It’s extraordinary that the national political discourse isn’t dominated by the war in Afghanistan. We have been engulfed in it for nine years already and almost every bulletin brings news of yet more deaths of young British men and women — not to mention the far more numerous deaths of innocent Afghan men, women and children at our and our allies’ hands. As soon as any of our leaders tries to define our current objectives in Afghanistan, it’s instantly obvious that none of them makes any sense, and that there’s not the remotest prospect of achieving them, however long we continue the war. If al-Qaeda is to be prevented from re-establishing its terrorist training camps and anti-western terrorism planning from a safe haven in Afghanistan, which was the perfectly proper original intention of the western intervention there after 9/11, it must be obvious that the Taliban must be persuaded that the rewards for keeping al-Qaeda out will be greater than the rewards for letting al-Qaeda back in. Equally obviously, we’re unlikely to persuade the Taliban of this by killing them and burning their crops, filling their country with unwelcome foreign troops, and throwing all our support behind corrupt warlords and their principal cheerleader in Kabul. A resumed Taliban régime would be deeply unsavoury, especially for women and girls, harsh and illiberal: but the only people who can decide between the Taliban and the warlords — or perhaps some day a third and more democratic option — are the Afghans themselves, and our military interference in their choice can only be counter-productive.
So why, when these are all statements of the painfully obvious, are the streets of Britain not seething with anti-war protestors, and our MPs not bombarded with angry demands to bring it all to an end, not in another five years’ time as David Cameron now seems to be half-promising, but starting now? The streets of Wootton Bassett are filled not with angry protestors but with silent weeping mourners as the coffins of our slaughtered servicemen are slowly driven past, day after day after day, and the hospitals and rehabilitation units are filled with the terribly wounded and maimed victims of the war, bodies broken and young lives wrecked in a cause that hardly anyone can credibly define.
But perhaps the prospects are not all black. I think the media missed the most significant remark by the prime minister in his comments on Afghanistan from the G8 meeting in Canada. “Troops out by 2015, says Cameron” was the Guardian’s lead story’s headline on 26 June 2010, with the subheading: “Prime minister wants forces to leave Afghanistan before next election”. The rest of the mainstream media focused on the same remark. But they also reported, without apparently recognising its significance, what the prime minister went on to say:
“We can’t be there for another five years, having been there for nine years already.“ Cameron said: “I want us to roll up our sleeves and get on with delivering what will bring the success we want, which is not a perfect Afghanistan, but some stability in Afghanistan and the ability for the Afghans themselves to run their country, so they [British troops] can come home.” (Emphasis added.)
Both Cameron and especially the defence secretary, Liam Fox, have already sent out much more sceptical signals about the purposes and prospects for ‘success’ in the Afghan conflict than anything hinted at by their Labour predecessors. The present government’s ambitions appear much less ambitious and therefore far more realistic. Of course Cameron has had to take care not to open up a public rift with the Americans just as he was about to have his first face-to-face bilateral meeting with President Obama. But the UK’s and the Americans’ options and commitments are very different. If British troops were to be withdrawn in a planned and phased withdrawal, to be completed by the end of this year, that would not precipitate the collapse of the whole US-led NATO operation in Afghanistan in the way that an American military withdrawal would be bound to do. Given enough advance warning of our withdrawal, NATO could replace British forces by contributions from other NATO member countries which have either not taken part in the military operation at all hitherto, or which have not contributed anything like as much as Britain in the past nine long years. If no other NATO members could be found to volunteer to take Britain’s place, that would send an important political message of which NATO and Washington would have to take proper account. It might result in a major shift of emphasis from the military to the diplomatic, political and developmental dimensions of the international effort. There would be every reason for Britain to redouble its diplomatic, political and developmental contribution to a solution of the problem while withdrawing every last British soldier in as short a time frame as logistics permit.
So why are we not acting accordingly?
Our political leaders are, I think, inhibited by two fears, neither of which can possibly justify a single additional death or maiming of another British soldier.
The first is the fear that our withdrawal will be interpreted as a failure, and a defeat for British arms. But it need not be so. Britain has been second only to the Americans in the size and effectiveness of our contribution to the war over nine years, and in the cost of it in blood and treasure. It can reasonably credibly be claimed that our war effort has real and tangible achievements to its credit: al-Qaeda’s presence and power virtually eliminated, Taliban control of towns and villages removed and girls’ schools reopened, social development schemes instigated and funded under British military protection, Afghans given political options denied to them in the years before 9/11 and the arrival of NATO forces. British forces have not been defeated: they have made their contribution to the progress made, and after nine years it’s time for others to replace us and also for political, diplomatic and social priorities to replace the military effort in pride of place.
The second inhibiting fear is that our British dead and maimed and their stricken families will seem to have suffered in vain if we withdraw before we can make any meaningful claim of ‘victory’. But here again, we can justify withdrawal by reference to the progress made in Afghanistan during our nine-year military presence, progress that would not have been possible without a military effort which has been costly but indispensable in progressively removing a major threat posed by al-Qaeda’s Afghan activities to Britain’s and the western world’s security. There’s also the point that if we wait for a recognisable ‘victory’ before we bring our troops home, they will be there for ever; sooner or later we’ll have to face the reality that there will be no such thing as an outright demonstrable ‘victory’ and that to go on leaking the blood of our young men and women while we wait for a chimera, the waste will be unforgiveable.
These claims of sufficient success in improving the situation in Afghanistan to justify our military withdrawal now will of course be hotly disputed. Those forced to make them won’t all sincerely believe in them. Not all the bereaved and maimed will be altogether consoled by them. To many they will appear no better than a fig-leaf. But what’s the realistic alternative? If we struggle on for another four or five years, how will we be any better able to justify our withdrawal then, after what will then be nearly 15 years of war and loss? It’s a cliché to remark that when you find yourself in a hole, the first thing to do is to stop digging. But it’s a useful truth. It looks as if Cameron and Fox understand it. But they need the help of public opinion and of the chattering classes and of the enlightened media in creating a climate of opinion in which they can begin the process of military withdrawal without being accused of admitting defeat, or of causing the bereaved and maimed to feel that their suffering was all for nothing. Which of the candidates for the Labour party leadership is going to come out loud and clear for withdrawal from Afghanistan by the end of 2010 with heads held high and a wave of national pride in what our boys have achieved?
“We can’t be there for another five years, having been there for nine years already.“ If David Cameron can say that, why can’t the Milibrothers, the other Ed, Diane[1] or the other Andy — not Murray — say it too, and draw the logical conclusion from it even more boldly? Meanwhile the slaughter in Afghanistan continues, with hardly a peep of protest at home apart from routine muttering from the usual suspects. A 2.5% rise in VAT looms much larger. Our deadly, unwinnable war is truly the dog that still doesn’t bark in the night.
[1] Actually Diane Abbott has got this right, as she has so many other things right: “I would tackle the deficit by coming out of Afghanistan, slashing the defence budget and scrapping Trident.” (Candidates’ answers to questionnaire, The Observer, 27 June 2010) Make it the centrepiece of your campaign, Diane: now that England’s out of the world cup, perhaps people will sit up and take notice.
Brian
In August 2007, nearly three years ago, I wrote (again) in this blog about the scandal of Indeterminate Sentences for Public Protection (IPPs), under which people sent to prison for, often, quite minor offences, can’t be released, even after they have served the ‘punishment’ part of their sentences, until they can convince a Parole Board that they won’t reoffend when they leave jail. That post has now attracted almost 150 ‘comments‘ , very many of them expressing anguish at the impossibility of knowing when a beloved husband, partner, son or brother will be released from prison — often expressing, indeed, the fear that he might never be released. In the same period, all the major UK organisations working for the reform of our crime and prison laws have condemned the IPP system as unjust, inhumane and a waste of public money.
The change of government last month (May 2010) has brought a ray of hope that this indefensible system might soon be abolished. Yesterday I submitted the following letter to the Guardian for publication:
Sir,
Polly Toynbee is right to point to the obscene waste of public money involved in short-term prison sentences which achieve nothing (Forget being tough, it’s time to get realistic on crime, Comment & debate, 22 June). She might also have mentioned the folly, waste and injustice of Indeterminate Sentences for Public Protection (IPPs), which currently add massively to shameful overcrowding in our prisons. They waste public money on a vast scale by keeping in prison thousands of
people who have served their sentences imposed for punishment, rehabilitation and deterrence but who can’t prove to a Parole Board that they won’t reoffend if released, often because there are no places for them on the behaviour courses which they need to attend as a virtual condition for release.These people are in preventive detention, being punished for future offences they haven’t committed, often with no hope of release, fearing that they are in prison for life, having already been punished for often quite minor offences. The onus is on them to prove a negative about the future, which is conceptually impossible as well as reversing the normal onus of proof. The proportion of IPPers so far released is minuscule. Justice Department ministers of the new government have acknowledged that the system is unacceptable: Crispin Blunt told parliament on 15 June that “We have 6,000 IPP prisoners, well over 2,500 of whom have exceeded their tariff point. Many cannot get on courses because our prisons are wholly overcrowded and unable to address offending behaviour. That is not a defensible position.”
It’s inhumane, unjust and a monumental waste of taxpayers’ money. All parties should now insist that the system is swept away and those IPPers who have served their minimum sentences should be released forthwith, either unconditionally or on licence. Here’s a useful cut in government spending that will benefit everyone.
Yours sincerely
Brian Barder
http://www.barder.com/ephems/
22 June 2010
A version of this letter is published in today’s Guardian (scroll down to the third letter on the web page), but so indiscriminately ‘edited’ that many of the main points I had hoped to make have been amputated (indeterminate sentences are not even identified as ‘IPPs’ in the published version!). Still, what was published is probably better than nothing.
Recently Michael Robinson, a partner in a firm of solicitors with extensive experience of IPPs and the injustices they inflict, wrote to the new prime minister:
Dear Prime Minister,
Re: Cost to the Tax Payer – The IPP Sentence
Britain is overwhelmed with debt. As the incoming Prime Minister you have the unenviable task of reducing the vast deficit left by the last government. It is time to cut waste from areas in which money is being spent for no ascertainable benefit.
In March 2010 the total prison population stood at 85,608, which is approximately 800 more than the highest figure predicted for March 2010[1]. The prisons are, by anyone’s estimation, full. A very significant number of these prisoners are serving Imprisonment for Public Protection. These prisoners are given sentences by judges who set their minimum term – the ‘punishment’ period – at half of the length of a determinate sentence.
In reality, the expiry of the minimum term is almost never the date on which the prisoner is released. In fact only about 1% of all IPP prisoners have been released and have subsequently stayed out of prison. This means, for example, that someone sentenced to a 12 month IPP in November 2006 (the equivalent to a two year determinate sentence) could technically have been released in November 2007 but could still be in prison today. To date they would have served three years and six months, the equivalent of a seven-year determinate sentence.
There are approximately 6,000[2] IPP prisoners in custody, and the figure is rising at a rate of around 70 per month[3]. With the average cost of keeping a prisoner in jail estimated at £40,000 per year this equates to a total of £240m per year for this class of prisoner alone, and which will continue to rise under the current system.
In order to have any chance of being released on parole, these prisoners are wholly reliant on demonstrating their reduction in risk while in prison. These prisoners are unable to access the courses they need because of the continuing problem of woefully inadequate funding. In a shockingly high number of cases, these people are simply not being given the opportunity to earn their release.
The previous government admitted that there were no centrally available reliable figures on the number of IPPs waiting to access courses.[4] To compensate for the overcrowding, they embarked on a program of early release for determinate sentenced prisoners. There is a clear contradiction here which, we submit, cannot have been the intention of the sentencing judiciary.
Rather than being saddled with this enormously inefficient, not to mention ‘inhumane’[5], regime we implore you to make your pledged wholesale review of sentencing, including the IPP, a priority. So much money is wasted currently holding individuals in prison who have, because of a lack of availability of courses, been unable to demonstrate that they are no longer dangerous to the satisfaction of the Parole Board.
We are not suggesting that offenders should not be punished for their offences: On the contrary, we wholeheartedly support your proposals for mini-max sentences. If prisoners have definite dates for their earliest and latest release this will give them an impetus to want to earn release as soon as possible. This will encourage good behaviour amongst all prisoners, rather than just those serving indeterminate sentences who are scared to ‘step out of line’ while those currently serving determinate sentences aren’t as adversely affected if they are punished for misbehaviour.
Mini-max sentences will reduce pressure on the operation of the Prison Service as a whole by promoting good order inside prisons; they will enable this government to budget more accurately in terms of the annual cost of the Prison Service; and will still act as a sufficient deterrent in terms of serious crime.
The changes to IPP in 2008 did not go far enough – and there are many, many short tariff IPP prisoners still languishing in jail who were sentenced under the earlier regime. Only abolition of the IPP will put a stop to this wasteful expenditure.
Yours faithfully,
Michael Robinson
[1] Prison Population Projections 2009-2015
[2] Pre-election Conservative line on IPP
[3] Pre-election Conservative line on IPP
[4] Jack Straw, House of Commons Hansard Written Answers 16th June 2009
[5] Independent Monitoring Board
Under the Conservative-LibDem coalition agreement the government is to set up a review of sentencing policy. This is to report by October. Taking into account the parliamentary summer recess, that doesn’t leave all that much time to make sure that the sentencing review will conclude that the whole IPP régime should be wound up (there should be no attempt to ‘improve’ it, since it’s inherently flawed) and that all IPPers should be automatically released at the end of their tariffs (‘minimum sentences’). There may be a case for introducing ‘mini-max’ sentences; but that’s a separate issue which should be independently debated.
If you agree, therefore, that it’s time to get rid of IPPs as a blot on our justice system and a wicked waste of money, please write to or email your MP, urging that the sentencing review should include a review of IPPs and that this should lead to their outright abolition. Ask your MP to make urgent representations accordingly to the Justice Secretary (Kenneth Clarke). Please give your reasons in your own words — but then I recommend that you also attach or enclose a copy of the letter I submitted to the Guardian (the full text as submitted, quoted above) if your MP is Labour, LibDem, Green or a nationalist party member): or, if your MP is a Conservative, I suggest that you attach or enclose a copy of Mr Robinson’s letter to the prime minister, also quoted above. By all means also invite him or her to read http://www.barder.com/696 and especially some of the heart-wrenching comments underneath it.
This is an opportunity to rid ourselves of a system which is unjust, which causes untold fear, misery and anguish, and which wastes millions of pounds of taxpayers’ money, all to no purpose whatever. The opportunity may be unrepeatable. Please take ten minutes now to help ensure that the government and parliament do the right, necessary thing, soon.
Update (25 June 2010): A shortened version of this post is now published on the left-of-centre website, Labour List: you can read it here. It’s already attracting an interesting and sympathetic debate in comments, and I hope it might prompt many more letters to MPs while there’s still time to influence the government’s review of sentencing policy. Thanks to those who have already been in touch with their MPs in response to this Ephems post (see comments below).
Brian
I’m generally a fan of the American constitution, its Bill of Rights, and especially of the American commitment to due process. In the words of the Fifth Amendment,
No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury … nor shall any person be … compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law… [Emphasis added]
Anyone tuning in yesterday (17 June 2010) to the UK or US television live coverage of what the New York Times called “the much-anticipated grilling of BP’s chief executive, Tony Hayward, by members of the House Energy and Commerce Committee” over the disastrous oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, could have been forgiven for assuming that the hapless Mr Hayward was indeed on trial for his life, or at best in imminent danger of being sentenced to 120 years’ hard labour in the federal penitentiary, such was the uninhibited savagery of the questioning, the harshness of the comments on Hayward’s replies, and the crestfallen, cringing demeanour of the accused. Yet this was not technically a trial at all; Mr Hayward has not been charged with any offence, still less convicted of committing one; the members of the House of Representatives Energy and Commerce Committee were not at the hearing in any legal or judicial capacity.
Above all, Mr Hayward was afforded not a single one of the safeguards required by elementary justice and by American law in a criminal trial. No impartial judge would have allowed the prosecution — the role that the Committee’s members awarded themselves — to ask more than a handful of the questions to which Mr Hayward was subjected. Most questions could have been answered only by someone who had been personally involved in the decisions whose consequences had led to the oil spill (which Hayward had not), or else by someone who had read the full report of inquiries into those decisions that had been rigorously conducted and fully completed (which they have not, at any rate not yet). Mr Hayward repeatedly explained that for these reasons he was in no position to answer many of the numerous questions put to him. It made no difference. The distinguished Congressmen continued to harass, hassle and hound their victim with more and more plainly unanswerable questions, and then to denounce his explanations of inability to answer them as evasiveness amounting, by implication, to a contempt of Congress. Mr Hayward, much to his credit, remained studiously low-key, refusing to betray the anger and sense of injustice that he must have felt, maintaining an expression of deep penitence but never any other emotion.
The hearing lasted for many hours; Hayward sat facing his inquisitors alone, unsupported by colleagues or staff, unrepresented by counsel, unprotected by even any pretence of impartiality by the Committee Chair. The UK’s Daily Express summed it up accurately, for once:
Throughout the session, the atmosphere became increasingly heated and confrontational with Congressmen repeatedly interrupting the BP boss. The conclusion was clear — the majority of those engaged in this show trial had already decided he was guilty.
Perhaps the Daily Mirror’s mistaken assumption that “those engaged in this show trial” were Senators, not members of the House of Representatives, resulted from a folk memory of other, even more discreditable show trial hearings on the Hill conducted by another Congressional committee in the early 1950s, more than half a century ago. Those hearings ended on 2 December 1954 when the Senate voted by 67 votes to 22 to condemn Senator Joseph McCarthy on the explicit grounds, among others, that he had
acted contrary to senatorial ethics and tended to bring the Senate into dishonor and disrepute, to obstruct the constitutional processes of the Senate, and to impair its dignity.
Of course McCarthyism was a far more lethal and destructive plague, destroying far more victims, than anything so far visited by the House Energy and Commerce Committee on the Chief Executive of BP. But some of the techniques employed yesterday had an eerily familiar echo.
One or two further observations are perhaps in order. Mr Hayward and the BP Chairman, Carl-Henric Svanberg, have apologised handsomely to the American people for what has happened, accepting BP’s responsibility for it, and promising that BP will pay the full costs of repairing the damage done. BP is an international company with as many American shareholders as British; the ‘B’ in BP no longer stands for ‘British’ (or anything else). As the various inquiries and investigations proceed, BP may no longer find itself alone in the dock. Transocean Ltd, the owner of the faulty drilling rig (BP was merely leasing it), is the world’s largest offshore drilling contractor, based in Switzerland, with offices in 20 countries including the US and Scotland. It’s been suggested that the cement slurry which the US firm Halliburton (remember Halliburton?) was pumping into the drill hole prior to the Horizon’s explosion may have been at fault. Halliburton is the world’s second largest oilfield services corporation with headquarters in Houston, Texas. The US Interior Department’s Mineral Management Service inspectors may also come in for criticism for failing to follow up expressions of concern about the safety of the shear rams used to seal off out-of-control oil and gas wells in deep-water drilling. According to the Wall Street Journal, “the Fed may suddenly find itself the target of public anger, along with Transocean, which bought the rams, and Cameron International, the manufacturer.” Cameron International’s headquarters are also in Houston, Texas.
At least some of the pressure on BP, as on all other oil exploration and production companies, to cut costs and perhaps therefore also corners, arises from the Americans’ ravenous appetitite for oil — the US consumes some 25 per cent of world oil production — and their unshakeable reluctance to pay the true economic price of it, taking into account not only the heavy production costs of deep sea drilling as in the case of BP’s Deepwater Horizon rig, but also the environmental cost to the planet of the excessive use of carbon fuels.
And finally: on 6 July 1988, in the words of the BBC’s account, –
The ill-maintained and overloaded North Sea oil rig Piper Alpha was destroyed in a fire which also killed scores of workers.
Leaking gas on the Occidental Oil drilling platform ignited late in the evening of 6 July 1988, causing a devastating blaze in which 167 of the 226 men on board perished. Many of the oil workers leapt 100ft (30m) into the sea to escape the fire and toxic fumes, despite being told their jump would almost certainly be fatal.
It is still the world’s worst-ever offshore oil disaster.
Occidental Petroleum, the operator of the ill-fated Piper Alpha oil rig, affectionately known to Americans as “Oxy”, is the fourth largest U.S. oil and gas company, the largest oil producer in Texas and the largest natural gas producer in California, with operations also in Kansas, Oklahoma, Colorado and New Mexico. The Piper Alpha disaster occurred in UK territorial waters in the North Sea, north-east of Aberdeen. In the subsequent inquiry Occidental was, in the words of the Wikipedia entry, found guilty of having inadequate maintenance and safety procedures. But no criminal charges were ever brought against it. I can find no record of any British parliamentary committee having hauled Occidental’s Chairman or Chief Executive before it to pound them with questions that they wouldn’t have been able to answer, or to denounce them for failing to answer them. Indeed, it’s hard to imagine any self-respecting senior American businessman consenting to subject himself or herself to any such indignity.
Brian
Dear Harriet,
If the Labour Party is going to make a healthy recovery in time for the next election (which, despite the CameroClegg’s pronouncements about a fixed term, may turn out to be much less than five years away), we all need to recognise and admit that the coalition government has got off to a cracking start. Cameron and Clegg and most of their teams give a strong impression, on television and in their press interviews and articles, of being sensible and likeable, even progressive. The coalition’s programme includes a goodly number of items which many Labour supporters (including probably a majority of Labour MPs in the last parliament, even perhaps a majority of Labour ministers, and certainly including me) were desperate for our Labour government to adopt. Who knows how much better Labour might have fared had the then leadership listened to the many Labour voices calling for a return to humane and liberal policies, and the rolling back of the oppressive and authoritarian measures which disfigured the records of successive Labour home secretaries?
It’s too late now to lament what our Labour government could so easily have done better. Now we are suffering the shaming experience of being outflanked on the left by the first relatively enlightened Tory leader in years, and by LibDem ministers who really do seem to be exercising a benign, liberalising influence on their unexpected bedfellows. Of course it’s still early, honeymoon days, but it would be rash to assume that it can’t last. Even when the Osborne axe begins to fall on ordinary people’s standards of living and on the services they depend on, don’t forget the capacity of the British people for masochism in a crisis, if the measures to tackle it are persuasively presented as necessary and reasonably fair. “Blood, toil, tears and sweat,” remember? Labour can’t afford to appear to want the coalition’s campaign to get Britain out of its financial crisis to fail. Great care is needed in selecting individual measures that deserve to be opposed, and even then only constructively. Overall support for the government’s efforts must be the order of the day, if the Loyal Opposition is not to be dismissed as irresponsible, feckless, needlessly negative and old hat.
What other lessons should we learn from this impressive beginning to the coalition’s period of office? First, we must avoid like Swine Flu any impression that Labour opposes the liberalising measures promised by the coalition, such as the abandonment of identity cards and their supporting monster database, and virtually all the other reforming measures promised in the coalition’s agreed programme under the heading “Civil Liberties”. It’s essential that the whole of the parliamentary Labour party should vote enthusiastically for almost all these measures, whatever the idiot media might say about U-turns: if ever there was a time for some Labour U-turns, this is it. We should all heed the warm welcome given to the coalition’s programme for the repair of our civil liberties by no less a person than Juliet Lyon, the director of the Prison Reform Trust and secretary general of Penal Reform International. Any former Labour home secretaries tempted to try to defend their dismal legacies, or to oppose coalition action to reverse them, should be firmly silenced both by yourself as interim Leader and by all the candidates for the substantive leadership. (Two important exceptions to this general rule are discussed later.)
Secondly, the coalition’s period in office seems to have been marked so far by a new atmosphere of cooperation and mutual respect in the political arena. Old-fashioned knee-jerk newspaper columnists such as Simon Hoggart have been lamenting the absence of noisy bear-baiting from prime minister’s questions; the rest of us rejoice at it. PMQs should never again be allowed to deteriorate into a juvenile Punch-and-Judy show for the delectation of the stupider luminaries of the commentariat. It’s up to the Labour front bench and all Labour back-benchers to see that this new and constructive atmosphere is sustained. Many of us devoutly hope you in particular will use all your influence as Leader to enforce sensible, adult behaviour on the pack behind you, praising the government when it does well (as it currently seems to be doing) and offering collaboration whenever possible, not opposing for the sake of opposition. This is an essential ingredient in the task of winning back a degree of public respect for politicians in general and for the Labour Party in particular.
In my first letter on 19 May I respectfully suggested two golden rules to guide the Labour Party’s behaviour and goals in opposition, and discussed how the first of them might usefully be implemented. Here are some further thoughts about the second golden rule, which you’ll remember was:
Radically overhaul every aspect of the late Labour government’s policies, brutally slaughtering sacred cows, and boldly thinking the hitherto unthinkable. In the words of Danton: De l’audace, et encore de l’audace, et toujours de l’audace! Avoid like the Black Death any impression that if and when Labour is re-elected you will simply take up where the Blair and Brown governments left off. If that’s how it looks, you won’t be returned to the government benches for a generation, and you won’t deserve to be.
Labour in office from 1997 to 2010 had many really substantial achievements to its credit, mainly ones that no Conservative government would ever have matched. The rescue of the National Health Service and state education from the years of Tory government neglect were certainly among the proudest of these. Perhaps though the greatest were the raft of measures to reduce poverty, both at home and globally. The Tories taunt us for allowing the gap between the richest and the poorest to widen during Labour’s time in office, and it’s dismaying that it did. But that doesn’t mean that the poor got poorer: the figures show that the poor became less poor but the rich got richer at a much faster rate, and that without Labour’s campaign against poverty in the UK the poor would have been further impoverished and the gap would have been even wider. Those who dispute this can be referred to the analysis by the independent Institute for Fiscal Studies, Poverty and inequality in the UK: 2010 (pdf).
Similarly, Labour’s record on aid for development and poverty reduction overseas has won world-wide respect and indeed has been explicitly praised by the Conservatives and LibDems who have promised to continue where Labour left off. Labour is entitled to claim credit for these and many other achievements and to spend its time in opposition planning how to make its promotion of development and poverty reduction even more effective when returned to office. Meanwhile the opposition should clearly support the coalition government as long as it continues to work towards the goals set by Labour in office. Andrew Mitchell as Secretary for Overseas Development will need lots of all-party support if he is to preserve the programmes and objectives of development and aid established by Labour against the inevitable assaults of the Tory neanderthals when the going starts to get rough.
There are however two areas of Labour’s legacy where a clean policy break is absolutely essential: Iraq plus Afghanistan, and civil liberties.
On the latter, I have already suggested earlier in this letter the need for Labour to support wholeheartedly the liberalising reform measures now promised by the coalition. If this is interpreted gloatingly by the government and the right-wing media as a repudiation of a sizeable chunk of Labour’s record in office, so much the better. There are, though, two important areas of civil liberties where Labour in opposition should tenaciously defend its record: Freedom of Information (whose scope the coalition promises to enlarge, hopefully with Labour’s cheerful support), and the Human Rights Act, on which coalition intentions remain obscure. Here Labour should defend the existing Act, ensuring that any ‘British Bill of Rights’ designed to add to or replace it doesn’t erode existing rights, and above all that any new legislation doesn’t commit the egregious error of appearing to make our fundamental rights dependent or conditional on observance of ‘responsibilities’ as defined by the state. That poisonous and misguided doctrine has been used in our lifetimes to justify some of the worst repression inflicted on tens of thousands of victims by Stalin, Hitler, Mao, Pol Pot and assorted lesser villains. It may well become necessary to face down the Murdoch press and the Daily Telegraph, as well as the puritans of the Tory right, on this issue.
Now to the difficult subject of Blair’s Wars. There’s no need to spell out to you, dear Harriet, the reasons for the dismay and anger felt by thousands of Labour Party members and supporters over the disastrous decisions made by the Blair government over Iraq, including what many of us firmly believe to have been the lies told to justify them. Some of us also recognise that despite the strident supporting role adopted by Tony Blair in regard to the NATO attack on Yugoslavia over Kosovo in 1999, that attack was equally illegal under international law, equally unjustified, equally unnecessary, equally unsuccessful and equally fraudulently explained in attempted justification to the British people and to the world. There’s no point in the opposition reopening that argument now, but it would be prudent for opposition spokespersons to resist any temptation to boast of success for either the Kosovo or the Iraq conflicts, or to attempt to defend the ways in which the Labour government sought to justify either war.
Two of the candidates for the Labour leadership have already, at the time of writing, acknowledged that Iraq was a “mistake”. There’s no need for a formal apology by the Labour opposition for Iraq (or for Kosovo): indeed, an explicit apology would be widely scorned as a hypocritical gesture, cynically designed to win back votes. But there should be no disguising the fact that Britain’s role in the Iraq war was an aberration which with hindsight should never have happened. The eventual report of the Chilcot Inquiry into Iraq and the lessons to be learned from it may well turn out to be bitter medicine for Labour: all the more reason to be seen to be willing to swallow it with good grace.
The positive way to signal a radical change of policy on the resort to military force, implying (but not necessarily stating explicitly) a promise never to repeat the Iraq criminal blunder, would be to declare formally that no future Labour government will ever again send British forces into action overseas unless (a) in response to an armed attack on sovereign British territory (as permitted under the UN Charter) or else (b) to participate in peace-keeping or peace-making operations expressly authorised by the United Nations Security Council. Labour would also do well publicly to endorse the present coalition defence secretary’s useful reminder that in any case Britain is not a “global policeman” — and should never again try to act as if it were. He who “punches above his weight” tends to end up on the canvas.
And that leads us to perhaps the most difficult current policy dilemma facing the government — but also facing the opposition. There is an immediate requirement for Labour to reformulate its policy on Afghanistan. It has become increasingly difficult for ordinary sensible and responsible people, especially perhaps Labour people, to see what useful purpose is now being served by our military presence in Afghanistan; indeed, it’s increasingly obvious that western military intervention is now doing more harm than good. It’s time to withdraw British forces from Afghanistan as soon as logistically possible, and Labour needs to say so, now, loud and clear.
Labour need not do an 180-degree about-turn and pronounce the whole Afghanistan operation a mistake. The early withdrawal of all British forces from Afghanistan would clearly not entail the withdrawal of the entire US-led NATO force from the country. There are plenty of other NATO countries which have not yet made a military contribution on anything like the scale of Britain’s, and it’s time for some of them to take our place. We can be proud of what our servicemen and women have done there: no-one has to call it a failure or say that those who died or were wounded in combat suffered in vain. We have done our stint and it’s time for someone else to take our place.
Accordingly, Labour should call for the withdrawal of all UK military forces from Afghanistan over a period of the next 12 months, allowing time for NATO to replace them from another member country or else to revise its strategy to minimise the effects of our departure. We could offer to maintain and reinforce our development aid presence and commitment for as long as it is demonstrably able to achieve positive results (but no longer). If the Labour opposition were very soon to adopt this policy, it might even be quite welcome to the coalition government. It would demonstrate Labour’s responsible attitude if the Labour opposition were to offer to discuss its intentions privately with the government before announcing it, in order to minimise any damage to the morale of our forces or any boost to the Taliban or al-Qaeda. But Labour dug Britain into this hole, no doubt with the best of intentions: it’s now up to Labour to say that it’s time to stop digging. Almost the entire country, and much of the military, would heave a huge sigh of relief.
This is one area where Labour can rightfully resume its proper place to the left of the coalition partners. Another is the future of Trident — not just of this particular weapon and its replacement, but the whole issue of Britain’s nuclear deterrent. No-one has the slightest idea whom the UK deterrent is supposed to deter. No nuclear weapon can blunt the threat from international terrorism. No country poses a nuclear threat to Britain, nor is any country at all likely to do so. Our deterrent is not ‘independent’, despite the label often tied to it: we depend on the Americans to keep it active and could never use it without US approval. Germany, Italy, Spain, Australia, Canada — none has a nuclear deterrent, none seeks one, and none is less secure than Britain. The argument that it’s impossible to predict what threats might arise in future, and so it’s just as well to go on spending billions on keeping our deterrent just in case, is fundamentally fatuous: it could be used to justify any kind of lunatic expenditure designed to protect us against every conceivable — or inconceivable — risk (don’t we need a programme to save us from being hit by an asteroid?). Maintaining the nuclear deterrent grossly distorts our defence spending and involves huge expenditure that we can’t afford. It gives our ministers delusions of grandeur, tempting them to behave as if Britain were still a global great power, instead of pursuing policies that are proportionate to our real position in the world. Unilateral Nuclear Disarmament, which would have been unacceptably risky during the cold war, is now a policy whose time has come. Labour should not be afraid to adopt it.
So for the immediate future the motto needs to be: support wherever you can; oppose where you must. Better to collaborate than to obstruct. Defend those elements of Labour’s legacy of which we can be justifiably proud: support the reversal of everything that shames us. Treat Labour’s adversaries with respect; behave like adults. Remember that the coalition government has an electoral mandate to address Britain’s crisis in the ways it promised, and that Labour has no mandate to try and prevent it. Britain’s recovery is as much in Labour’s interest as it is in the government’s, and most of all it is in the interests of the British people. Labour must be seen to be playing its part in helping to promote it.
For the longer term future, this is an unrepeatable opportunity for Labour to reclaim its old radicalism as the party which represents the poor and vulnerable against the rich and privileged, as the champion of fundamental human rights, as an internationalist party whose policies are firmly rooted in respect for the United Nations Charter. Above all it must once again be the party which recognises and uses the power of the state to achieve by universal collective action what can never be achieved by individuals acting privately. Without the state, the Big Society is a delusion. Labour should now resume its place as the party of the positive state.
PS: Was the Labour government serious about abolishing FM radio in favour of DAB? Making us all abandon our hifi tuners and portable FM radios and car radios and replace them all with those pale brown boxes with their primitive, virtually unworkable controls? What kind of lunacy is that? Let’s for heaven’s sake abandon the whole crazy project (and invite the government to call it off before they think of it themselves), with a craven apology to the radio-listening public, perhaps using the Fergie defence — we must have had a lot to drink before adopting this proposal and we “weren’t in our right place”.
Yours sincerely (and hopefully),
Brian
It would be madness to venture a personal view on the latest Israel-Gaza conflict unless from under a double-thickness cycle helmet and from deep inside a suit of armour, but a cool, clear statement of the relevant provisions of international law can perhaps be recommended in reasonable safety: it’s at
In the words of Norman Geras (to whom a profound hat-tip), it’s a piece–
by Ed Morgan, professor of international law at the University of Toronto, [who] looks at the incident in the light of the Law of the Sea and in opposition to what he calls ‘politicized interpretation’.
Comment on it really is superfluous, cliché and all.
I should stress that my passing on a useful tip by Norm Geras has nothing at all to do with the publication today on his blog of the 350th in his long-standing and fiendishly addictive ‘profiles’ of fellow-bloggers. No. 350 is at –
http://normblog.typepad.com/normblog/2010/06/the-normblog-profile-350-brian-barder.html.
Fame at last!
Brian
