Abortion! I enter these shark-infested waters with trepidation. But here goes, anyway.
I start from the position that what a pregnant woman chooses to do with her body and its foetus, up to the moment of the birth of what is then her baby, is her own business, and not anyone else's. But those who share this view need to beware of the temptation to argue the case on our adversaries' terms by tacitly accepting the proposition that abortion should not be allowed after the point where the foetus becomes theoretically 'viable', i.e. capable of surviving independently of the mother. This is wrong and dangerous on two grounds.
First, the commonly accepted test of viability makes a kind of sense only if one believes that destroying a potential future human life is morally equivalent to killing a human being (baby, child or adult) after birth. But the logical consequence of that belief is that it must be wrong to destroy the foetus at any time after conception, since the moment the mother's egg is fertilised, a potential future human comes into existence. Viability is irrelevant to this. And once you equate the destruction of a one-day-old foetus with the murder of a baby, it's a short step to condemning anything that prevents an egg from being fertilised — i.e. contraception — which also destroys a potential future human. To their credit (in a way), the more old-fashioned or doctrinaire Roman Catholics fully accept the logic of this, opposing abortion at any time regardless of 'viability', and condemning contraception on the same grounds. But a necessary consequence of that position is that pregnant women's control over their own bodies is subordinated to a theoretical moral equation which is not only dubious but also contradicted by common sense and moral instinct: destroying a foetus, whatever its nominal potential, is self-evidently not the same thing as killing a new-born baby, or any other human being.
The second reason for not relying on viability as the point at which abortion should be disallowed is its relativity and impermanence, as well as its ambiguity (does viability imply merely capacity for survival for a week, or a month, or a year, after removal from the womb, or does it also incorporate the sense of capacity to develop into adulthood without crippling disabilities?). There's anyway an obvious inconsistency in laying down a moral principle about the point at which an action ceases to be morally neutral and becomes morally unacceptable, if that point is constantly changing with the development of new scientific and medical techniques and if it comes at a different time in a pregnancy according to the location and circumstances of the mother. The time is clearly approaching when a fertilised egg will come to be regarded as viable immediately after conception, since its removal from the womb and transfer to an artificial womb-like environment for rearing to full term can't be far away, if indeed it hasn't already arrived. No wonder that the Roman Catholic Cardinal Archbishop of England has been all over our radios and televisions in recent weeks calling for a reduction in the number of weeks after conception beyond which abortion is no longer allowed. He has the grace to admit that he opposes abortion at any time after conception (and opposes contraception designed to prevent conception at all) and regards a reduction in the time-limit for abortion as a positive step on the way to its total abolition. We should heed that warning.
Lord Steel, architect of the 1967 Act, makes a sensible point when he argues that too many people resort to abortion almost as a form of contraception, or as a consequence of irresponsible failure to use contraception in the first place. Abortion must always be a traumatic experience, emotionally and sometimes physically, and not something to be lightly undertaken. But both he and the current responsible minister, Dawn Primarolo, accept that viability as the criterion for the time-limit is something for scientists and doctors to define, with the fatal implication that as viability becomes possible earlier, so abortion must be banned earlier too:
[Lord Steel] also said that he was not yet convinced that the upper legal time for terminations should be cut from 24 weeks. This view is to be echoed today by the Government, in a move that has infuriated pro-life campaigners. Dawn Primarolo, the public health minister, will tell a cross-party Commons committee of MPs that there is no evidence to support a change in the law. (Daily Telegraph, 25 Oct 07; my emphasis.)
Fortunately the mounting pressures for a reduction in the time-limit from those whose long-term aim is to ban abortion altogether, mainly for reasons stemming from a religious belief which only a small minority of British people share, is partly offset by countervailing pressures for further liberalisation of the law governing abortion, although the chances of that currently look remote. But even the liberalisers risk seeing their case undermined if they continue to pin their colours to the rickety mast of viability. Those who wish to see women's control over their own bodies respected under durable rules of law and custom ought to base their argument on the manifest difference between an unborn foetus and a human being after birth. Destroying one can never be equated with killing the other: and the consequences of making that false equation can only mean misery and suffering for legions of women of the kind that thousands endured before abortion became legal. Don't let's allow ourselves to be driven back to that, just because of scientific and medical advances which in truth have nothing to do with the matter.
One further point. The argument is unlikely to be advanced by discussion in terms of rights. Even if one concedes the existence of 'rights' — granted by whom, to whom, under what conditions? — there's no obvious yardstick by which to referee a conflict between, say, the rights of a pregnant woman and the supposed rights of her unborn baby. Nor should we ever accept without challenge the self-characterisation of the anti-abortion lobby as being 'pro-life'. We're all, I hope, pro-life. Some of us, though, are pro-choice, too.
Hat-tip: Owen Barder (in a blog post no longer available).
Update: I wrote this before I read Polly Toynbee's piece in the Guardian of 26 October (last Friday). Polly says it all. How refreshing to find someone else who has spotted the fatal flaw in the viability debate and its malign consequence of surrendering key decisions on it to scientists and medics — and, even worse, to priests of various sects — who are no better placed than anyone else to have a view! As Polly says,
That is why no house room should be given to slippery arguments about the "viability" of foetuses. Virtually none survive under 24 weeks, and, if they do, the handicaps are usually horrendous. Already children's services are crippled with the cost of multiply damaged children left in their care. Foetuses may survive with "heroic" efforts of over-enthusiastic doctors winning full pages in the Mail, as yesterday, but the child's later progress is rarely reported.
Over the years more may survive younger, but that's not the point and it never was. Give in to that argument and the case for a woman's supreme right over her own body and destiny is lost. It is handed back again to the doctors and priests and politicians to make those decisions for her.
Amen to that — or rather Hear, Hear.
Ms Toynbee's article is also memorable for its withering attack on the moral cowardice of the saintly, dithering Archbishop of Canterbury. At least the Roman Catholics have the courage of their convictions and accept the logical consequences of them, however destructive these turn out to be. For that they deserve, I suppose, a reluctant salute; but we really shouldn't take any notice of what they say.
Update (3 November 07): Rob Jubb posted a formidable commentary on this piece in his comment below, here. I have now put my own response to his commentary as a fresh comment here. In a message to Rob I have acknowledged that I would have written this piece differently if he and I had had this exchange beforehand. So it ought now to be read in conjunction with our exchange. The full text of Rob's commentary is embodied in my response to it so you don't need to visit both.
Brian
From the Guardian, 26 October 2007, page 12, by Michael White, reporting the prime minister's and justice minister's initiatives on liberty, etc.:
Mr Brown and Mr Straw … promised to … [devise] ways to curb criminals benefiting from payments for books and interviews
From the Guardian, 26 October 2007, page 10, by Michael White and Tania Branigan:
From No 10 to Random House: Blair signs book deal
- Publishers paid up to £5m for PM's memoirs
- 'Frank but not disloyal' account predicted
…Tony Blair has signed a deal to write his memoirs of life in Downing Street, the publisher Random House announced last night … Both the publisher and Mr Blair's spokesman refused to disclose his fee. But publishing experts suggested the deal was worth as much as £5m. The single volume memoir will be published under the Hutchinson imprint in the UK.
Perhaps war criminals will be exempt from the 'curb' on benefiting from the proceeds of publishing their memoirs.
Brian
I have recently been dragged, kicking and moaning softly (not screaming, though), into the eerie world of Facebook, reportedly the thinking man's — and presumably woman's — MySpace, or is it YouTube? On each visit I find myself increasingly bewildered by a profusion of invitations from knowledgeable and streetwise 'Friends' (a Facebook technical term) to expand my Facebook repertoire by including some new and even weirder function. Most recently I have consented to open a FunWall on which 'Friends' can inscribe or plaster messages, pictures or even video clips. The first to take advantage of this astonishing meme is Stephen Grey, exposer of Extraordinary Rendition (more on that and him here). Stephen has used my FunWall to introduce me to a very funny 
American humorist and commentator, Bill Maher, by projecting onto my FunWall Maher's hilarious take on France and American attitudes to the French. You can find it on YouTube, here. Strongly recommended.
On the same YouTube page there are links to other Maher clips which are doubtless equally well worth watching. Information about Mr Maher is (predictably) here, including the following sample of his style, this time on conspiracy theories:
"Crazy people who still think the government brought down the Twin Towers in a controlled explosion have to stop pretending that I'm the one who's being naïve. How big a lunatic do you have to be to watch two giant airliners packed with jet fuel slam into buildings on live TV, igniting a massive inferno that burned for two hours, and then think, 'well, if you believe that was the cause…' "
He's even funnier, though, on American views of the French. A treasure.
Brian
The (London) Times, being a Murdoch newspaper, naturally argues for a referendum on the EU treaty — and if the government were to agree to hold one, no doubt the Times, like the Conservative Party, would campaign for a No vote. So a modest bouquet to the Times for publishing today my letter which argues against holding a referendum at all:
The Times, October 24, 2007
A vote to stay in
To reject a treaty regarded as sound by all other EU governments would make us pariahsSir, You say that anything more than administrative changes in the EU treaty “must require a referendum and therefore a referendum is required” (“Cold Calculations”, leading article, Oct 23), and the Tories taunt the Prime Minister with the accusation that his reason for refusing a referendum is his fear of losing it.
In fact, that’s one, although not the only, perfectly rational and honourable reason for not holding a referendum. Not only the Tories but much of the Europhobic press would exploit the worst kinds of anti-European xenophobic prejudice to secure a “no” vote, not out of any genuine opposition to specific provisions of a treaty whose main purposes you yourself admit are necessary after EU expansion, but in the unacknowledged hope of bringing about Britain’s eventual exit from the EU.If that is their aim, they should come clean about it: a referendum on British membership, as now advocated by the Lib Dems, could be a healthy way to lance the boil.
But for the UK, probably alone of all EU member states, to reject a treaty regarded by every single EU government as sound and necessary would make us the pariahs of the union, and may[1] well result in our expulsion from it, an outcome that only a minority of the electorate seems to want.
Brian Barder
HM Diplomatic Service, 1965-94
London SW18
There are other reasons for not holding a referendum on this treaty. It's not an issue on which even the most sophisticated electorate can reasonably be asked to make a decision, given its phenomenal complexity. Most of the few who manage both to read and to understand the treaty (a minority which doesn't include me) will dislike some elements of the treaty, or have reservations about them; some will conclude that the bad outweighs the good and that on balance it should not be ratified; some will take the opposite view, and will support ratification on the grounds that the administrative and institutional reforms in the treaty are not just desirable but urgently necessary following the substantial expansion of the EU's membership, and that for the UK to refuse to ratify it would leave the EU in a very serious and disabling quandary. If this were to happen as a result of a referendum here, the other 26 EU member states would be unlikely to shrug their shoulders, accept the British veto as the end of the affair, and try to make the existing structures, designed for a Union of half its current size, work as best they can. Why should they? They would be much likelier to find a way to go ahead without the UK, perhaps not formally expelling us, but in effect making our continued membership impossible. It's no exaggeration to say that this would be a catastrophe for Britain. Once a referendum was conceded, we would be half-way down a slippery slope from which there would almost certainly be no rescue.
Ratification of the treaty is also unsuitable for another reason. The treaty is itself virtually unreadable, or, if read, unintelligible. To cast an informed vote in a referendum on it, we would all need to hire teams of research assistants to explain to us what it's all about. To take an example completely at random, what are we to make of this (PDF)? –
48) Article 27 shall take over the wording of Article 17, with the following amendments:
(a) the following new paragraph 1 shall be inserted and the next paragraph shall be renumbered 2:
"1. The common security and defence policy shall be an integral part of the common foreign and security policy…."
Or this:
50) Articles 29 to 39 of Title VI of the EU Treaty, which relate to judicial cooperation in criminal matters and to police cooperation, shall be replaced by Articles 61 to 68 and 69e to 69l of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union; they shall be amended as set out in Article 2, points 64, 67 and 68, of this Treaty. The heading of the Title shall be deleted and its number shall become the number of the Title on final provisions.
And there's much more that's even more impenetrable.
Tony Blair, as prime minister, was hustled (reportedly by the inimitable Jack Straw) into promising a referendum on a quite different document: a brand-new constitution for the Union. It's beyond dispute that the reform treaty reproduces much that was in that draft constitution, but it's explicitly a different document, not a constitution but an amending treaty of the kind which we have seen several times before. This argument, although formally valid, can be — and is being — represented as jesuitical and evasive, which to an extent it is. Much better to acknowledge that whatever the rights and wrongs of an undertaking given by a previous administration, a referendum now would be unacceptably dangerous for Britain, not because the government can't trust the British people to make a sensible decision but because the outcome would be vulnerable to the lies and misrepresentations of the fanatically Europhobic and unscrupulous tabloids, and similarly unprincipled elements of the Conservative party, whose real objections are not to the small print of the treaty but to British membership of the European Union. The prospects of a referendum result that reflected a mature weighing up of the overall pros and cons of ratification, after exhaustive analysis and discussion of the issues and the likely consequences of non-ratification, would be almost nil, given the poisonous atmosphere which would be created for the referendum campaign by the Europhobic rottweilers in Westminster and the media. This is a decision that in a parliamentary democracy should be made by the government and parliament, not by the electorate, which will be free to punish the government and its MPs at the next election if its decision has proved wrong. It's an essential feature of a democracy that a government, provided that it has the support of parliament, should be able to take decisions that may be unpopular at the time but whose results can be judged by the people at election time.
No responsible British government should think for a moment of taking such a risk with Britain's future in Europe and the world as a referendum would entail, and there's no reason to be afraid to say so.
[1] The words "may well result" in the last sentence of my letter as printed contain effectively the only editorial change made by the Times in the text that I submitted. The fastidious reader will guess, I hope, that I wrote "might well result".
Update (26 Oct 07): I wrote this (including my letter in the Times) before I had seen an admirable article in the New Statesman of 18 October by Charles Grant, director of the Centre for European Reform, which makes exactly the same point: that if Britain alone were to reject the treaty in a referendum, the other EU countries would be highly likely to go ahead without us, making our continued membership of the Union effectively impossible. None of the three biggest parties wants that; no serious newspaper wants it; and I doubt whether any significant section of UK public opinion would want it, at any rate if confronted by the dire consequences of our expulsion. Britain isn't Norway.
Brian
Anyone interested in international affairs generally, and the criminal behaviour of some western governments in particular, ought to go and see the new American film Rendition, now on general release.
Nearly a year ago I wrote in this blog about the American practice of Extraordinary Rendition, the polite name for the CIA habit of kidnapping foreigners (including British citizens), usually in countries other than the US, and clandestinely flying them, blindfolded and shackled, to countries where torture is routinely practised and where the victim can be more, um, forcefully interrogated than would be prudent within the jurisdiction of the US courts — all this on the mere suspicion, sometimes later revealed to have been unfounded, of involvement with terrorism. The whole thing is exhaustively chronicled and analysed, and the damning evidence set out, in the indispensable book Ghost Plane by the man who has done more than anyone else to expose this gruesome activity, Stephen Grey. And it's made much more unpalatable still by the cogent evidence, some of it from leaked documents, that our own (British) government has knowingly connived at it.
Now comes the first film on the subject, appropriately entitled Rendition. It's directed by the South African-born Gavin Hood (this seems to be South Africa's week) and stars the 
always dependable Meryl Streep, here in a chilling role as the head CIA renditioner, with Reese Witherspoon, Jake Gyllenhaal (one of the gay shepherds in the seriously overrated Brokeback Mountain), and several equally excellent actors of middle eastern extraction. 'Anwar', the victim of rendition in the film, is an amalgam of real-life rendition victims, many of whose experiences are described in detail in Stephen Grey's book, so the main plot is disturbingly realistic. The country in which the film's victim is interrogated under torture (and even the details of the torture used are well documented) is identified only as being in North Africa, but parts of the film were shot in Morocco and a document briefly shown mentions Tunisia: however, we can take it that the location at least is fictitious.
There's no need to write a full review of the film here: the Los Angeles Times, among many others, carried a very good one just three days ago when Rendition opened in the States, and I recommend it. But British reviewers have in some cases been surprisingly lukewarm, on grounds that seem to me mistaken. Peter Bradshaw, usually a perceptive and reliable critic, was grudging in his praise for the movie in the Guardian, but concluded on a harshly negative note:
But infuriatingly, the movie fudges the most important issue, with a fundamental flaw that goes to the heart of the matter: the question of whether the CIA's phone-record evidence against Anwar is sound or not. If it's all just a mistake, then how can such a mistake be made? The question is not satisfactorily answered, and the sleight-of-hand intended to distract you from this fact simply fails to work.
But surely this ambiguity, far from being a 'fundamental flaw', itself 'goes to the heart of the matter': in so many of the cases of extraordinary rendition by the CIA, we have no way of knowing whether the CIA's 'evidence' against the terrorist 'suspect' is sound or not. That evidence is virtually never tested in an impartial court of law, and the intense suffering and disruption of life inflicted on the victim may well be unjustified even on the most cynical and self-serving interpretations of the international law against torture. We want to believe that Anwar, the rendition victim in the movie, is wholly innocent: but we can never be one hundred per cent sure. And that's more true to life than the definite acquittal for which Mr Bradshaw seems to hanker, an essentially more sentimental hankering than the film or real life can usually satisfy.
The reviewers in last Friday's Newsnight Review (BBC 2 television) were similarly lukewarm, complaining that the sub-plot, which concerns the lives and relationships of the Arab families and associates of the principal local interrogator acting on behalf of the CIA, was unrealistically 'melodramatic'. I must avoid a spoiler here, which might detract from the enjoyment of the film by those who haven't yet seen it, so it's enough to explain that the sub-plot describes the complex events surrounding a suicide bombing, its organisers and perpetrator and their relations with its main intended victim; and all this is ingeniously tied in with the main plot (the rendition) by a surprise twist that to my mind comes off brilliantly. To complain that such events are 'too melodramatic' is surely to complain that people in the real world whose lives are wrecked, one way or another, by terrorism are themselves involved in too much melodrama. The complaint seems to reflect a certain squeamishness about recognising unpleasantness. The film, by contrast, faces the unpleasantness with unflinching realism. It's not always easy to watch, but it needs to be seen.
Stop Press: First prize for the worst and most extraordinary British review goes to today's (London) Sunday Times . 'CL' (presumably Cosmo Landesman — indeed the Sunday Times website confirms his authorship) complains that Rendition
is too loaded against the practice of rendition to make it interesting
which is a bit like saying that a murder story is too heavily loaded against murder to make it exciting. Comment is surely superfluous.
"Maintain your rage," Gough Whitlam told the crowd outside the Australian parliament building in Canberra immediately after being unconstitutionally deposed as Australian Labor Party prime minister by a scheming Governor-General in 1975. Half at least of the Australian people complied, maintaining their rage until the Governor-General went into exile — and beyond. Watching Rendition, the movie, is a good way to maintain your rage against this ugly excrescence on the international scene. And it's a first-class movie, too.
Tailpiece: J. and I saw the film at a free preview for which tickets were provided to those responding to a newspaper advertisement. The preview was at the Empire Leicester Square in London, where the floor of the auditorium is so inadequately raked that it was impossible for most of the audience to see over the heads of the people in front, restricting the view to the area of the screen between heads, and involving the need for constant swaying from side to side in the attempt to see round them. Since much of the dialogue of Rendition is in Arabic with long English subtitles, and the screen, in the current fashion, is about a quarter of a mile wide, it was physically impossible to read all the subtitles, which certainly served to intensify the suspense by limiting one's comprehension of what was going on. But as we hadn't paid to see the film, we could hardly complain. We went on afterwards to a well-known restaurant in London's Chinatown, just behind the cinema, where at the end of our meal I was constrained to tell the head waiter, in what I hope was a moderate and amicable tone, that while the food had been terrible, the service had been worse. (He laughed, I hope with embarrassment.) It was indeed the worst Chinese food that we have ever encountered in many decades of eating Chinese in, probably, a score of different countries. Still, the film was well worth seeing. Please don't miss it. But if you eat Chinese afterwards, it's prudent to stick to a restaurant that's in the current Good Food Guide.
Update (22 October 07): Stephen Grey — now see his interesting comment below — points out in a private message that he has referred to the film Rendition in a longer piece in the New Statesman about the developing story of Extraordinary Rendition and the way even our MPs conspire with the British government to pretend that it doesn't exist because the Americans deny that they practise or condone torture.
Brian
In an enthusiastic post in Ephems in November 2004 I recommended a new play, Cumquats, at one of London's most adventurous and attractive little theatres: the Landor, over the Landor pub in Landor Road in south London (a stone's-throw, not usually literally, from Clapham North tube station and various bus stops). Now there's a 
first-rate musical at the Landor, I Love You Because (click there for links to the story, lively pictures of the cast, and a page for booking seats). It has all the qualities we associate with an outstanding American off-Broadway musical (first performed in 2006): Sondheim-like, brilliantly performed by an attractive cast of six, witty and clever lyrics, delicious music, funny, touching, corny, sexy. You can hear clips of some of the songs from the original New York production here, and read some of the original enthusiastic reviews here. The review in the New York Times summed it up:
The authors, both out of the New York University graduate program in musical theater writing, bill this as "a modern-day telling of 'Pride and Prejudice' with the genders reversed," but don't let that scare you away; no CliffsNotes needed. As for the story, well, it ends up exactly where you know it will, because this whole show is constructed by formula. But who cares? It's terrific, refreshing fun.
The production makes ingenious use of the tiny acting space to switch from scene to scene, cameo to cameo, using minimal props and skilful lighting (you can get an idea of the complexity of the lighting script in this article).
But it's only on for another week, closing next Saturday, 20 October. The performance last night was sold out, so there may be few seats left by now for the rest of the run. Hurry!
Brian
There's increasing public concern about the new rule by the Foreign & Commonwealth Office that seeks to prevent diplomats publicly expressing views on current issues after they have retired, drawing on their experience of international affairs during a lifetime in the Diplomatic Service, unless they have prior permission to do so from the government (see for example this, this and this). One aspect of this that's attracting interest is whether the FCO would seek, or threaten, to terminate or reduce the pension of a retired diplomat if he or she failed to observe the new censorship rule (see, for example, this). In my comment on the issue on the Daily Telegraph website I wrote:
…in the past the FCO has not been above threatening the pensions of retired officers who risk embarrassment to ministers and mandarins. The threat might or might not be bluff: few of us have sufficient private means to risk testing that in court.
Eagle-eyed blogger Tim Worstall has published a useful and characteristically lively post on the FCO gag in the online magazine The Business, and a retired diplomat and former ambassador, Oliver Miles, who frequently contributes to media discussion of current issues, has posted a comment on the Worstall piece, focusing on the potential threat to retired officers' pensions, which he and Tim have given me permission to reproduce here:
I am interested in the question of the threat to withhold the pensions of retired ambassadors (I would be – I am one). I note the reference to Dr David Kelly, and such a threat may indeed have been made to him for all I know. I know of one former ambassador who has stated in a semipublic forum that he was threatened (while still serving) with loss of pension. But to the best of my knowledge pensions have never in the past been withheld except in cases where individuals were guilty of treason. Although Diplomatic Service Regulations made under the Order in Council procedure have the force of law, you have to go a long way back to find a time when the royal prerogative meant that the Crown could simply do what it liked. Civil servants, both from the Home Civil Service and from the Diplomatic Service, have successfully sued their employers on employment matters. I am pretty sure that if it came to the point, the FCO legal advisers would warn ministers that an attempt to withhold the pension of a retired officer, unless perhaps he had been convicted of a serious crime, would be thrown out by the courts.
But the David Kelly case, if indeed the threat was made, is relevant here. Most retired people, certainly including me, would view with horror the idea that their own pension and their widow's pension would be jeopardised by some action of theirs, even if they believed that the Crown would eventually lose in court. So as an instrument of pressure to be used by an unscrupulous employer deprivation of pension is a winner.
A sobering and persuasive conclusion!
Brian
Whether or not prompted in part by my Ephems piece of 3 October 2007 about the Foreign Office's new rule barring retired diplomats from expressing their opinions on current affairs without prior FCO approval, or by my own original source, Sir Edward Clay's New Statesman article of 6 September, the Daily Telegraph has now joined the fray with a hard-hitting piece by Hugh Miles that will, I hope, cause some urgent scurrying around in King Charles Street.
I responded to an invitation from the Telegraph to write a comment on their story, but it has been demoted from the print edition to a rather remote corner of the Daily Telegraph website: you can read it here. I am reproducing my original text below to preserve the layout from the strange newspaper practice of making every sentence a new paragraph; apart from that, it is only lightly edited in the DT website version. (The story in the print edition includes a box quoting my name and opening sentence and providing a website address from which an exceptionally diligent Telegraph reader with a computer and an internet connection can reach my comment: better than nothing!) The tireless eagle-eyed blogger Tim Worstall has already picked it up in a very good piece in the online magazine The Business, well worth reading.
Here's what I wrote (hyperlinks now added):
Is the Foreign Office simply protecting its official secrets, or seeking to save ministers from embarrassment? Official secrets are protected by the Official Secrets Act, which rightly binds officials for life, both as government employees and after retirement. The new rules go much further, banning any unauthorised expression of opinion not just by serving officers but by also by retired diplomats for the rest of their lives, if it "draws on, or appears to draw on, official information or experience gained in the course of official duties", even if no breach of secrets is involved. Had this been in force a few years ago, it could have prevented publication of the ground-breaking letter of 52 former ambassadors and other senior ex-diplomats constructively criticising the government's middle east policies. It would prevent ex-diplomats with unrivalled experience "gained in the course of their official duties" from writing articles or letters to the newspapers or giving radio or television interviews on controversial foreign policy issues such as Iraq. It would have closed down several stimulating and informative blogs (including mine!) and pre-empted many diplomatic memoirs. Baroness Pauline Neville-Jones, former senior diplomat, would presumably have been prevented from serving as the official opposition spokesperson on security matters in parliament. It would have silenced the sage contributions to House of Lords debates of several other ex-diplomats, now peers.
The government naturally curtails its serving officials' freedom to publish personal opinions on political issues. But suppressing the opinions of experienced retired officers is surely a gag too far. As private citizens we are guaranteed freedom of expression by the European Human Rights Convention: none of its permitted exemptions justifies the breach of that freedom which the FCO now apparently seeks to impose.
It's tempting to urge newly retired officers to ignore the gag: publish and be damned! But in the past the FCO has not been above threatening the pensions of retired officers whose intentions risk embarrassment to ministers and mandarins. The threat might or might not be bluff: few of us have sufficient private means to risk testing that in court. The government may seek to reassure us that the rule will not be unreasonably enforced. Past experience teaches us not to trust any such assurances. My old department should think again.
Brian Barder
I doubt if this latest assault on the civil liberties of former members of HM Diplomatic Service (and indirectly on the freedom of the press) will have thousands marching in protest from Trafalgar Square to the august portals of the Foreign & Commonwealth Office; even former diplomats are not a widely admired or trusted species, for whatever reason. But this fresh incursion deserves to be noted, logged and challenged as much as all the others.
Brian
We all know and thrill to the tune of the Marseillaise, but how many of us anglophones know, or even can translate, all its revolutionary words, even those of the first verse? We can do the first two lines, probably, and perhaps the first couplet of the refrain, and of course Marchons! Marchons!; but how much more?
Here they are, to enable us all — especially our Australian and New Zealand mates — to sing along with the French team at the start of the Rugby World Cup semi-finals next weekend:
Allons ! Enfants de la Patrie !
Le jour de gloire est arrivé !
Contre nous de la tyrannie,
L'étendard sanglant est levé ! (Bis)
Entendez-vous dans les campagnes
Mugir ces féroces soldats ?
Ils viennent jusque dans vos bras
Égorger vos fils, vos compagnes.Aux armes, citoyens !
Formez vos bataillons !
Marchons, marchons !
Qu'un sang impur
Abreuve nos sillons !
Arise! Children of our homeland!
Our day of glory is here!
Against us the bloodstained banner
Of tyranny has been raised! (repeat)
Do you hear in our fields
These fierce soldiers bellowing?
They came right here into your midst
To cut the throats of your sons, your companions.
Refrain
To arms, citizens!
Form your battalions!
March on, march on!
Let their impure blood
Water our fields!
Sung by the immortal Mireille Mathieu :
http://www.marseillaise.org/audio/mireille_mathieu_-_la_marseillaise.mp3
Brian
The politicians and political commentators have a funny-peculiar way of adopting their own patois to describe current events. Thus none of them seems able to describe a decision by the prime minister not to call a general election this year other than as "bottling it", an expression surely unknown to ordinary people outside Westminster. We're familiar with the idea of a person having "plenty of bottle", which I take to mean something like chutzpah, boldness, readiness to take risks: but this latest cliché seems to mean the opposite, namely playing the coward. The OED online recognises the phrase "to bottle out" as meaning "to lose one's nerve; to back out of an action at the last minute, ‘chicken out’. slang", with a few examples dating back to 1979, almost all from journalism, but in recent days the required inclusion of the 'out' with 'bottle' seems to have got mislaid.
The main objection to the phrase in its current context, though, apart from its having already become a lazy, worn-out cliché, is that it's the opposite of the reality: not to call an election now will require courage, not cowardice, as well as being pretty clearly the right thing to do (or not to do).
Update, 22:00 6 Oct 07: So Mr Broon has plucked up considerable courage and decided not to have an election this year, after all:
Gordon Brown rules out snap election
By Patrick Hennessy and Melissa Kite
Daily Telegraph website, 06/10/2007Gordon Brown has ruled out calling a snap general election after a political fightback by the Conservatives.
# Analysis: Gordon Brown's colour now will be yellow
# He would have won, but not by enough
# Q&A: Behind a difficult decision
# Have your say: Has he made the right move?The Prime Minister today electrified Westminster by ending months of speculation and declaring he will not hold a contest next month. He also said there would not be an election next year, except in "exceptional circumstances". Andrew Marr, who had a one-on-one interview with Mr Brown, said the Prime Minister confirmed "there would not be an election this year, and unless there are exceptional circumstances there will not be one next year". A "remarkably calm, but not sunny" Prime Minister also admitted he had considered calling a snap election, and denied recent poor polls were behind his decision to stall. The move has opened Mr Brown up to Tory charges of “bottling” the decision after opinion polls showed a big Labour lead narrowing rapidly in the face of a resurgent opposition.
Tory leader, David Cameron said: "The Prime Minister has shown extraordinary indecision and extraordinary weakness. He has sent Cabinet ministers out to brief the press, faked troop announcements, faked hospital numbers and brought forward announcements to prepare the ground for a new election. And now we have seen a humiliating retreat."
Stoking up the speculation about an imminent election has turned out to have been a blunder of, probably, middling magnitude. It seems to have been young and inexperienced Brownite ministers who engaged in it, rather than even younger hot-headed staffers, but it must be assumed that the prime minister knew of and acquiesced in what they were doing, even if he didn't personally initiate it. The partisan itch to rattle the Tories at their conference seems to have proved irresistible.
The accusation of cowardice in changing course and deciding against an early election is puerile: in fact that decision required real courage, and shrill talk of "bottling" and "the colour yellow" simply perpetuates the absurd notion, beloved of politicians and their media hand-maidens, that changing one's mind to respond to changed circumstances is evidence of weakness. But there is obvious substance in the accusation that Brown and his ministers seriously misjudged the possible effects on public opinion of the Conservative party conference, including especially Cameron's effective speech and Osborne's (actually dodgy, but evidently popular) announcement about inheritance tax. Even worse was the evident willingness, if it had seemed likely to bring party advantage, to call an early election when the national interest did not require it. The impression of partisan manipulation was strengthened by Brown's gimmicky visit to Iraq in the middle of the Tory conference in what was fairly obviously an ill-judged attempt to steal Tory thunder and to exploit the position of prime minister for political purposes by putting him on display with British fighting troops. The details of these misjudgments will soon be forgotten, after a week or two in which Gordon Brown will have to put up with much mockery (or worse). But this week has probably made a permanent dent in his carefully fostered image as a sober, cautious, relatively unpartisan national leader, leading a broadly-based and similarly high-minded ministry, and able to rise above the petty squabbles and manoeuvres of party in-fighting. Worst of all, he has only himself to thank.
The best that can be said is that the right decision — from virtually everyone's point of view — has finally been taken. It's tempting to speculate about the possibility that a decisive factor in the decision might have been a discreet and deniable hint from the Palace that a formal request for a patently unnecessary dissolution would have the potential for placing the Queen in a most unpalatable quandary — see my reply to a comment on an earlier post, below. Funnier things have happened. But alas! we'll never know.
Brian
