An 85-year-old man who left school at the age of 14, served in the RAF and SOE during World War II, spent most of his peace-time working life as a bookie, and was awarded an honorary degree by Keele University in 1996, arrives each Thursday evening during university term-time at Keele to supervise the arrangements for that evening’s meeting of his World Affairs Group, and to provide that week’s visiting speaker with an excellent pre-session dinner in one of the university’s restaurants. On most Thursdays more than 300 adults from all over the surrounding area will have assembled and taken their places in probably the university’s biggest auditorium, ready for Owen Powell, usually himself in the chair, to start the proceedings on the dot of 7.30. The speaker may be a Professor from a distant or nearby university, current or retired; a former General, Minister, MP, ambassador (past or present), international civil servant, prominent journalist and commentator, trade union leader, tycoon; he or she may be British, German, South African, or almost any other nationality; and the subject of the talk may range (to pick examples at random from the current season’s programme) from ‘British fascism’, ‘Israel and Palestine’, or ‘prostitution’, to ‘Rethinking Global Security’, ‘Anglo-German relations’, and ‘the new politics of northern Ireland’. Last week I chose for my subject, only slightly intending to provoke, ‘The war on civil rights and terrorism‘: Professor Michael Clarke of King’s College London had spoken the previous week on ‘If there is a war on terror, who’s winning?’ (we had made sure beforehand that our respective talks would not duplicate each other). Roy Jenkins, Shirley Williams, Arthur Scargill, Field Marshal Lord Carver, Baroness Seear, General Rose, AJP Taylor, John Biffen, Sir Stephen Lander, Bill Cash, Mark Fisher, and John Edmunds have been among past or forthcoming visiting speakers.
Each talk is scheduled to last for about an hour (a challenge to both speaker and, especially, audience, even when the speaker is more professional than I and embellishes the talking head with hi-tech visual aids). After a break for coffee, the meeting reassembles for 45 minutes of questions and comments. It’s the universal experience that the questions are of impressively high quality; this is a well informed and serious minded audience, ranging in age from 20s to 80s (or older) and from many different backgrounds. Some travel long distances to attend. Many have not missed a meeting for years. The greater part of the work of recruiting and hosting speakers, drawing up the programme, and master-minding the meetings’ logistics week by week, is done by Owen, much of it from home and on his own, without either internet access or a computer, but with support and assistance from the university’s School of Politics, International Relations and Philosophy, which sponsors the Group.
It all began in the 1970s as an adult education class of half a dozen or so mature students of political history and current affairs. In 1978 one of its members, Owen Powell, with at that time no academic qualifications whatever, suggested that he might arrange a series of lectures by experts on international relations and other topical subjects, for a mature, lay audience. The idea was greeted initially with a marked lack of enthusiasm on the part of most of those whom he consulted, and who said it wouldn’t work and no-one would come; but Keele’s then International Relations Department agreed to provide a home for the lectures. Audiences grew from a dozen or so to around 40, and then rapidly to the current level of over 300, requiring frequent moves to larger venues. Lectures take place weekly from September to May, with breaks for Easter and Christmas. There’s an annual dinner, also with a guest speaker.
Several regular attenders at the Group’s meetings have been so stimulated by the talks and discussions as to embark on degree studies as mature students. Some have graduated at Keele and elsewhere with First Class honours. Owen Powell himself led the way in this: he became a part-time student in his mid-60s, gaining a Diploma in International Relations and later a Master’s Degree by Research in history. When on 30 November 1996 the Vice-Chancellor of the university conferred an honorary degree on Owen Powell, Dr Lorna Lloyd, BSc., PhD, Senior Lecturer in what is now the School of Politics, International Relations and Philosophy, concluded her oration with the words:
Thanks to Owen, Keele has acquired a remarkable asset. The World Affairs Group has strengthened the University’s links with the local community and the world of international relations and, in the process, has extended Keele’s high reputation for intelligent and informed discussion of world affairs.
Amen to that!
The fee for the whole season’s course is currently £25 (£13 for pensioners): the first three lectures of the season are free, as a kind of amuse-gueule, but I’m afraid you’re just too late to take advantage of that: lecture no. 3 takes place tonight, when Dr Daoud Abdullah of the Muslim Council of Britain speaks on "Iraq!" (his exclamation mark, perhaps implying: ‘what else?’). If you live or work within reasonable distance of Keele and want to sign up for the rest of the lectures and discussions, there are contact details at the World Affairs Group’s website, or you can get in touch with me here and I will be glad to put you in touch with the Group’s founder and unique presiding genius — Owen Powell.
Brian
13 October 2005
Hat-tips: (1) to Dr Lorna Lloyd, who provided most of the material for this, and her husband Professor Alan James, who genially chaired last week’s meeting of the Group: and both of whom were Jane’s and my delightful hosts during our visit Oop North. Alan James is, among many other things, co-author with Professor G R Berridge of the Dictionary of Diplomacy, indispensable work of reference, to which I was allowed to make a modest contribution as consultant; and (2) to the Sentinel newspaper for its kind permission to reproduce the photograph of Owen Powell. End of commercial.
Postscript (9 January 2006): Members of Owen Powell’s Group, past speakers at it, Owen himself and his wife and family, will all have been delighted that Owen was awarded an MBE in the 2006 New Year honours, for his services to adult education. Few gongs can have been so well earned. (Apologies and regrets for having previously and erroneously reported that the award was an OBE, which would have been even more appropriate.)
Jane, my wife and family history guru, has now (October 2005) revised and brought up to date with the fruits of recent researches her paper about her mother, Margaret Annie Wood, a fascinating piece of social history with lots of links to other sites and documents. You can read the new revised edition by clicking here.
Brian
10 October 2005
Last week I gave a talk to the Keele University adult current affairs group of more than 300 people about some of the iniquities of the government’s anti-terrorism legislation since the 2000 Act, and the objectionable features of its new proposals shortly to come before parliament. I argued that existing laws had created enough offences, sufficiently sweepingly defined, to make further offences and powers unnecessary and indeed objectionable. I also urged that the iniquitous Control Orders régime, introduced under the Prevention of Terrorism Act 2005, should be repealed when it comes up for review shortly. To my surprise, only one of the numerous questions put to me after my talk expressed disagreement with my basic points that the continuing erosion of our civil liberties made us all less rather than more safe, since it aggravated the feeling of anger and alienation among many British Muslims who would inevitably be the main victims of the new powers and the new offences: and that the idea of a trade-off between civil rights and security against terrorism was a dangerous fallacy, since we needed both: the two go hand in hand, and it isn’t a zero sum game. All the other reactions to my talk, during and after the meeting, supported the views I had expressed with varying degrees of conviction.
Next day I received an e-mail from a lady who had been at the Keele meeting. Her message, and my reply to her, read as follows:
From Ms X:
*** Message dated 8 October 2005 sent from barder.com website using contact form. ***
Dear Brian Barder,
Was alarmed and impressed by your talk and would like to know who to write to in order to protest about new proposed Govt. legislation – also would be grateful for one or two salient facts to quote. I already noted your main comments re existing legislation which already deals with incitement etc. and knee-jerk reaction of TB to placate the public, as he sees it.Many thanks. Your talk was excellent, but we must all stir ourselves and not just sit down under the frightening new laws which would be a serious infringement of our civil liberties. WHAT IS GOING ON?
Yours,
[X]
To which I have replied:
From BB, on 9 Oct 05:
Dear [Ms X],Thank you very much for the message you sent me from my website (I’m glad you found that all right!). Thank you too for your kind remarks about my talk at Keele on Thursday.
I think the best person to write to in order to protest about the government’s new anti-terrorist legislation is probably your MP: you could urge him or her, whatever party he/she represents, to vote against the new Bill, to vote for the repeal of the Control Orders Act (the Prevention of Terrorism Act 2005), and to encourage his/her parliamentary and party colleagues to do the same. I suggest that you send your MP a fax, re-transmit it by e-mail if you can find out the MP’s e-mail address, and then print out the message and send it to the MP at: House of Commons, Westminster, London SW1A 0AA. You can identify your MP and send him/her a fax (free) from –
http://www.faxyourmp.com/index.php3
— and once you know the MP’s name (or constituency name) you can send him or her an e-mail, if an e-mail facility is shown in the list, from –
http://www.parliament.uk/directories/hciolists/alms.cfm. You can also usually send an e-mail to an MP by using the surname followed by the initial followed by @parliament.uk: thus the e-mail address of John Smith MP will usually be smithj@parliament.uk. But that might not work if two or more MPs have the same surname and initial.It looks as if the new Bill is to come before Parliament next week, so if you are going to influence your MP’s vote, now is the time to contact him or her.
I suggest that three key points you might make in your message are:
(1) Existing anti-terrorist laws and other laws against conspiracy, murder, etc., are now already so sweeping that it is unnecessary, and endangers our basic civil rights, to create yet more offences, defined even more sweepingly, as the latest government Bill seeks to do. MPs should vote against these new offences and new police and government powers to deal with them.
(2) Criminalising more and more kinds of behaviour and taking more and more powers to deal arbitrarily with people suspected of involvement in terrorism, without the proper safeguards of charges for specific offences and trial by a judge and jury, tends further to alienate and anger Muslims in Britain and may thus plant the seeds of future terrorism. The best defence against terrorism in the longer run is to preserve a fair and just society which is under the rule of law and in which everyone is equal before the law.
(3) ‘Control Orders’, introduced in March under the Prevention of Terrorism Act 2005, are completely unacceptable: they give politicians the power arbitrarily to wreck people’s lives on grounds of pure suspicion about what they might do in the future, without any proper opportunity to know what they are accused of or to appeal to a properly constituted court against the imposition of the control order. Terrorist suspects should be charged under one or more of the existing and all-embracing laws and given a fair trial. The Prevention of Terrorism Act 2005 is due to be reviewed by parliament later this year or early in 2006 and there will be an opportunity then to amend it or repeal it altogether. MPs should insist on repealing it before Britain is humiliated yet again by a finding in the European Court of Human Rights, or in one of our own British courts, that it breaches our rights under the European Convention on Human Rights.
Incidentally, following my talk at Keele on Thursday, the Guardian reported next day that the Home Secretary had abandoned the barmy and dangerous idea of making it an offence to ‘glorify’ terrorism even if there’s no intention to incite others to commit terrorist offences: it will now only be an offence if an intention to incite can be proved. So the Home Secretary won’t after all have the hilarious task, given to him in the Bill as first published, of drawing up lists of terrorist acts more than 20 years ago that we are to be allowed to ‘glorify’! I didn’t expect such a prompt response to my Keele talk….
Finally, I strongly recommend that you have a look at the website of ‘Liberty’ –
http://www.liberty-human-rights.org.uk/ –
— which has much full and useful information about all these matters, with detailed criticisms of the many defective and objectionable measures that have been wished on us since the Terrorism Act 2000 and those that the government is trying to introduce now. You can join ‘Liberty’ online on its website: it’s a very good cause and well worth supporting.I hope that helps!
—
Good luck and best wishes
Brian
9 October 2005
http://www.barder.com/
http://www.barder.com/ephems/
Go thou and do likewise!
Brian
9 October 2005
Jasper Gerard in the Sunday Times, 2 October 2005, writing about Lance Price’s Book of Revelations of the goings-on in No. 10 Downing Street, The Spin Doctor’s Diary:
A picture emerges of a government less concerned with the commanding heights of the economy than in plummeting the depths of banality.
Mr Gerard, or his helpful sub-editor, clearly needs one of those legendary Polish plumbers.
Brian
Just come across a splendid liberal/legal blog by a team led by Professor Jack M. Balkin, who holds the magnificent titles of Knight Professor of Constitutional Law and the First Amendment, Director, The Information Society Project at Yale Law School. It includes an interesting piece by Professor Balkin on the value of blogs to academics, including of course lawyers.
< Lynndie England in Abu Ghraib
Also in this treasure trove is a disturbing piece by Scott Horton about the sad case of Lynndie England, recently jailed for three years for her part in the torture of prisoners at Abu Ghraib, all part of the great cover-up of the far more senior people who either deliberately or negligently presided over these scandalous practices and are apparently going to get away with it while pathetic bit players like Ms England, with her new baby fathered by Charles Graner, another of the Abu Ghraib staff who had led her on, serve out their terms in the penitentiary. Of course she deserved punishment, but she looks to me almost as much a victim as a culprit. (Graner got ten years.) One passage in Horton’s piece highlights the anomalies and potential benefits that can flow from the well developed American practice of plea bargaining:
The plea bargain process is essential to the economics of our criminal justice system. However, it frequently isn’t consistent with justice. Anyone familiar with the plea bargain process knows that plea bargain statements are a form of kabuki theater – in essence, what the prosecutor gets as a gift in exchange for a reduced sentence. Accordingly, the plea bargain statements [in the Lynndie England case] that Pollack [Wall Street Journal editorial writer] quotes tell us one thing: that the prosecutors were focused with a laser-like intensity on throwing inquiry off the trail of command authority. It does not provide any kind of evidence that the command authority is innocent. Given the relationship between command authority and the prosecutorial service, it might suggest just the opposite. Citing such statements as proof of what is said borders on being comical.
That’s particularly true in England’s case. Her plea bargain was busted because Graner testified that the photos had been taken in order to train others in techniques for preparing prisoners (directly contradicting Pollack’s characterization, incidentally). This was inconsistent with the plea bargain statement, and thus forced the court to throw the plea bargain out.
There’s talk of introducing more formalised plea bargaining into English courts (and Welsh ones too, for all I know) as a means of saving the cost of lengthy trials. Plea bargaining, if it had been successful, could have resulted in a more merciful outcome for Ms England, but it has other perils, putting heavy pressure on the innocent to plead guilty in order to avoid the danger of a heavier sentence, and tempting prosecutors to over-charge so as to leave room for scaling down the charges in the course of plea-bargaining (Louise Woodward had a bad experience with Massachusetts law through unexpectedly declining to plea-bargain after being monstrously over-charged). We should beware.
Brian
