centre ground deemed essential to electoral victory. Hitchens holds out very little hope that things really will change if David Cameron becomes prime minister.

He puts much of the blame for this what can be broadly defined as a liberal left progressive orthodoxy, or liberal authoritarianism, on what he refers to as the 1968 generation who have made up New Labour cabinets and are also to be found in influential posts within the media, judiciary and education. This was the generation who one protested against the established order, or even for its overthrow. Some fought running battles with riot police or were arrested. They campaigned against the war in Vietnam and apartheid (rightly so). They campaigned for a new enlightened world of freedom of speech, sexual liberation, against racism and the discrimination towards homosexuals. An age when Roy Jenkins could say, “the liberal hour has come.”

So has the liberal age created a much more free and enlightened world? The above battles appear to have been won and they will boast that they have brought about greater choice and diversity. Yet, the other side of the coin is they have restricted choice and even banned activities, which can also be described as freedoms, they did not like e.g. fox hunting. In certain key areas of social policy, on grounds of class or ideology, and on the premise of trying to help the disadvantaged, they may have done extensive damage and actually destroyed opportunity and choice rather than enhance it.

One of the many key issues discussed by Peter Hitchens in the book to emphasise this point is education. The Education Act 1944 created a tripartite system of schools: grammar, secondary and technical schools. For all that system’s flaws, and there were quite a few, it did provide a route for clever children from poorer homes to receive a high standard of academic grammar school education. In addition, there was the old Direct Grant scheme in which also enabled such children to attend independent schools by local authority funding, but was scrapped by the Labour government in the 1970s.

As for grammar schools, the determination of Labour to implement a national comprehensive schooling was expressed in the 1960s in the words of the then Education Secretary, Anthony Crosland, who pledged to close down “every ****ing grammar school in England.” Sadly, so many did close and was continued by the Heath government in which, ironically, Margaret Thatcher was Education Secretary.

What is the consequence of this massacre? Grammar schools exist, but on a much smaller scale than 40 years ago. There are good comprehensive schools in any borough, but places often are filled by children from middle-class homes of parents who have both the financial resources to buy homes in the catchment areas, creating the inevitable property-price inflation, or who have the knowledge and verbal skills to negotiate their way through the system. So both this and lack of access to available good schools has penalised the least well off – the very people Labour has always claimed to champion.

Peter Hitchens argues it is in the nature of the liberal left that while it starts out campaigning for liberty and diversity, it often ends up becoming authoritarian and restrictive regarding matters of which it disapproves. Having travelled and worked in much of the old Soviet bloc, he saw first hand where the state exerts total control on its citizens and intrudes into private life. He is amazed at the irony of East Europeans having thrown off the shackles of communism, the Iron Curtain and the Berlin Wall in 1989, only see many parallels of this old system increasingly appear in the West, and in particular in the UK. It has happened gradually, silently and by stealth and such that we have barely noticed it.

The left long ago realised that the mass of the proletariat in the West will not flock to the barricades of class war. So they have adopted the approach as predicted by Italian Marxist philosopher, Antonio Gramsci, in the 1960s that for society to be changed it had to be by cultural transformation, not by class war. This has largely come to pass in the UK. New Labour embraced the Thatcherite reforms on trade unions and privatisation, and largely left the market to itself.

However, they have otherwise brought about a cultural revolution whereby a normally law-abiding, rational and intelligent individual can be labelled racist, Islamophobic or homophobic for raising serious questions about aspects of multiculturalism or diversity. And with over 3,000 new offences created since 1997, you could even be criminalized for saying or doing some things that in recent history would not have raised an eyebrow. There has evolved a vast array of quotas, targets, initiatives and Quangos to measure compliance. To quote from page 9 of the book, “A liberal will defend to the death your right to agree with her. Disagree with her, and she will call the police.” Such is the new puritanism.

Where is the real adversarial politics? Where is the clear blue water between the main parties, rather than competing for the so-called middle ground? If the political elite continues to be so far removed from the aspirations of ordinary people, extreme parties such as the BNP will increasingly fill the void. Tony Benn once said that democracy is about choice, and real choice is something our system lacks. Peter Hitchens book says a lot more about so many issues than I have covered in this piece. Definitely well worth a read.