Crooked Timber

I’ve just noticed that the Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill which got royal asset yesterday (btw, enthusiasts of necrophiliac porn, better hide it under the mattress[1]), contains provisions to make it an offence to incite hatred on grounds of sexual orientation. I am in general in favour of this, in the same qualified way in which I was in favour of the parallel provisions of the Racial and Religious Hatred Act 2006[2]. The reason being that the specific laws in question aren’t really particularly material restrictions on free speech (as with the 2006 Act, the current law on homophobia has an explicit clause explaining that merely critical or mocking speech is not incitement to hatred), and that the UK really doesn’t need any of the antisocial behaviour that is an inevitable consequence of incitements to hatred.

It does strike me, however, that two years ago, there was an awful lot of public protest against the RRHA06. Not the least of this came from comedians like Stephen Fry and Rowan Atkinson, who were making the point that mockery and criticism of religion were an important part of comedy and that they felt their right to free expression was under threat[3].

One doesn’t have to be an aficionado of Mr Humphries or Larry Grayson to be aware that British comedians have at least as much of a professional interest in the mockery of gays as they do in the mockery of religions, but if there was a big comedians’ protest against this one I missed it. In fact, I don’t recall the free speech lobby really raising much of a stir at all; Index on Censorship didn’t so much as mention it (Update: thanks Padraig Reidy in comments, they did mention it, once, last year), though they did take an interest in the religious hatred bill, and they are aware of the current Criminal Justice Bill.

This sort of thing is unfortunate; I’m sure nobody involved intended it this way[5], but to an outsider it would certainly look as if the 2006 kerfuffle had very little to do with freedom of speech, except in as much as it could be picked up as a handy stick to beat the Muslims with. And given that, I bet it looks that way to British Muslims too. Every time we try to have a sensible discussion of the subject of hate speech, it gets much more heated than it has any reason to be, and a lot of the reason for this, in my opinion, is that the free speech issue has got tangled up with a whole load of other questions about security and immigration, to nobody’s benefit.

[1] Also bestiality porn, and as far as I can see Plaid Cymru didn’t so much as raise an objection.
[2] In comments to that thread, my view of calls from the gay lobby for parallel protection was something along the lines of “tough luck”, because I didn’t think that violent homophobia was enough of a social problem to warrant a restriction on free speech. I now think this was a mistake, partly because when you put the point as bluntly as that it’s obviously callous, and partly because the overwhelming evidence of the experience of the 2006 Act is that the restriction on free speech is trivial.
[3] Ben Elton, the noted author, former comedian and disappointment[4], apparently still believes that jokes about Islam are too near the knuckle for the politically correct world of modern British comedy. He has perhaps not noticed that they more or less form Shazia Mirza or Omid Djalili’s entire act. I suspect that what he means is that you’re not seeing white comedians making fun of Islamic minorities, in which case I rather think he owes an apology to Jim Davidson and the late Bernard Manning for more or less everything he said in the 80s.
[4] For example, as Alexei Sayle noted when Elton collaborated with Andrew Lloyd Webber on a musical: “It’s really quite tough, you know, when you see someone whose work you’ve been familiar with for years, you don’t agree with them on politics but you recognise that they’ve got a genuine talent – and then they go and write a musical with Ben Elton”.
[5] Not true, obviously; one of the Freedom of Speech marches that year very nearly had to be called off because of the amount of involvement from the BNP and similar groups. I’m referring to Rowan Atkinson and Stephen Fry here – I am sure their concern over free speech was sincere at the time.

Over at our joint I’ve been doing a fair bit of “this day seventy-five years ago” because of the anniversary of Roosevelt’s hundred days and, well, because. This one may hold some interest for an international readership:

On this day in 1933, British Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald delivered an address from the National Press Club in Washington, DC, discussing the common problems of the US and UK: “In America at this moment and in Great Britain there are millions of men who want work and can’t get it…. Governments cannot be indifferent to a state of things like that.”

MacDonald looked forward to “wise international government action,” to be established at the upcoming international economic conference. He hoped it would revive “a freely flowing international exchange,” i.e., trade—“Self-sufficiency in the economic field on the part of nations ultimately ends in the poverty of their own people.”

He was mindful of the apparent irony in Britain’s having taken the nationalist, defensive action of going off the gold standard: “Can you imagine that in the early days of that crisis we said gayly and light-heartedly, ‘Let it rip. Let it rip. We will go off gold. There are benefits in being off gold, and we will reap them.’” Obviously he meant the answer to be “no.”—“And so on this currency question, agreement is the only protection.”¹
Continue reading ““Let it rip.””

I have a post up at the Guardian blog noting that with no activity on its weblog on the last six weeks, the manifesto itself closed to new signatures and nobody so much as remarking its second anniversary, the Euston Manifesto appears to have gone the way of all flesh and most leftwing political tendencies. I suggest, perhaps a little uncharitably, that the cause of death (which I suppose I might be premature in announcing, but really, it doesn’t seem to have much life in it) was the Manifesto Group’s consistent refusal to ever move on from their platforms and slogans to having any concrete program at all[1] (and that this was in its turn probably due to the need to keep together a coalition which, in as much as it extended beyond a very small clique of pro-war ex-Trots, had very little to hold it together other than a personal dislike of George Galloway). If I had the piece to write again, I suspect I might have given more airtime to the other big psychological impetus behind the Paul Berman/Euston/”Decent” tendency, which was genuine trauma at the 9/11 and 7/7 attacks. But I certainly wouldn’t walk away from my assessment of the central motivation – a desire on the part of people who had been wrong for decades during the Cold War to be on the right side of history for once.

In terms of their contribution to British political debate, my epitaph for the Euston Manifesto is basically Byron’s on Castlereagh. For whatever reasons, as a political movement it was never able to get over the personality issues involved, and chose to promote its views by the same tactics of condemnation, excommunication and inflated rhetoric which had served it so badly during its past on the left[2]. But the current of political thought that Euston represented in the UK was not entirely bad or even entirely wrong. What would their legacy be?
Continue reading “It was a good grouplet as they go, and as grouplets go, it went”

There’s been a marked increase in the harassment of photographers by the police, quasi-police, security guards and suchlike since 9/11, and the UK is no exception. Photographers have been (illegally) forced to delete pictures by officious police and have been told plain untruths about what the law says on the matter. A recent anti-terrorism campaign even has posters with the legend “Thousands of People Take Photos Every Day. What if One of Them Seems Odd?”, and invites the public to involve the constabulary. Since photography is a hobby that disproportionately attracts slightly nerdy loners, lots of photographers “seem odd”, but they ought to be spared this sort of attention!

Now Austin Mitchell MP, himself a keen photographer (and a past victim of such behaviour), is taking a stand, and has introduced an early day motion in the House of Commons

That this House is concerned to encourage the spread and enjoyment of photography as the most genuine and accessible people’s art; deplores the apparent increase in the number of reported incidents in which the police, police community support officers (PCSOs) or wardens attempt to stop street photography and order the deletion of photographs or the confiscation of cards, cameras or film on various specious ground such as claims that some public buildings are strategic or sensitive, that children and adults can only be photographed with their written permission, that photographs of police and PCSOs are illegal, or that photographs may be used by terrorists; points out that photography in public places and streets is not only enjoyable but perfectly legal; regrets all such efforts to stop, discourage or inhibit amateur photographers taking pictures in public places, many of which are in any case festooned with closed circuit television cameras; and urges the Home Office and the Association of Chief Police Officers to agree on a photography code for the information of officers on the ground, setting out the public’s right to photograph public places thus allowing photographers to enjoy their hobby without officious interference or unjustified suspicion.

Readers in the UK could email their MPs and express their support for Mitchell’s stand, they could also email Mitchell himself. Since it seems to be the trendy thing to do, I’ve also set up a Facebook group in support .

Some commenters thought that I should have waited before attacking the BBC’s “White” season. After, all, they argued … legitimate topic of inquiry …. watch first, judge later, … blah blah. Martin O’Neill has been watching, and he doesn’t like what he’s seen. Specifically, he has an article in the New Statesman deploring Denys Blakeway’s film about Enoch Powell, which attempts both a partial rehabilitation of the man and manages to suggest (without saying directly) that Powell’s “rivers of blood” claim was vindicated on 7/7 (a product of multiculturalism). Anyway, I’m summarizing Martin, so surf over to his excellent piece.

Well here’s an interesting, and worrying, development. BBC2 is about to screen a series of programmes under the general title “White”, which purport to document the fact that the white working class in Britain (or just England?) feels embattled, with its “culture” under threat, and so on. The series includes a film re-examining Enoch Powell’s “rivers of blood” speech, and it looks pretty clear that other documentaries will feature not a few blokes beginning sentences “I’m not racist, but ….”

There’s an oddity about the addition of the modifier “white” to “working class”, in the British context. Historically, Britain has been a country where class has trumped ethnicity as the key dimension of social stratification for politics. Class solidarity, and Labour politics, appealed across ethnic and national divisions. Of course ethnicity mattered, but, in the end it was class that structured the institutions in an through which political compromise and conflict happened. Perhaps the prominence given to “white working-class culture” by these film-makers merely reflects the fact that class has been or is being replaced by ethnic balkanization on American lines.

The other thing worth noticing is how various people who position themselves as vaguely transgressive leftists (who spend all their time criticizing “the left”) are anticipating this series. (I’m thinking, of course, of people on the fringes of the Euston Manifesto crowd.) So, for example, John Lloyd (I’m assuming it is the same John Lloyd) has a piece in the FT making sympathetic noises, and Andrew Anthony (a kind of Nick Cohen-lite) had an article in last Sunday’s Observer. Given their leftist background, most “decents” have promoted either a class-based solidarity or an abstract universalism of citizenship in opposition to multiculturalism (which their blogs incessantly attack). But these pieces suggest something new. One possibility is that they are being drawn to the promotion of “my culture too!”, a resentment-driven demand for recognition within a multicultural system; another is that they are pushing the ethnos in the demos. Maybe they haven’t worked it out themselves yet. Either way, it gives me the creeps.

British Home Secretary Jacqui Smith, defending proposals for 42-day detention :

Ms Smith said the Government could not afford to “sit on our hands” in preparing for potential future risks – but denied she was legislating for a hypothetical situation.

“We need to legislate now for that risk in the future,” she told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.

“It won’t be hypothetical if and when it occurs. We are not legislating now on the basis that we are bringing it in now for something that might happen in the future; we are bringing in a position for if it becomes unhypothetical.”

Indeed, or indeed not …

You know middle age has arrived when you think to yourself “I’m going to write a letter to my MP!“. It’s a tacit admission that your days of throwing petrol bombs are probably behind you and that you have been ground down and co-opted into the System, Man.

On the other hand, kids grow up much faster these days, so maybe it’s not as unfashionable as it used to be. Maybe if we all try, we can make writing a letter to your MP become the next cool craze among the hip, trendy, pipe-smoking, tweed-wearing crowd. Let’s all try it this evening – come back from work, stride through the door, hang your bowler hat on the stand and loudly announce to your long-suffering spouse or partner “Dammit, Muriel! I’m going to write a letter to my MP!”. Writing a letter to your MP is the new black.

What should we all write a letter to our MPs about? I know! How about the Iraqi employees campaign talking points?

• David Miliband’s Statement on ‘Iraq: Locally Recruited Civilians’ of 9th October stated that Britain will help to resettle- in the wider Middle East, or in the United Kingdom- Iraqis who can prove that they have worked for this country’s soldiers or diplomats for a continuous period of twelve months.
  
• Hundreds of Iraqis have been targeted for assassination for having worked for this country. Some have worked for a period of twelve months exclusively for the British and can prove this. Some have not but have been pinpointed for murder anyway. We have a responsibility to save these people from being murdered for the ‘crime’ of working for the British.
  
• There are a lot of local employees who fled their jobs before 12 months precisely because they had been targeted, or who did a 6-month tour for one British battalion and were then told to go and work for the Americans, or who did 12 months or more with interruptions, or who the Army didn’t give proper documentation too.
  
• Iraqi staff members must be given shelter not because of their provable length of service but according to whether they have been identified for murder by local death squads. This can be investigated on the spot by Army officers and referred rapidly to London: the process needs to start now.
  
• Mr Miliband’s statement did not mention the families of Iraqi employees. As Iraqi militias also murder the families of their ‘enemies’, we must resettle our employees’ families as well. Mark Brockway, an ex-soldier who hired many Iraqis, estimates that we are talking about a maximum of 700 Iraqis to resettle: this country admits 190,000 immigrants net every year.
  
• Iraqis have already been targeted for murder for having worked for this country. We will be shamed if we allow more to be killed for the same reason. Our soldiers, who are angry at this betrayal, and our diplomats, will be placed at risk if they gain a reputation for abandoning their local helpers.

I’d add that, of course, to tie the relocation package and thus the risk of death to 12 months’ continuous employment puts the employers of local staff in an utterly invidious position – how the hell do you manage your personnel and budget if you know that making someone redundant is tantamount to signing their death warrant? But anyway, come on folks, it’s so far out that it’s far in again! Write a letter to your MP! Seriously, write a letter to your MP. I am trying to jolly things along but it is a really important campaign. Write a letter to your MP.

I’ve just noticed (thanks to Facebook) that my friend Martin O’Neill had a splendid article on inheritance tax in last week’s New Statesman . This is currently a hot topic in British politics, as Labour have reacted concessively to a populist Tory attack on the tax. You should read the whole thing, as Martin gives a very cogent explanation of why we should learn to love inheritance/estate taxes and of what’s wrong with the arguments against them. Martin concludes with a Rawlsian suggestion for progressive reform:

To return from abstract arguments to concrete policies, what should Labour do about IHT, in reaction to the Tory proposals? The answer comes from an unexpected direction. The American philosopher John Rawls, in his final book Justice as Fairness, suggests that a just society should have a system of IHT that taxed beneficiaries rather than estates. In that way, inheritance could be taxed much more like income, and hence inheritance tax could be made progressive, through orienting it towards receivers rather than donors. Large estates need not attract any taxation, as long as they were dispersed among a number of relatively disadvantaged recipients. At the same time, even small estates could be taxed heavily if they were all left to others who were themselves already wealthy. Under this system of IHT, there could be no objection that the state was stopping middle-income families from “setting something aside” for their children. But, at the same time, this form of IHT would prevent wealth-transfers which greatly widened existing inequalities.

Jon Pike (Open U) has emailed me about an initiative he has launched to get the question of whether or not there should be an “academic boycott” of Israel put to the entire membership of the union. As CT readers will know, I’m opposed to the academic boycott. But even if I weren’t, the idea that this issue should be decided by a small group of activists strikes me as absurd and undemocratic. So I urge all British academics who are members of the UCU to support Jon’s initiative and sign the petition .

UPDATE: It turns out the whole question is moot, as the UCU has acted on advice that any boycott would be illegal.

The Iraqi employees of the British Army story has continued to roll on, with some amount of mainstream media attention (particularly in the Times) and the first wave of responses from MPs. Any CT readers with a UK MP who didn’t write to their MPs last week, you still have time to do so, but potentially not very much time. For one thing, the British Army is withdrawing from Basra town, meaning that it is going to be much more difficult for the employees to be protected. For another, the government (an uncharitable man would say “the New Labour spin machine”) is trying to suggest that the problem can be solved by giving visas only to the 91 individuals who had been employed as translators by the British Army. This is clearly inadequate – the way Des Browne is quoted, it doesn’t even sound as if protection is being extended to families – and I’d be grateful if our readers could mention this.

By the way, the last comments thread on this subject was a bit of a disgrace. Can I make it very clear that anyone using the word “harki” is going to get themselves banned immediately and without appeal. The very idea that people who read this blog might think that the massacres in 1960s Algeria represent a model for an anti-imperialist struggle frankly gives me the creeps. I will charitably assume that the term was used out of ignorance by people who’d only heard it in the context of Zinedine Zidane, for the time being, but any evidence to the contrary and you are banned my son (the commenters in question know who they are). Ditto “quislings”, “collaborators” and any other terms which say or imply that the massacre of civilians by self-styled “resistance” movements isn’t mass murder or isn’t a war crime (as Conor Foley notes in the comments to this trainwreck, there is a decent case for saying that, along the lines of the Rwandan radio trials, advocating a war crime is a war crime itself).

The British pro-war “left” and its hangers-on (such as the crypto-neocon Oliver Kamm) are busy screaming abuse at traitors to the cause in the aftermath of “apostate-from-decency” Johann Hari’s Dissent review of Nick Cohen (see Chris Brooke for links ). The contrast between the current scene and the “heroic” early phase of “decency” (the early days of the Iraq war) reminds me of some lines from Auden’s Letter to Lord Byron:

Today, alas, that happy crowded floor
Looks very different: many are in tears:
Some have retired to bed and locked the door;
And some swing madly from the chandeliers;
Some have passed out entirely in the rears;
Some have been sick in corners; the sobering few
Are trying hard to think of something new.

Conor Foley will no doubt add to their discomfort with his own brilliant dissection of Cohen . The highlight of Foley’s piece is a hilarious quote from Nick Cohen himself in which he characterizes his opponents:

Rather than accepting the psychological consequences of confessing error, people lose their bearings. They talk only to friends. They imagine conspiracies as they seek the worst possible motives for their critics. They retreat into coteries and speak in code … To cut a long story short, they go a little mad.