Two or three years ago my wife, Jane (aka Maureen), wrote her reminiscences of her experiences in Brixton (and as an evacuee in Accrington, Lancashire) during the second world war. This was mainly intended for our granddaughters, now young teenagers, American citizens living in New York, for whom London in World War II is about as easily imagined as Hastings at the time of the Norman Conquest.
For reasons too intricate to recount here, this document turned up again the other day, and I thought it might be of sufficiently wide interest to warrant a place on my website. So now you can read it here. Readers born after about 1950 may find that it provides some insights into what life was like for a little girl in Britain during the war which help to explain why those of us of Jane's generation still regard the childhood experience of war, however long ago, as the defining event of our lives, regardless of how vivid our post-war experiences may have been.
By all means comment on it here.
Brian
'Tis the season to be illiterate, apparently, as well as jolly. The following assaults on our language are nearly all taken from the letters page of a single issue of the Guardian. I refrain from naming their authors, since the editing of letters to the Guardian is famously done with a meat cleaver, so the letter writers could well be blameless:
* The most important defence for workers in the garment industry are independent and democratic trade unions.
* If these standards had been in place in southern Italy, these workers may have been spared the conditions they were forced to endure.
* While the EU quite rightly wants to place itself at the forefront of efforts to promote decent standards of work globally, but first we must guarantee that worker's rights are upheld within the EU .
* True, but the shortfall made up by the hard-working families is miniscule when compared to the deficit incurred by the unwillingness of others to cough up the taxes they should pay…
* While not wishing to question the law, nor to support creationism, a consequence of the second law is that the randomness of the universe is increasing…
And a different kind of clunker from the news pages of the same issue:
* Ben Dunne, one of the Irish businessmen criticised for making secretive payments to Mr Haughey, hit back…
Here's a (presumably unintentionally) revealing slip of the pen from a Sunday Times article about a footballer called Wayne Rooney and his 'girlfriend':
* I had eight sessions with him of three hours each at his Cheshire home, while working on his autobiography…
And a tailpiece from the Scotland Yard Crime Prevention Team Christmas email message:
* Theft from bags/handbags etc is a problem in shopping centres and bar’s/café’s at this time of year.
Could be a problem in the greengrocer's, too, I imagine.
Brian
In case there's anyone in the country who doesn't know, the X Factor is a television amateur talent competition in which many thousands of the aspiring young sing pop songs in the hope of winning the millions — literally — of telephone votes required to emerge at the end of numerous rounds over numerous weeks as the winner for the year, earning in the process a guaranteed million-pound recording contract and the near-certainty of success in the charts for the record of the winning song that's issued almost instantly once the result is announced.
Similarly, hardly anyone in Britain (or Northern Ireland, for that matter) can fail to have 
seen or read that this year's winner is a bright young woman called Leona with a powerful voice and a considerable screen presence. (Her somewhat bewildering name looks like the solution to a crossword clue: "Il Trovatore heroine singing and winning or missing, but not applicable to a lion", perhaps.) The announcement of her victory in the final round was accompanied by an appropriate fiesta of covering face with hands, weeping, laughing, hugging, accepting brave congratulations from the runner-up (a boy of 18 who looked more like 14 with an Elvis haircut and a pleasant singing voice) and a welter of hyperbole from the organisers, experts, voice coaches and other celebrities in attendance ("You are a world-class artist, Leona, and you're a lovely girl, and you're heading for top of the Christmas charts, and you'll be a millionaire", etc.)
The shock of her success must in reality have been somewhat mitigated by the fact that a raft of experts in the field, even including a celebrity chef, had previously tipped her as the likely winner:
Leona Lewis is the stars' favourite to win this year's X Factor.
In a straw poll of red carpet celebrities, she picked up more votes than fellow semi-finalists Ben Mills and Raymond Quinn.
Westlife singer Kian Egan, former Fame Academy contestant Lemar Obika, Jamie Oliver and ex-Sugababes singer Mutya Beuna all tipped Leona to win the competition.
Unfortunately Brian McFadden and Delta Goodrem showed they haven't been watching very closely by tipping the MacDonald Brothers, even though the Scottish duo were voted off last weekend.
Kian said: "It's tough competition there, there is a lot of good people still left."
"Red carpet celebrities"? Well, even I have heard of Jamie Oliver, although I confess that I have no idea why his judgement on such a matter should be of interest to anyone, certainly as compared with his judgement of, say, a plate of caldeirada de lulas à madeirense.
A rare note of dissent is sounded by someone on the 'Hollywood Grind – Celebrity Gossip' website, reproduced here with inventive and economical punctuation intact:
Hi I would like to join in the plaudits for the phenomenally gifted Leona Lewis, and wish her great success in the future. However !, after surfing the net and discovering she has already written an album (not released) and been working with “Top” singers and producers both in the USA , i think the UK TV viewing public have been "conned" by the makers of X Factor.
To hear Simon Cowell and Sharon Osbourne repeatedly tell us weekly how Leona is bewilderingly unaware of her huge singing talent and ability, PLEASE !!!, and to find out she had been booked on the Ellen US chat show approx 3 weeks before the final result !!.
This series of X Factor has been a good fundraiser for the producers with nearly 9 million texts and phone-in’s. The core value of X Factor is to tour the country looking for an individual uncut diamond of talent, cut and polish it over 9 weeks then put it in the shop window to find it’s own place in the music industry. This year it seems they just opted to take the easy option go to the jewelry store and hope nobody notices.
My gripe is not with Leona but with the manipulative makers of X Factor.
Good luck Leona, make your family and your country proud, you ARE an outstanding singer.
On the same website you can see and (more importantly) hear a clip of Leona performing her prize-winning song, 'A Moment Like This'. Obviously this is the peak of 21st-century musical artistry, although to my elderly square's ear the heavy vibrato, the sudden harsh meaningless fortissimi (voice broadening out into something just short of a scream), the long drawn out glissandi and, worst of all, the yodelling subdivision of long vowel sounds regardless of meaning (day-ayay-ayay-ayay), are painful to listen to, even though all are the stock-in-trade of the contemporary pop or rock singer, perhaps indicating a distant relationship to gospel singing — impression reinforced by the improbable appearance, half-way through the song, of a large black gospel backing group in white church surplices, swaying, prancing and finger-snapping in perfect unison. The tonal uncertainties of Leona's final prize-winning performance may charitably be ascribed to nervousness, and perhaps to the tunelessness of the song itself, for which Leona can't be blamed. Well, we can unaffectedly wish her fame (which she already has in spades) and fortune (evidently now guaranteed). She seems a perfectly harmless young woman.
Now if the formation and training of a school choir in every state and private school in the country were to be made compulsory by law, along with a curriculum requiring every child to sing the choruses of the Messiah, the B Minor Mass, Elijah and The Beggar's Opera in the course of his or her schooldays, the next generation's lives would be immeasurably enriched, and the singing of even popular songs on radio and television by amateurs and professionals alike might become a pleasure to listen to. We should be so lucky.
Brian
In Ephems last week I wrote this about the publication of evidence, hitherto classified (presumably 'secret' or 'confidential'), given to the Butler Inquiry in June 2004 by Carne Ross, the British former diplomat who subsequently resigned from the Diplomatic Service over Iraq:
Last month (on 8 November 2006) a member of the House of Commons Foreign Affairs Select Committee made strenuous efforts to persuade Carne Ross to pass to the Select Committee his classified evidence to the Butler Inquiry under the protection of parliamentary privilege (the transcript of his exchanges with Ross and with the Chair is well worth reading), but the Committee seems subsequently to have decided not to ask for it.
Today, however, the Independent newspaper has published the full transcript of Carne Ross's hitherto secret evidence to the Butler Inquiry.
An aside in yesterday's Observer, and further research, have alerted me to some significant errors in what I wrote. First, it seems from a closer scrutiny of the Butler Inquiry (into intelligence on WMD in the lead-up to the Iraq war) that Butler's eventual published report did not reproduce any of the written (or indeed the oral) evidence submitted to it, so the fact that Carne Ross's written evidence was not published had no special significance. (Of possibly greater interest, though, is the fact that Carne Ross's name doesn't appear in the Butler report's list of witnesses: presumably he is one of "two further witnesses who asked for their identities to be protected".) More important, however, is the fact that the Independent newspaper was not the first to publish Ross's previously classified Butler evidence, as I had thought: it was in fact first published on the website of the House of Commons Select Committee on Foreign Affairs. This raises some interesting further issues.
I have not yet been able to discover how Ross's evidence to Butler came to be classified. When he submitted it, Carne Ross was still a member of the Diplomatic Service, then as now bound by the Official Secrets Act but also by the ordinary code of conduct and discipline applicable to all public servants. The Cabinet Secretary granted immunity from disciplinary procedures to any public servant on account of anything said in evidence to Butler, but this would hardly have given Ross carte blanche to make public information which was itself classified. At any rate, his evidence to Butler certainly was classified, and Ross was clear in his oral evidence to the Foreign Affairs Select Committee that he would be in legal trouble if he simply published it on his own account.
This prompted one member of the Committee in particular to press Ross to hand over the text of his Butler evidence to the Committee under the protection of Parliamentary privilege, although the Committee Chair urged Ross to take further legal advice before doing so. Ross himself made it clear that he was keen to get his Butler evidence into the public domain and saw a request for it from the Committee as a good way of doing so. There was however apparently some disagreement within the Committee about the propriety of inviting Ross to hand over this classified information. From the Committee's website:
Motion made and Question proposed, That the Committee do not send for Mr Carne Ross’s evidence to Lord Butler’s Review of Intelligence on Weapons of Mass Destruction.—(Mr Greg Pope.)
Mr Pope's Motion must have been defeated, because on 6 December the Clerk to the Committee wrote to Carne Ross in terms that made it quite clear that he was expected to hand over the document:
At its meeting today, the Committee resolved to send for your unpublished written evidence to Lord Butler's review of intelligence on weapons of mass destruction.
I would be grateful if you would make arrangements to hand over the evidence at your earliest convenience.
Ross replied on the same day in terms that suggest that he had taken further legal advice about how to cover himself against any accusation of personally publishing classified information, by sheltering behind parliamentary privilege:
Please find enclosed a copy of my evidence to the Butler inquiry in 2004, which is disclosed to the Foreign Affairs Committee on the basis of and in accordance with its express requirement that I disclose it as part of my evidence to the committee.
It is of course a matter for the committee what if anything it wishes to do with the evidence but it would, in my view, be unfortunate if the committee were publicly to rely on or comment in any way on my evidence without making the document itself public. It would be strange and unfair if comments were to be made about this document out of context and without the public being aware of its contents or my being able to make any comment on it.
I want to make clear to the committee that I do not regard this evidence as anything other than a small part of the story of policymaking before the war. I was but one of several officials involved, and of course I was not at the most senior level. I also left the British government—on sabbatical—in June 2002.
These events prompt a number of questions. If a minister of the Crown, or his officials acting in the minister's name, judge certain sensitive information to require classification on grounds that its publication would be damaging to the public interest, can a committee of MPs demand that a witness giving evidence to them should nevertheless hand it over to them? Having received it, is the committee itself not bound by the Official Secrets Act not to disclose it to anyone else without the agreement of the relevant minister: or may it safely do so on the grounds that it is covered by parliamentary privilege and immunity? Did this particular committee consult the Foreign & Commonwealth Office before publishing the Ross Butler evidence by putting it on its website?
There are other pertinent questions of a slightly different kind. Now that we can read Ross's evidence to Butler, either on the Select Committee's website or in the Independent newspaper, does it seem that its publication will in fact have damaged the public interest, or will it have damaged only the credibility of the government in the controversy over the legality or otherwise of the attack on and occupation of Iraq — not quite the same thing? Is a government entitled, legally or morally, to try to protect itself and its reputation by withholding certain potentially damaging information from publication by classifying it, even if publication would not pose any threat to the wider public interest — such as the public interest in having available all information that helps us to judge the credibility and integrity of our government? On the other hand, is it possible for officials and others to give genuinely frank and uninhibited advice to ministers, including advice that might be unwelcome to ministers because it warns of the likely malign consequences or even illegality of a course of action that they plan to take, if any old official who sees it is entitled to publish it, if necessary under cover of parliamentary privilege (or on a foreign website)? Wouldn't such a régime result in all sensitive or unwelcome advice from officials either being suppressed and withheld from ministers, or else transmitted orally, with no record of it kept, and any written evidence of it quietly destroyed? The consequences of any such development would be disastrous for uninhibited private debate on policy within government and for later accountability to parliament, public opinion and historians. Certainly no other government in a comparable democracy gives to its officials and advisers anything like such licence to publish and not be damned: the development of public policy is nowhere conducted in a goldfish bowl.
Very similar issues arose earlier this year over the efforts of the Foreign & Commonwealth Office to prevent Craig Murray, controversial former ambassador to Uzbekistan, from publishing, first on the Web and later in his book, the texts of classified documents related to his long dispute with the Office, leading eventually to his own resignation from the Service. Once these texts were published on the Web, and it became known that the FCO was trying to get them removed from it, so many websites in Britain and abroad made copies of them and re-published them as 'mirror sites' that the FCO's efforts failed, and indeed they are still available on the Web to any ordinarily diligent searcher. The FCO did however succeed in getting the texts expunged from Craig Murray's book, by threatening his publisher with legal action if they were published there. I commented on these issues at length (!), and also exchanged (courteous) arguments about them with Craig Murray, in earlier Ephems posts here, here, here and here.
I remain convinced, on the basis of personal experience as much as of any academic assessment of the arguments, that a condition of good government in a democracy is the right and ability of governments to protect some of the sensitive information in its possession from publication, at least until publication no longer threatens to damage the wider public and national interest. The present government's recent encounters with Craig Murray and now with Carne Ross suggest that in some circumstances government may find it impossible in practice to exercise that right. If so, even the most sensitive information (affecting, for example, national security and relations with foreign governments) must now be vulnerable. The problem, I believe, lies not only in the advance of information technology but also in the power of government to decide unilaterally what may and what may not be published. The machinery in the Freedom of Information Act enabling an independent referee to arbitrate between an applicant for the release of specific information and a government department that refuses to provide it, may need to be broadened so that all disputes over the publication of classified information can be resolved by a disinterested authority, and not by threats, litigation, or the exercise of raw power or cunning evasion, as at present.
Update (19 December 06): The first comment, below, by Craig Murray is well worth reading.
Brian
The government's decision to block the investigation into BAE System's massive arms contracts with Saudi Arabia is not just outrageous: it looks as if it may be in breach of an OECD Convention to which Britain is party, and the 'explanations' of it given by the prime minister, the attorney-general and the head of the Serious Fraud Office are riddled with contradictions and obfuscation. The Guardian of 16 December 2006 helpfully quotes the attorney-general, Lord Goldsmith, on the effect of the OECD Convention:
He specifically quoted article 5 of the OECD convention on corruption which precluded him from "taking into account considerations of the national economic interest or the potential effect upon relations with another state". He omitted the third element that should not have influenced him, "the identity of the natural or legal persons involved" – in this case the potential naming in a court of corrupt Saudi princes.
Yet according to the Financial Times of the same date, the prime minister was singing from a very different hymn sheet:
“Leave aside the effects on thousands of British jobs and billions worth of pounds for British industry. Leave that to one side, our relationship with Saudi Arabia is vitally important for our country in terms of counter terrorism, in terms of the broader Middle East, in terms of helping in respect of Israel/Palestine,” said Mr Blair. “That strategic interest comes first, particularly in circumstances where, if prosecutions have gone forward, all that would have happened is that we would have had months, potentially years, of ill feeling between us and a key partner and ally, and probably for no purpose…
He continued: “I take full responsibility for the advice I gave in respect of it, but I have no doubt at all that had we allowed things to go forward, we would have done immense damage to the true interests of this country, leaving aside the fact that we would have lost thousands of highly-skilled jobs and very, very important business for British industry.”
There's more. According to the so-called Shawcross convention, the decision whether to halt a prosecution or criminal investigation rests solely with the attorney-general and not with any other members of the government, whom the attorney may, but is not obliged to, consult. Yet on the one hand the attorney-general says that the decision was taken not by him but by the head of the Serious Fraud Office, who has avowedly been under pressure of 'advice' from the prime minister, the foreign and defence secretaries and the attorney-general, all urging him to halt the investigation (pretty persuasive, one supposes), while the prime minister takes full responsibility for the 'advice' he has given. More still: the attorney-general tells the media that one of the factors influencing his 'advice' to the SFO was his judgement, which he asserts was shared by the SFO, that the evidence turned up by the SFO investigation was unlikely to support an eventual prosecution or prosecutions. But the head of the SFO has disputed this, saying that it's far too early in the investigation to form a view about the likelihood, or lack of it, that a prosecution would have a reasonable chance of success.
Meanwhile Mr Blair asks us to believe that if the SFO continues to investigate these deals with the Saudis, they will withdraw their cooperation with us "in terms of the broader Middle East, in terms of helping in respect of Israel/Palestine." But any schoolchild must know that Saudi middle east policy is determined by the Saudis' own judgement of their country's (or its régime's) interests, not by pique over the behaviour of the prosecuting authorities of a middle-ranking country far away in Europe and, in truth, one with precious little influence on events in the middle east, whatever Mr Blair's messianic delusions might lead him to believe to the contrary.
As for national security, Richard Norton-Taylor has it shamingly right in the Comment is Free Guardian blog:
So now we have it: Britain's national security is in hock to a corrupt and despotic monarchy, which our own Foreign Office admits is a serial abuser of human rights.
We may ask in vain for practical details of the ways in which Britain's national security would be damaged by any partial and temporary interruption of cooperation on terrorism matters with the Saudis: what kind of intelligence, for example, it is that they provide to us at present but that we couldn't get from any of our other and more reliable intelligence partners? Is it really so indispensable as to outweigh our obligations under the OECD Convention and our international reputation as an enemy of corruption? So valuable that for years to come we shan't be able to insist on developing countries eliminating domestic corruption as a condition of receiving our development aid, without them laughing in our faces? We shall never know: all these matters are masked and hooded in secrecy.
There could be a different response to Saudi demands that we stop investigating them, "or else". How cheering it would be if the British ambassador to Saudi Arabia were to be instructed to call on the senior Saudi prince and say to him:
"Your Royal Highness, I'm sorry to disappoint you, but I'm afraid that in our country we don't practise political interference in semi-judicial proceedings such as the investigation of possible crimes committed against our laws. I ought to remind you, politely, I hope, that your country has more at stake in preserving a constructive relationship with my country than my country has in its relations with yours. Britain plays a significant role in supporting and sustaining Your Royal Highness's avowedly unstable and insecure régime, whereas ours doesn't depend in the smallest degree on support from yours. The danger to the Saudi throne posed by Islamic extremist terrorism far exceeds any danger it might pose to our much more durable democracy, and if you carry out your threat to withdraw cooperation with us in our joint campaign against terrorism, you will lose more than we shall: cooperation is a two-way street and we have many other more substantive partners in this effort than you do.
"I also hear what you say about the consequences for our hopes of selling you 72 Eurofighter Typhoon jets if we go ahead with our investigation of possible illegal bribes paid in the context of the earlier phases of Al Yamamah, but I respectfully remind you that here too your country and government have a significant stake in preserving our goodwill. We have in our possession a huge stock of information about the ways in which the Saudi royal family benefits financially and personally from these huge contracts, ultimately at the expense of ordinary Saudi citizens, and you can easily imagine the effect on the stability of your régime if even a fraction of this information were to become public.
"Moreover, I think you should consider the likely consequences for your defences, both domestic and international, if there were to be a regrettable interruption in the supply of spare parts, servicing, training facilities and other after-sales services in support of the enormous amount of defence equipment that we have sold you since 1985. Perhaps you would be able to replace these by persuading new French commercial partners to supply them, but I very much doubt it.
"I do hope that on sober reflection you will agree that we both have a major interest — yours even greater than ours — in avoiding an impulsively conceived breach in our mutually profitable relationship, and that it will be in Saudi Arabia's interests as much as (or more than) ours to concentrate now on eliminating any hint of sleaze or corruption from our future dealings, even if that means tracking down and prosecuting those in both our countries who may — or may not — have been responsible for corrupt activities in the past.
"And finally, Sir, I ought to tell you in all frankness and friendship that my country has never taken kindly to being threatened, and that we have a record of remarkable obstinacy in defending our democracy and its commitment to the rule of law, even if there is sometimes a material price to be paid for doing so. Our people have a quite strong antipathy to being pushed around, even by wealthy countries in whose friendship we have a major stake. It is an attitude that I earnestly and respectfully commend to Your Royal Highness.
"I should of course make it clear that I am speaking on the explicit instructions of my government."
Dream on!
Brian
The evidence given by Carne Ross to the Butler Inquiry on the use of intelligence in the run-up to the Iraq war was 'classified' and accordingly not published in the Inquiry's 
report. Ross was the First Secretary in the UK Mission (delegation) to the UN dealing with Iraq, WMD, sanctions, etc., for more than four years (specifically from December 1997 until June 2002), i.e. before the US/UK attack on Iraq in March 2003, but he kept in touch with former British and other colleagues throughout the period. He resigned from the Diplomatic Service after giving his evidence to the Inquiry, on the grounds of his objections to the way UK policy towards Iraq had been pursued during the lead-up to the war and to the way in which the war had been publicly justified.
Last month (on 8 November 2006) a member of the House of Commons Foreign Affairs Select Committee made strenuous efforts to persuade Carne Ross to pass to the Select Committee his classified evidence to the Butler Inquiry under the protection of parliamentary privilege (the transcript of his exchanges with Ross and with the Chair is well worth reading), but the Committee seems subsequently to have decided not to ask for it [1].
Today, however, the Independent newspaper has published the full transcript of Carne Ross's hitherto secret evidence to the Butler Inquiry. It contains a number of important and potentially damaging points which will repay detailed analysis by the commentariat. One of these is of special interest to students of United Nations resolutions and their interpretation. According to Ross, –
Resolution 1441 did not authorise the use of force in case of non-cooperation with weapons inspectors. I was in New York, but not part of the mission, during the negotiation of that resolution …. My friends in other delegations told me that the UK sold 1441 in the Council explicitly on the grounds that it did not represent authorisation for war and that it "gave inspections a chance".
Later, after claiming that Iraq was not cooperating, the UK presented a draft resolution which offered the odd formulation that Iraq had failed to seize the opportunity of 1441. In negotiation, the UK conceded that the resolution amounted to authority to use force (there are few public records of this, but I was told by many former colleagues involved in the negotiation that this was the case). The resolution failed to attract support.
This is not the place for an intricate textual analysis of resolution 1441 and whether it implied authority for the use of force against Iraq in the event of Iraqi non-compliance with the UN and its weapons inspectors without the need for a further 'decision' by the Security Council. To state the case briefly, it has been asserted on behalf of the British government that the absence of the word decision or decide from paragraph 12 of the resolution, requiring the Council only to "consider" the situation and not to take any further decision on what to do about it, means that the resolution did authorise force without the need for a "second resolution":
12. Decides to convene immediately upon receipt of a report in accordance with paragraphs 4 or 11 above, in order to consider the situation and the need for full compliance with all of the relevant Council resolutions in order to secure international peace and security; … [My emphasis -- BLB]
The validity of this obviously counter-intuitive assertion, which is at the heart of the British Government's defence against the charge that the attack on Iraq was illegal, depends on a number of factors. One of these is close analysis of the Explanation of Vote by the British ambassador to the UN (which appears to confirm that the resolution does not contain any authorisation for force without a further Council decision, although it can just about be interpreted as falling very slightly short of this):
We heard loud and clear during the negotiations the concerns about "automaticity" and "hidden triggers" – the concern that on a decision so crucial we should not rush into military action; that on a decision so crucial any Iraqi violations should be discussed by the Council. Let me be equally clear in response, as a co-sponsor with the United States of the text we have adopted. There is no "automaticity" in this Resolution. If there is a further Iraqi breach of its disarmament obligations, the matter will return to the Council for discussion as required in Operational Paragraph 12. We would expect the Security Council then to meet its responsibilities. [My emphasis -- BLB]
Another element in the UK government's defence is the so-called 'negotiating history' of the resolution: whether members of the Council knew from their private discussions of the text eventually adopted as Res. 1441 that the omission of the word decision or decide from Paragraph 12 would be taken by the US and the UK as constituting authority for them to attack Iraq without the need for a further resolution of the Council explicitly authorising them to do so. However, since there is no official or other record of those secret discussions leading to Res. 1441, or none that is publicly accessible, we may have to wait for the memoirs of the participants before we can judge the weight to be attached to this proposition. On the face of it, it looks flaky. All the sadder that the Foreign & Commonwealth Office seems to have succeeded in preventing Sir Jeremy Greenstock (the British ambassador to the UN at the time) from publishing his memoirs, at any rate for some considerable time.
Meanwhile at least one of the interesting points to emerge from Carne Ross's Butler Inquiry testimony is his understanding at the time, from his New York contacts involved in these negotiations, that
Resolution 1441 did not authorise the use of force in case of non-cooperation with weapons inspectors. …. My friends in other delegations told me that the UK sold 1441 in the Council explicitly on the grounds that it did not represent authorisation for war and that it "gave inspections a chance".
If, contrary to what Ross was being told at the time, members of the Council really did know and accept from the negotiation of the text that Resolution 1441 authorised the use of force against Iraq without the need for a further decision in a fresh resolution, it's hard to explain why Britain went to such inordinate lengths to secure a "second resolution" containing that authority, failing dismally to obtain it, and indeed why those members of the Council who were vocally opposed to the use of force at that time without the Council's explicit authority (including France, Germany, Russia, China and Germany, with others constituting a clear majority of the Council) nevertheless voted unanimously for Resolution 1441.
All this may appear to some to be counting angels on the head of the proverbial pin. But it goes to the heart of the question whether Britain was in breach of the Charter and thus of international law by participating in an unauthorised attack on a sovereign member state of the United Nations. Such a breach is properly described as an act of aggression and indeed a war crime; those responsible for committing it are equally properly described as war criminals. The Independent [1], and Carne Ross, have performed a valuable service by contributing a new piece of evidence on this point: it's not decisive, certainly, but it's suggestive, to put it at the lowest.
[1] Update (19 December 2006): In a later Ephems entry I have corrected a couple of factual errors in this piece concerning the actual roles of the Select Committee on Foreign Affairs and the Independent newspaper in arranging the publication of Carne Ross's previously secret written evidence to the Butler Inquiry. Please also see Craig Murray's comment appended to it.
Brian
Alan Mumford, management training guru and latterly indefatigable publisher of books of political cartoons, has produced his best collection yet: "Did Cowards Flinch? A cartoon history of the Labour Party", with a foreword by Neil Kinnock. As Lord Kinnock writes in his 2-page + foreword,
This book is an illuminating political history provided in the form of an art gallery. Some of the work will have made even the most courageous flinch and wince some of the time.
Professor Mumford prefaces each chapter, covering a different period from 1900-1917 to 1993-2006, with a page or two setting the political context of the cartoons that follow, and each cartoon has a full explanatory caption — very necessary, since even the oldest readers and most dedicated Labourites will be hard put to it to identify some of the subjects of the earlier cartoons reproduced. The cartoonists represented include everyone's favourites: Low, Vicky, Peter Brookes, Steve Bell (of course), Martin Rowson (of course), Cummings, Jak, Trog, Illingworth, and many more.
I declare an interest (personal, not financial): Alan Mumford is among my oldest friends, going back to historic protests against the Suez disaster in 1956 and even earlier than that. There are few people better equipped by an encyclopaedic knowledge of cartoons and by an equally comprehensive knowledge of contemporary political history, viewed from a discerning but recognisably Labour perspective, to produce a splendid book like this: big and colourful enough for the coffee table but with enough solid reading in it for the bedside. It's not too late to give away a few dozen copies as perfect Christmas presents. Hardback, a snip at £19.99 (no, that doesn't fool me, either), from The Political Cartoon Gallery, 32 Store Street, London WC1E 7BS, by telephone to +44 [0]20 7580 1114, or by e-mail to info@politicalcartoon.co.uk. You can also visit a splendid exhibition of many of the cartoons in Alan's book, and bearing the same name, at the Political Cartoon Gallery, (still) at 32 Store Street, London, UK, WC1E 7BS, open from 9.30am to 5.30pm Monday to Friday and 11.30am to 5.30pm on Saturday. Call 020 7580 1114 for further details. But better hurry: the exhibition closes on Christmas eve. And don't forget to buy the book!
One word of warning: apart from the magnificent front cover (see below, and don't on any account miss the present Leader in it), all the cartoons are in black and white. I suppose the great majority of them were only ever drawn and published in B&W, and to have reproduced a handful of more recent ones in colour would probably have doubled the price of the book, so don't let's complain.
Brian
Few would disagree with the editorial in today's Guardian denouncing the Iranian President's conference to discuss whether the Holocaust actually happened as "undeniably offensive":
Mr Ahmadinejad claims to have arranged the conference to retaliate for the notorious Danish cartoons poking fun at the Prophet Muhammad. These were seen as offensive by many Muslims but they were not the work of any government. The president's misunderstanding of how western democracies function may be matched by western misunderstanding of Iran or Islam. But it is hard to imagine anything remotely analogous to his questioning – in the face of overwhelming historical evidence – of the industrial-scale murder of 6 million Jews during the second world war. The word "myth" was much in evidence in Tehran. It is unclear whether he believes that gays, Gypsies and other victims of Nazi persecution also shamelessly lied about their suffering.
This unpleasant episode is more about the present than the past. Iran is deeply hostile to Israel. Mr Ahmadinejad has spoken of it "vanishing from the page of time" – prompting heated debate, more political than philological (and often absurdly indulgent of this bitter foe of the US), as to precisely what he meant. Iran's determined quest for nuclear power is widely seen as a cover for the acquisition of nuclear weapons to challenge Israel's nuclear supremacy. There are some very grave dangers here.
But there are aspects of this that ought to make us very uneasy. Describing some of the unsavoury characters (Nazi sympathisers, Ku Klux Klan activists, and so forth) attending the Iranian conference, the Guardian mentions, almost as an aside, that –
German neo-Nazis were banned from attending by their government.
True, our own government bans football hooligans from attending certain matches overseas — one of many examples of Blair laws infringing citizens' liberties on account of what they are deemed likely to do, not as punishment for anything they have done. So we are in no position to point the finger at the Germans. But it's one thing to prevent one's citizens from leaving the country because of a record of violent behaviour in defined circumstances in the past: quite another, surely, and even more objectionable, to prevent them from going abroad because of their unpalatable views on a historical issue. In both cases it's sad that we can no longer boast, as we used to do in the days of Soviet communism, that one of our treasured freedoms in the west was the right to leave the country without the government having the power to prevent us.
Still worse, though, is to enact laws under which a person can actually be sent to jail — not for days or weeks but for years — for denying that the Holocaust happened. Democratic EU members Germany and Austria however have just such laws. According to a Deutsche Welle website report of 23 Dec 2005, —
Germany's parliament passed legislation in 1985, making it a crime to deny the extermination of the Jews. In 1994, the law was tightened. Now, anyone who publicly endorses, denies or plays down the genocide against the Jews faces a maximum penalty of five years in jail and no less than the imposition of a fine.
"It affects the agitator who claims the Jews prey on the German people, that they invented the Holocaust for that purpose, that foreigners should all be thrown out and that the discussion should finally be over with," [historian Wolfgang Benz, who heads the Center for Anti-Semitism Research in Berlin] said. "He must be punished because he engages in incitement of the masses, because he slanders the memory of those murdered, because he slanders our fellow citizens."
Austria imposes even tougher penalties for such offences. Historian and Holocaust-denier David Irving, who was recently arrested there, faces up to 20 years in jail.
And the British historian David Irving was duly sentenced to three years' imprisonment, a sentence he is still serving:
British historian David Irving has been found guilty in Vienna of denying the Holocaust of European Jewry and sentenced to three years in prison. He had pleaded guilty to the charge, based on a speech and interview he gave in Austria in 1989. [BBC News, 20 February 2006]
Even allowing for the special sensitivity of the Holocaust for Germans and Austrians, it's impossible to defend this kind of sweeping censorship of opinion and encroachment on freedom of speech. We are talking here of events that took place more than 60 years ago, before most Germans or Austrians alive today were born. An oppressive law, applied with wholly disproportionate severity to an eccentric foreign historian of unacceptable views but no real significance, has turned the offender into the victim. This kind of breach of basic principles by otherwise liberal western democracies makes it that little bit easier for our own government to nibble away at our own similar liberties — attempting to criminalise the expression of religious or racial 'hatred', which slides easily into merely the giving of offence; or making statements 'glorifying' terrorism or terrorists, where terrorism is so broadly defined and is such a subjective concept that the legal ban is an open invitation to abuse by government and the police. We all know now that Voltaire didn't say "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it," but if he didn't, he should have.
Meanwhile Irving, 68, languishes in an Austrian prison for expressing ludicrous if offensive views. It would be nice to think that his (and my) government has been and is still making strenuous efforts with the Austrian authorities to get him released. Some hope.
Brian
Don't mention cricket just now. Apart from that, Australia is unarguably the second-best country in the world in which to lead the good life, and Australians are the best people, second to none, to have around when you're in a tight spot (in either sense). Matthew Engel, writing in Adelaide, says many good and sensible things about Australia and Australians in his column in this weekend's Financial Times: well worth a mouse-click.
J and I spent seven years living and working (and travelling around) in Australia during our working lives, four of them in the mid-1970s when among other things we were transfixed by the country's only coup d'état, and three-and-a-half of them in the early 1990s when Australia was transfixed by the controversy, still unresolved, over who should be Australia's head of state (most Australians wanted an Australian President, but they couldn't agree on how the President should be chosen, so the London- and Balmoral-based Queen of Australia reigned on, and still does).
The only thing to disagree with, I think, in Engel's column is his closing quotation:
Thirty years ago the philosopher David Stove put it like this: "At cricket the Australian is a Pom-beating animal. The margin of superiority is slight, but it is consistent…My own belief is that it is due to a difference in attitude towards the opponent: that whereas the Australians hate the Poms, the Poms only despise the Australians."
Perhaps that was valid thirty years ago, and it's still valid on the compulsive Pom-beating at cricket — and any other sport when the opportunity arises. But for many years now I don't think it's been true that many Australians 'hate' the Poms, any more than these days any significant number of Poms 'despise' the Australians. There's still an interesting edge to the relationship, but I like to think that when the chips are down, rather than on Aussie or Pommy shoulders, we're mates.
Brian
We older Old Labour folk were more amused than saddened by this, in today's Guardian Corrections column:
In a front-page sketch, Remember Nye Bevan's warning …, December 5, we mistook, both in the heading and text, Mr Bevan (1897-1960) for his contemporary Ernest Bevin (1884-1951). It was Ernest Bevin, when foreign secretary, who pleaded with colleagues not to send him naked to the conference table.
They're all so young on the Guardian, apart from Jonathan Steele, and he's generally in
Ramallah or Nasiriyah or Helmand or some other such hellhole, so we should forgive them. And they can take some small comfort from the fact that one Mr Peter Mullen of the Northern Echo thinks it was Clem Attlee who said it. Come back, Nye, all is forgiven — not that there's anything to forgive…. (He was right at the time about the British nuclear deterrent, but if he was here today he'd think the decision to renew Trident totally crazy.)
Oh, and incidentally it was the conference chamber, not table, wasn't it?
Brian [former and still unrepentant Bevanite]
