J and I must be among the very few who watched all 67 minutes of David Cameron's speech to the Tory party conference on television yesterday. Presentationally, as today's commentators all agree, it was a tour de force, delivered fluently and without hesitation (and almost, but not quite, without repetition or deviation, as required by the radio show Just a Minute). No autocue, no text: just a few notes on a small stand to which Cameron referred only occasionally. He prowled the stage, speaking conversationally, almost as if thinking aloud, a model of persuasive and likeable 21st-century oratory which practitioners of old-fashioned formal debating would do well to study. He was constantly interrupted by bursts of clapping by a rapt audience of the Conservative faithful: cut-away shots of some of them, gazing up at their Leader with something like adoration, did their party's image no favours. Almost every punchline drew applause, polite rather than enthusiastic in most cases; so it was all too noticeable that he was met with an uneasy silence when he praised the contribution of immigrants to British society and called for restraint in discussion of the issue:
I think this country has benefited immeasurably from immigration. People who want to come here and work hard and contribute to our country. I think our diverse and multi-racial society is a huge benefit for Britain … I want our Party, a modern Conservative party, to talk about this issue in a reasonable, humane and sensible way and to take the very sensible measures that are necessary.
They didn't seem to care for that.
There were other positives, music to the ears of Old Labour characters like me: abolition of 'pointless' Identity cards; elected mayors for our towns and cities; the rather vague suggestion that more powers should be devolved to local government (easier to preach in opposition than in office). These were guardedly applauded. But so were many other points that ticked all the old discredited Tory boxes:
- "get out of the European Social Chapter" — so that British employers can exploit their employees more ruthlessly than any other employers in Europe;
- "we will keep pushing for that referendum, campaign for a No Vote and veto that Constitution" (he meant the new EU treaty, which is explicitly not a new constitution) — making us once again the odd man out in our own continent, sabotaging much needed procedural reform to adapt the EU to its new enlarged membership;
- "it's time with local government to tear up rules and all the ring fencing and the auditing and actually say to our local councils, it's your money, spend it as you choose..." – tear up the auditing? Really? Even a Tory Chancellor of the Exchequer might gag on that, surely?
- "'Deporting people for gun and knife crime', you can't do that because of the Human Rights Act", and "they will keep the Human Rights Act that actually hinders our fight against terrorism" and, worst, "we will replace the Human Rights Act" — when he must know that with or without the Human Rights Act, we are and will remain bound by the European Human Rights Convention for which Britain was largely responsible in a more enlightened age; so these false allegations against the Act are sheer reckless Blairite/Blunkettite populism;
- "How can it possibly be right that magistrates can only send someone to prison for a few weeks rather than a year? Yes we need to scrap that early release scheme in prisons..." — so the solution to the problem of our bursting prisons, holding more in proportion to population than any other comparable European country, is not to move those many who never needed to be sent to prison in the first place and to ensure that inappropriate imprisoning of offenders is reduced, but actually to send even more people to prison and keep them there!
- "the time has come for National Citizen Service where we say to 16 year old 'we have got a compelling programme that is about the transition from youth to adulthood, that's about your responsibilities in society, that is about community service, that will challenge you'… this sort of National Citizen Service for 16 year olds can teach young people the self respect and the social responsibility that we really need to make our society stronger…" – Compulsory National Citizen Service, Mr Cameron? How many 16-year-olds will sign up for it if it's voluntary? Will candidates for university be exempt or will they have to do it after graduating? How much will these youths be paid while doing their National Citizen Service? How long will they have to do it? What will it cost the taxpayer? Above all, what will they actually do? Provide cheap labour, without union or other employment rights, for government-approved and subsidised employers? This is not even half-baked. It's raw, and raw rubbish.
There's plenty more like this which doesn't bear scrutiny.
So beneath the relaxed, liberal, conversational style, the substance of this speech was largely a reversion to the kind of Michael-Howard, Iain-Duncan-Smith, William-Hague reactionary Toryism that has lost them three elections in a row. But it's questionable whether much of the objectionable small print — and I have singled out just a selection of the worst of it — will impinge on the consciousness of the ordinary swing voter in a marginal constituency or whether it will be reflected in this week-end's polls. More likely Cameron's youthfulness, energy, fluency and apparent sincerity (currently re-labelled 'authenticity' by the commentariat) will make a more favourable impression than his real message deserves. Let's hope that it will impress enough of the handful of people whose views determine the opinion polls' findings to drive Gordon Brown off his crazy plan to hold an election this year, an election which would be unwanted, unnecessary, unconstitutional, and unlikely to do anything but harm to a premiership which has begun so much more promisingly than most of us had dared to hope.
Brian
This post brings together one item in a recent collection of unconnected jottings in this blog and two comments so far made on it. As it raises a surprising and important issue of principle, involving an attempt by government to abridge the right of freedom of expression of former public servants who in many cases have much to contribute to the national political debate, it seems to me on reflection to deserve a piece of its own. So I don't apologise for repeating myself.
In my earlier post I wrote:
>>We owe an extraordinary and so far unremarked revelation in the New Statesman of 6 September, headed "The gagging of the Mandarins", to Sir Edward Clay, formerly British High Commissioner in Kenya where he was famous for his hard-hitting public denunciations of corruption at the highest level in that now sad country ("the evidence of corruption in Kenya amounts to vomit, not just on the shoes of donors but also all over the shoes of Kenyans and the feet of those who can't afford shoes"). Clay, now retired, has exposed a new example of corruption in high places: the Foreign & Commonwealth Office, for which he (and I) used to work, has now gagged its diplomats to prevent them from publicly expressing their personal views on political and international issues, not only while they are still in the public service (which is perfectly reasonable), but even after their retirement, for the rest of their lives! In Clay's words,
[The FCO has] enlarged the scope of rules inhibiting serving diplomats from speaking, writing, or otherwise expressing any view, without prior clearance. Retiring mandarins are now warned that the rules bind them for life.
If enforced, this new prohibition will deprive public debate on international issues of the benefit of the input of, eventually, hundreds of former diplomats with unrivalled collective experience of international affairs and the ways of government in conducting them. There will be no more fascinating insights on Iraq from the successors to the always judicious Sir Jeremy Greenstock; no more open letters to the prime minister critically analysing government policy in the middle east from 52 former ambassadors or their equivalents, of the kind that rattled the bars of the government's cage in April 2004 to salutary effect. (I declare an interest as one of the signatories.) If the new gag had been introduced before I retired, I would have been unable to make many of the comments on public affairs that I have contributed, for whatever they have been worth, in articles, interviews and letters in the press and indeed on my website and this blog (of course some might well say that this would have entailed no great loss).
>>It's hard to see any conceivable justification for this attack on the freedom of expression of people with potentially so much to contribute to political debate. Its only possible objective is to spare ministers and their officials embarrassment: no threat to national security or the proper conduct of public business can be said to arise. I wonder if it would survive a challenge under the Human Rights Act and the European Convention? It would surely be unconstitutional in the US.
>>It's reminiscent, incidentally, of the FCO's equally indefensible recent ban on ambassadors and high commissioners writing 'valedictory despatches' immediately before leaving a post, and especially just before retirement, such despatches having often been the occasion for swingeing criticisms of the way the Diplomatic Service is run and major decisions of foreign policy are taken. (Admittedly such despatches have sometimes had a funny way of getting into the public print.) Instead of taking these documents seriously as constructive analysis, based on experience, of the way the FCO operates, with potentially useful indicators of desirable reforms, the Office has chosen instead to ban them altogether. Our diplomats are now reduced to establishing a samizdat system for the dissemination of their views in defiance of the censors of King Charles Street. Unbelievable!<<
[End of original post]
This has elicited an interesting comment from an old forum and blogosphere friend in Los Angeles, Carl Lundquist. After quoting part of my original post, Carl wrote:
As a foreigner, I am puzzled. Just how does the Foreign Office muzzle a RETIRED ambassador or high commissioner? Surely barring the disclosure of classified material, such comment is the exercise of freedom of speech. I know of more than a few retired general officers in the US that a sucession of White Houses would have liked to muzzle. No chance tho.
I replied in a separate comment:
>>Thanks for your comment, Carl.
>>There's no mystery about "how" the government could prevent a retired diplomat from expressing personal opinions on public affairs: the Foreign Office has the power to terminate a retired officer's pension if there has been a breach of the officer's contract, including his/her duty under the Official Secrets Act not to make public without prior authority information obtained in the course of his/her public service. As the terms and conditions of public servants' employment are determined under the Royal Prerogative (more or less the equivalent of 'executive privilege' in the United States, I think), not by statute, the FCO would probably try to argue that a decision to stop a retired officer's pension could not be challenged in court, although a good lawyer would probably win on that point and succeed in applying for judicial review, or a hearing by some tribunal or other.
>>But the rights and wrongs of this in equity and under our Human Rights Act and its parent, the European Convention on Human Rights [pdf], are a different matter. Actually to stop the pension of a retired diplomat for expressing personal opinions (while not in breach of the Official Secrets Act) would be highly controversial and should entail a heavy political and media penalty from which ministers might well shrink. Moreover on the face of it, the gag would be in breach of Article 10 of the Convention, which allows certain limited exemptions, but none that (so far as I can see) gives the government the right to stifle expressions of opinion on public affairs by retired public servants:
Article 10 — Freedom of expression
1 Everyone has the right to freedom of expression. This right shall include freedom to hold opinions and to receive and impart information and ideas without interference by public authority and regardless of frontiers. This article shall not prevent States from requiring the licensing of broadcasting, television or cinema enterprises.2 The exercise of these freedoms, since it carries with it duties and responsibilities, may be subject to such formalities, conditions, restrictions or penalties as are prescribed by law and are necessary in a democratic society, in the interests of national security, territorial integrity or public safety, for the prevention of disorder or crime, for the protection of health or morals, for the protection of the reputation or rights of others, for preventing the disclosure of information received in confidence, or for maintaining the authority and impartiality of the judiciary.
>>I hope a challenge will be mounted sooner or later and that it will succeed!
>>PS: A very senior retired diplomat, formerly Dame Pauline (now Baroness) Neville-Jones, is now a front-bench member of the opposition Conservative Party in the House of Lords and Cameron's shadow spokesperson on national and international security matters. It's interesting to speculate whether, if the gag had been imposed before she retired from the Diplomatic Service, the FCO would have tried to prevent her from going into politics and expressing her hostile views of government policy as a member of the official opposition in the upper house of the national parliament. On a much humbler level, if the gag had been imposed on me before I retired, would the FCO have forced me to close down this blog? I have no craving for political martyrdom, but…<<
Comments on all this, from other retired diplomats (the still un-gagged, anyway) and anyone else, will be even more than usually welcome.
Brian
