The Court of Appeal ruled on 29 June that Rwanda was not a ‘safe third country’ and deporting asylum seekers there was unlawful. Given this judgement the drafters of the Illegal Migration Act might be complimented on their foresight in the wording of the bill’s title. The Act has been called unworkable, ‘morally unacceptable’ (Bishop Paul McAlennan) and ‘amounting to an asylum ban’ (the UNHCR). Its contents in their lack of human empathy could have been generated by AI. In the words of the Director of the Jesuit Refugee Service, Sarah Teather, to “deny sanctuary to people who need it based on their mode of arrival is grotesquely cruel”.
Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has declared he will achieve what he calls his five ‘people’s priorities’. The fifth reads: “We will pass new laws to stop small boats, making sure that if you come to this country illegally, you are detained and swiftly removed”. Last year some 90% of the boat people who reached the UK sought asylum. By the beginning of this year only 3% of them have received an initial decision from the Home Office. More than 135,000 asylum applicants were awaiting a decision, many of them in hotels paid for out of the UK aid budget; 89,000 of them had been waiting for more than six months. This is the context within which the Prime Minister has chosen to back this bad bill. Is he serious? Sunak excuses the draconian contents of the Illegal Migration Act on grounds of compassion. 56 people, 11 of them children, are known to have drowned trying to cross the Channel since 2018. He argues that the people smugglers’ business model will collapse if would-be migrants believe they will be sent to Rwanda. If there were a well-funded special unit in the National Criminal Agency (NCA) dedicated to the arrest of these criminal gangs, if there were adequate accessible safe and legal routes for asylum seekers to get here, his compassion argument might carry conviction. If migration policy is compassion driven, why has the Conservative Party in the Commons voted down Lords amendments to the bill containing such provisions? The Conservatives believe that their bill is a direct response to the democratic will, or, at least, the will of voters in the Red Wall constituencies who want to see an end to small boat crossings. And Kent County Council as well as Dover genuinely are overwhelmed because so few councils around the country are willing to ‘burden-share’ (and most of these are Labour Councils) - a microcosm of the European Union’s predicament. But just how popular is the Illegal Migration Act? How many people are thinking this harsh action is not our idea of British values? In the House of Lords we were hearing voices speaking for another, kinder Britain: Lord Dubs, who before the Second World War was brought to Britain on the kindertransport, concerned for the needs and protection of unaccompanied children. Then there was Baroness Mobarik, who aged six accompanied her family from Pakistan to Glascow, speaking alongside David Walker, the Anglican Bishop of Manchester against government attempts to weaken limits on the detention of immigrant children and pregnant women. Isn’t the welcoming of Ukrainian refugees, in which we take pride, more in keeping with what we want Britain to be? The under-appreciated Upper House of Parliament - without veto power - is doing its job, holding government to account, scrutinising its legislation and trying to make the bill less bad. Between 27 April and 10 July, peers worked on 20 pertinent, important and compassionate amendments. A large cross-Party group outvoted the Conservative peers on each of the amendments and sent the bill back to the Commons. (There had also been also 16 Conservatives in the Commons who denounced aspects of the bill and abstained during its initial readings – including former Home Secretary and Prime Minister, Theresa May). In the Commons, the Government rejected the Lords’ amendments but did make small concessions agreeing not to weaken limits on the length of detention and removing retrospective provisions which would have made the bill operative from its introduction by the Home Secretary, Suella Braverman, on 7 March 2023. The bill was sent back to the House of Lords, and on July 12 they accepted the rejection of their amendments. After deliberations the Lords returned the bill to the Commons with nine revised amendments - including two proposed by Tory peers. These sophisticated strokes in the Palace of Westminster ‘ping-pong’ were immediately and casually dismissed by the Immigration Minister, Robert Jenrick, who said the Government did not plan to make any further concessions. The Government, with only a few days left, badly wants to get its legislation through Parliament before the summer recess. For this reason, the House of Lords has a small amount of leverage though it is improbable the Government will change the Act in any meaningful way. Parliamentary Acts of 1911 and 1949, together with unwritten constitutional convention, dictate that the unelected House of Lords should not block legislation by the elected House of Commons – especially measures promised in an Election Manifesto. No such pledge on migration was in the 2019 Tory manifesto. Sunak persists in alleging that he is fulfilling a ‘people’s pledge’ responding to public opinion. The peers have done all they are entitled to do within constitutional convention to make this bill humane. The Conservative majority in the Commons means we will be saddled with this deeply unpleasant legislation. The Act enables the Government to interpret international human rights treaties and refugee conventions in ways not consistent with the UK’s obligations. The Government’s excuse for this shabby populism is a variation on Margaret Thatcher’s ‘there is no alternative’, alleging that the Act’s many critics do not offer any alternative. Consistent with our current politics of empty promises and brazen untruths, this is a lie. There is a broad consensus amongst Churches and religious communities, NGOs, refugee organisations, as well as in the House of Lords on what needs to be done, starting with the creation of new safe and legal routes and serious investment in putting the criminal gangs behind bars. One of the Lords’ amendments - proposed by the Archbishop of Canterbury and garnering not a single Tory vote - was a call for a UK-led strategic ten-year multi-lateral plan for handling immigration compassionately whilst countering the impact of conflict and climate change on sender countries. The Labour Party acting as a government-in-waiting has produced a strategic package of proposals consonant with the Archbishop’s call. His amendment was amongst those voted down in the Commons. The boat people who pay the people smugglers are desperate and aware of the risks. Nothing is quickly going to stop the small boats. Nor will the Rwanda threat, least of all if the Supreme Court agrees with the Court of Appeal’s judgement. Opinion polls suggest many voters now believe only a new Government, a new and competent Home Secretary and a reformed Home Office can reduce the number of small boats and deal humanely with refugees entitled to this country’s protection. See TheArticle 17/07/2023
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I don’t want to be a killjoy but the mirth with which signs of Jo Biden’s age are greeted strikes me as mindless. Good for a few laughs on Have I got News for You. Look, ha, ha, ha, he’s just tumbled over a sandbag. Trump at his rallies will be laughing along too.
“If the measure of a man is his gait, speech and memory for trivialities, then we are lost”, declared a letter-writer to the New York Times on 7 June summing up the dilemma facing uncertain voters in next year’s US Presidential elections. Will Jo Biden at 81 with some of the frailties of old-age be up to the job? The criminal investigations besetting Trump have only reinforced his cult status with his core vote. Can he count on Biden’s support eroding under withering scrutiny in the hostile media? Will the Republican campaign gain traction with each stumble, fall and wrong word? Biden is often compared on the geriatric scale to the elderly – a decade younger actually – President Ronald Reagan. Reagan, aged 72, touched an approval low of 35% in early 1983 but in 1984 went on to win a second term in a landslide victory against the lackluster Walter Mondale. Like the actor he was, Reagan played the folksy grandfather and the American public, used to TV stereotypes, responded positively. President Biden’s performance is less assured. His approval ratings have been bumping along at around 41% for many months. Recently there has been a small tick upwards. For Biden a better comparison than Reagan would be with President Lyndon Baines Johnson (1963-1969) whose knowledge of politics ‘on the Hill’ and around State governors was legendary. Biden too has brought stellar negotiating and deal-making skills as well as long experience to the Presidency. He has a talented and loyal team around him, with an outstanding Secretary of State, Antony Blinken though Kamala Harris as Vice-President is unpopular. Already the list of Biden’s executive orders and bills is impressive. US Congressional Acts are complex composites and US congressional representatives are far more independent of any Party discipline than their British counterparts. Biden’s skills operating within this difficult terrain, made even more difficult by a politicised Supreme Court, are demonstrated by his handling of his portmanteau Build Back Better plan, a ‘blue-collar blueprint’ to win back poorer workers. When key parts were blocked in the Senate (as was his proposed George Floyd Justice in Policing Act) Biden made acceptable amendments and changed the bill’s name to the Inflation Reduction Act finally signed off on 16 August 2022. The prices of prescription drugs were lowered, offering $800 annual savings on health insurance for 13 million citizens, and providing investment of $369 billion over ten years for climate change mitigation and clean energy use. Taxation was tightened and steps approved to reduce national debt. The Act built on the eye-watering, job-creating, $1.2 trillion Bipartisan Infrastructure Bill signed on 15 November 2021. Also in 2022, Biden’s Safer Communities Act included, amongst other minor provisions, enhanced background checks on under 21s buying guns. A tiny step forward but the first successful – bipartisan - attempt at gun control legislation in thirty years. And a bipartisan agreement concluded this year’s ritual ‘debt-ceiling crisis’ - it stood at an epic $31.4 trillion - enabling Biden to sign the Fiscal Responsibility Act on 3 June. But none of this stream of legislation seems to have impressed an American public; the perception is that the US economy is faring badly with the blame falling on Biden. Aware that his approval rating for his overall handling of the economy was only 34%, Biden delivered a much-prepared speech in the Old Chicago Post Office on 28 June. He sounded distinctly Keynesian presenting what amounted to aggregate demand as the most important driving force in the economy and promising government intervention to increase output. These are all echoes of Roosevelt’s New Deal. Contrasting Democrat economic policy with Republican trickle down, he rejected, “the belief we should cut taxes for the wealthy and big corporations...that we should shrink public investment in infrastructure and public education”, thus summarising ‘Reaganomics’. Instead the economy should be built “from the middle out and the bottom up”. In a room festooned with ‘Bidenomics’ banners, an attack term used by the Republicans, the speech was a bold counter-branding exercise, not without risk. Biden’s core electoral support lies amongst more educated and Black voters as well as to a lesser degree Latinos. US Catholics comprise a little over a quarter of the national vote. You might think the large Catholic community would support a fellow Catholic, and he did attract more support than Hillary Clinton, but about half voted for Trump in the 2020 Presidential elections. Despite an impressive record harmonising with official Catholic positions on climate change and social justice, Biden’s support for abortion provision will be an obstacle to deriving any significant electoral advantage from Catholic voters. Americans largely agree with the Supreme Court’s Roe v Wade decision of 1973 which divided pregnancy into three phases. Opinion polls suggest 69% of Americans think abortion should be legal in the first three months of pregnancy, 37% in the next three and 22% in the final. The respected Pew Foundation finds that 76% of US Catholics think abortion should be legal in some cases/contexts but amongst Catholics who attend mass regularly there is a significantly higher level of pro-life conviction. Biden has made several attempts to address this problem. At a recent fundraiser for his re-election campaign, he spoke approvingly of the tri-partite division citing the first three months of a pregnancy as a matter for the family, the second three for the doctors and the third for the State – to ban or to allow when needed to save the mother’s life. “I’m a practicing Catholic”, he said. “I’m not big on abortion. But guess what? Roe v Wade got it right”. Pope Francis, while avoiding direct censure, described the President’s religious position as ‘incoherence’. US policy on migration across the southern border is also contrary to Church teaching as well as the practice of many US Catholics of welcoming and supporting Latin American incomers. But for Biden to adopt the Church’s official moral stance would most likely deliver the USA into Trump-dominated Republican hands. In a democracy you cannot win over voters without making some concessions to popular opinion. And if you cannot win over voters you cannot win elections and achieve even incremental change. J.F. Kennedy made it clear that his catholicism would not influence his conduct of the US Presidency. Biden seems more equivocal, with his piety far more up-front, but makes necessary concessions. And with a man like Trump trumpeting around the country ever ready to divide and destroy we should not too easily condemn Biden’s à la carte catholicism. Nor laugh him out of court for manifestations of old-age. As Bette Davis once said: “Old age ain’t no place for sissies” - especially if it’s being jeered at. See TheArticle 03/07/2023. One reason for writing history is the hope it will help answer contemporary questions. It rarely does. In the much-quoted words of the then US Secretary of State, Dean Acheson in 1962: “Great Britain has lost an Empire but not yet found a role”. Acheson’s question of post-imperial identity was addressed to the ‘British in Britain’. But he was not directly asking what being British then meant.
Stuart Ward in his recent Untied Kingdom: A Global History of the End of Britain (Cambridge University Press) clarifies such questions in a scholarly book equipped with enough footnotes for several Ph.D theses. Ward’s almost five hundred pages of text focus in detail on shifting identities in the 1960s and 1970s. He writes in a thoroughly readable style making stimulating and unexpected connections, meriting Fintan O’Toole’s blurb on the cover: “essential reading for anyone who wants to understand the long slow waning of Britishness”. Those living in Britain at the height of imperial outreach assumed that the inhabitants of that swathe of pink in my old school atlas, Victorian “Greater Britain”, shared, willingly or unwillingly, in their own imperial version of Britishness. But the peoples of the Empire were already at work making their own history and forging new national identities. Identities are created by relationships, by cultural and material interaction and sometimes by appropriations. So how did the historical fate of ‘overseas’ Britishness - which we often forget - influence the different expressions of being British over the years and bring us today to this post-imperial island kingdom with its four less than cohesive nations? And is the government’s post-EU aspiration to adopt a world role, ‘Global Britain’, a fig-leaf barely hiding a ‘Little England’ wrecked by populism but hoping for the best? Never losing its central focus, Ward’s book highlights two other features that accompanied Britishness in the 20th century. First is the persistence of what he calls ‘patrimonial racism’, cultural and inherited, shaping White relationships with different peoples fostering social exclusion, behind immigration bills. Second, addressing the wave of de-colonisation in the 1960s, he discusses the telling transition from appeals by the colonised to values perceived as British to appeals based on universal human rights and directed at the UN as a world forum. But the diverse patterns of change encountered in the then Dominions, West Indies, India, Africa and Asia defy any simplistic analysis of changing allegiances. Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru remained passionately committed to Indian national identity after the huge inter-religious massacres attendant on Independence – strangely not mentioned anywhere in the text - and, of course Afrikaner nationalism in South Africa was ruthless. By way of contrast, advocacy of a strong British identity by Australians and New Zealanders persisted into the 1970s, only partly related to threats to trade triggered by Britain’s entry into the Common Market in 1973. Another revelation – at least to me - was how much Prime Minister Anthony Eden’s catastrophic Suez adventure may be attributable not just to his ill-health but also to pressures at the time from a significant right-wing faction of the Tory Party. The populist nationalism of Tory Brexiteers comes to mind. Ward is adept at providing detailed examples illustrating his main themes particularly the racism beneath the asserted British values. In Vancouver in May 1914 there were mass protests when the Komagata Maru carrying 200 Sikhs, fellow subjects of the Empire intending to settle in Canada, attempted to dock. The ship, chartered by the enterprising Gurdit Singh, after several months at anchor was forced to return to Calcutta. In June 1948 the aptly named Empire Windrush brought 492 West Indians to Tilbury docks on the Thames. Trusting in British values they had expected to be treated as fellow Britons. Some 70 years later, hundreds drawn from what became known as the ‘Windrush generation’ - arrivals from the Caribbean 1948-1973 – were detained and 83 deported to the West Indies, their legal rights denied. Ward also makes much of the sad story of Sagana Lodge in the Nyeri district of the Kenyan Central Highlands, to illustrate the mystique of royalty in delusions of fading imperialism. When Princess Elizabeth and Prince Philip married in 1947, the Colonial Government of Kenya built them a rustic lodge as a wedding present. If royalty could have several residences in Britain why not one in Greater Britain as an expression of the throne’s supranational character? The answer was that the Mau-Mau soon became active in the area. The Lodge was only occupied once by royalty - at the handover during the couple’s visit to Kenya in February 1952. The transition from Empire to Commonwealth got underway with Commonwealth Prime Ministers meeting in London in 1944. India refused to join a body called the ‘British Commonwealth’ so the Queen came to preside over ‘the Commonwealth’, a de facto loose association of disparate but notionally equal countries including at that time Dominions with Governors-General appointed by the Crown. Britain’s formal name, the UK is an abbreviation of the clunky ‘the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland’. It used to be ‘and Ireland’ before the Irish Free State became a self-governing Dominion in 1922 and then in 1949 an independent Republic outside the Commonwealth. UK has turned out to be a useful name as it gives British diplomats a seat near the USA in international gatherings. If you hold a UK passport, you have ‘British nationality’. Though Scotland’s nationalist Independence movement has scarcely been dented by the SNP’s financial shenanigans, and Wales has a strong national identity expressed in the Welsh language. There is no doubt you are ‘English’ while watching the Ashes, or, listening to John Major in 1993 quoting George Orwell while struggling with his Tory Eurosceptic rebels and evoking a fantasy unchanging England: a ‘solid breakfast and gloomy Sundays...old maids bicycling to Holy Communion through the morning mist’. The changing add-on ‘and Northern Ireland’ across the Irish Sea has given British governments an almighty identity problem both pre and post BREXIT. Ward tackles the ‘Troubles’, the resurgence of the IRA in the 1960s, within the wider context of human and civil rights, de-colonisation globally, and protest against different forms of exclusion and discrimination. He describes the way the police force of Northern Ireland, the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) repeatedly treated peaceful Catholic, nationalist, civil rights protests with excess force. And how protests were dogged by Ian Paisley’s followers, opening the door initially in 1970 to retaliatory IRA violence followed by 3,500 deaths in years of sectarian violence and terrorism. Today the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), founded and led by Ian Paisley in 1971, shares Gibraltar’s unbending stance from 1964, ‘British we are, and British we stay’ (the caption on one of those stirring old British Pathé news items). But as the history of waning Britishness charted in Ward’s book indicates, it is not easy to describe what being British means in 2023. It remains an important contemporary question. Cambridge University Press ought to send the DUP’s current leader, Jeffrey Donaldson, a copy of Untied Kingdom to review. And perhaps we might find out the answer. See TheArticle 21/06/2023 Turkey provides a unique example of the interaction between religion and politics. Recip Tayyeb Erdoğan, with his strong-man appeal to Islamic piety, won the Turkish Presidential election run-off at the weekend by 4% of the vote taking 52.1%. Kemal Kiliçdarğoglu with his promise of modern social democracy, had won only 44.9% of the vote in the first round, so stood little chance of overtaking Erdoğan with 49.5%. Fateful figures.
Two highly charged contending mindsets define Turkey’s national identity. Kemal Atatürk, a revolutionary nationalist who, after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire following the First World War, founded the modern Turkish secular State in 1923. He was influenced by French laicité, an ideological commitment to keep religion out of the public domain, and achieve its complete separation from the State. For many, this is expressed as a passionate rejection of Islam in favour of Turkey’s 1928 secular constitution traditionally supported by the military. For others there is a no less passionate religious commitment but to a moderate, pious Islamic conservatism. The US Brookings Institution wrote glowingly in 2002 that the AKP, Erdoğan’s Justice & Development Party which had just swept to power, “heralds democracy”. It seemed like a “new model” for the Islamic world. A year later, Erdoğan became Prime Minister. His development of a modern transport system, political flair and skillful negotiation of the deep nationalist tensions, while maintaining his espousal of Islamic values in the AKP, have enabled him to increase his power ever since. Erdoğan’s religious appeal owed much to the phenomenal success of the Gulen Islamic revival movement that provided him with the cultural and religious credentials of Turkish Islamic piety and helped to attract pious voters. Inspired by Fetullah Gulen, a scholar and preacher, the movement prioritized modern education, understanding of science and a commitment to interfaith dialogue as well as traditional Islamic practice. During the 1980s, starting with popular dershane, crammer schools, the Gulenists – calling themselves Hizmet meaning service – gained ground in the medium-sized towns of Anatolia. Those with money, the ‘Anatolian tigers’, invested in media and business forming the Confederation of Businessmen and Industrialists. Nationwide, Gulenist-led universities and schools became a ladder into the civil service, judiciary, police and army. With a flat structure and a reputation for being secretive, Hizmet was accused both of ‘infiltration’ of the state structures and of becoming too close to Erdoğan, collaborating in his dismissals of secular opponents of the AKP. At trials, beginning in 2008, Gülenist prosecutors brought charges, some falsified, against some 275 key secularists, high ranking military, government critics and opposition politicians. By 1999, Fethullah Gulen had withdrawn from the fray to a ranch in Pennsylvania after a new Turkish government which aimed to restore the constitution’s secular principles put him in danger of arrest for ‘anti-secular activity’. By 2012 Erdoğan was powerful enough to dispense with Hizmet’s blessing. Influential in the judiciary, the media, universities and schools and with supporters in some 160 countries, Hizmet was now a potential rival needing to be curbed. That October Erdoğan obliged Hizmet to hand over its cash-cow, the dershane schools, to the State. In February 2014 Hizmet members hit back by releasing tapes which provided concrete evidence of major corruption involving the President and his son. Erdoğan brazened it out and was elected President that August. The key to survival as an autocrat is ruthlessness, luck and courage. A military coup got underway on the night of 15 July 2016 while Erdoğan was on holiday in Marmaris, south-west Turkey. He narrowly escaped capture, broadcast to the nation via a mobile phone held to camera in a TV studio, flew back to Istanbul, called his supporters out onto the streets and regained control. Over 250 people were killed and 2,200 injured. Here was his opportunity finally to take control of the army and destroy his old allies, the Gulenists, some of whom had joined the coup. A disturbing feature of the coup’s aftermath, demonstrating the efficiency and depth of surveillance by the National Intelligence Agency was the immediate arrest of thousands of Gulenists alongside the coup’s secular military participants. A massive purge of civil service, police, armed forces, judiciary, media, universities and schools followed. Many were guilty of nothing more than a vague connection with Hizmet. ‘estoring democracy’, Erdoğan had seized the last pieces completing the puzzle of autocratic power. A sorry story of not much import? No. Now that we perceive geo-politics as a struggle been democracy and autocracy the Turkish experience is a neon sign flashing confirmation that democracy is losing the global struggle. Look at the post-Cold War record: Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya three tragic failures of intervention; Iran still in the hands of the mullahs; Russia triumphant in a devastated Syria and destroying Ukraine; Putin contemptuous of European democracies, the USA and international law; China with its terrifying surveillance society watching Ukraine as a dry-run for taking Taiwan; Narendra Modi’s discriminating against religious minorities; the army in Pakistan unwilling to accept Imran Khan’s attempt to reduce its power over the State. Sudan wrecked by two military factions. South Africa by government corruption. Just one hopeful sign in Brazil with its peaceful democratic transfer of power from Jair Bolsonaro. There are two main possible reactions to Erdoğan’s adding five more years to his twenty in power. Firstly, realpolitik requires continuing efforts to keep Turkey, a NATO member, out of the expanding band of brother autocratic regimes around the world, notably Russia. Another imperative is continuing huge payments to Erdoğan, following a 2016 migration deal which is keeping nearly four million refugees (3.6 million of them Syrians) out of the EU. Secondly, there is the utopian hope that one last push in the next elections in 2028 will remove Erdoğan, ending the imprisonment of opposition politicians, journalists and dissident voices, as well as removing government control of 98% of press, radio and television. But how realistic is this? Over half the electorate, not only in Erdoğan’s Anatolian heartland, feel he represents their values and hopes, and sustains their version of national identity. He represents strength amidst the fragility of their lives and their fear of repeating the chaos across Turkey’s southern and eastern borders. Must foreign policy choose between these two visions of Turkey’s future? Between realpolitik and utopian? In a recent slim volume, The Tragic Mind: Fear, Fate, and the Burden of Power by Robert D. Kaplan, a US journalist who has served on the Pentagon’s Defense Policy Board, implies we need to embrace both. The tragic mind, he argues, experiences failure not as fatalism or despair but as a goad to greater understanding and as a prompt for the heroism of ‘acting bravely in the face of no great result’. The tragedy of Kemal Kiliçdarğoglu and his defeated Republican People’s Party (CHP) is that however much he may understand the nationalism, culture and thinking of Turkey’s rural poor and of the working class in its medium sized towns – his talk of expelling the refugees - he does not speak to them and their condition convincingly. Erdoğan, more street-wise, plays on their heart-strings. No-one can doubt Kiliçdarğoglu’s heroism and bravery in facing a ruthless autocrat. There are lessons to be learned about navigating today’s multiple threats to democracy from the failure of Turkey’s Opposition. See TheArticle 30/05/2023 Today about 27% of adults in the UK own a dog. We have over 10 million ‘best friends’ second per capita in Europe only to Germany. That’s an awful lot of hungry animals. UK spending on dry dog-food alone is estimated at over £0.5 billion a year.
The dog market boomed during COVID. You see more couples with three dogs when you would have thought two’s company. The top price paid to date, in 2021, for a Border Collie with exceptional shepherding skills is £28,000 – and prices have risen with inflation. But what price the unalloyed love and affection of a pet dog? Crufts showcases dogs at their healthy glossy best. This year’s Best of Show was a perfectly groomed Lagotto Romagnolo, not a football coach from North Italy but a former ‘duck hunter’ now employed to find truffles, a fine example of canine labour flexibility. On a more mundane note, I was pleased to discover that the dog-show judges score dachshunds for ‘good ground clearance’. It is surely time to create a class of Professional Pets judged on their ‘petting performance’, an opportunity for great family dogs. My own contenders would be two Hackney residents, Solly a curly haired, gentle and cuddly Wheaten Terrier- Poodle Cross and Charlie, a Cavalier King Charles-American Cocker Spaniel cross whose love is measured by the number of excited circles performed to greet visitors and reproachful looks when he’s washed. But Solly and Charlie’s social skills pale when set against the abilities of working dogs, from guide dogs, an integral part of their blind owners’ lives, to trained sniffer dogs. Police German shepherds and Belgian Malinois find mobile phone by detecting the TPPO, triphenylphosphine oxide, which stops the microchip in the sim card overheating. When after much running around tail-wagging and sniffing, a police dog sits down next to your suitcase, it is time to get worried. More difficult to pinpoint are explosive residues, there can be false positives. And then there’s trained dogs’ ability to smell out diseases. These dogs are public servants working in the canine public sector. It seems extraordinary that animals so acutely attuned to human feelings, or so defined by human relationships, are descended from wolves. But you don’t have to be an evolutionary biologist to appreciate that this is where, with considerable help from selective breeding, our plethora of dog breeds began, from chihuahuas to greyhounds and Great Danes. Our current canine economy, how dogs fit into ways of making a living today, not least dogged devotion for sale, is a good starting point for understanding evolutionary dynamics. How did wolves and our ancestral hunter-gatherers get together? Who made the first moves? Shared hunting is thought to have developed between 32,000 and 18,000 years ago. The first undisputed domesticated dog found with human remains was buried some 14,000 years ago. By the beginning of the Neolithic – the agricultural revolution – 12, 000 years ago, dogs were moving from a purely economic relationship with people to becoming companions. One theory is that smarter, more enterprising, - more Thatcherite - wolves took the initiative, moved into hunter-gatherer settlements and became domesticated. Right now, there are foxes in London progressing from nervously raiding bins to entering kitchens in search of something to eat, and even one in Hackney who apparently without fear follows people walking home. An alternative plausible domestication theory is that the hunter-gatherers initiated the relationship. Like wolves, hunting was central to their lives. Both wolves and men travelled in search of prey. Though sharing the hunt, taking advantage of wolves’ sense of smell to find prey and rewarding kills with cast off portions of the meat, could only have worked if the prey was no larger than reindeer. Wolves were a highly successful species but could not cope with the main prize for human hunters, the mammoth. The canine economy is much more complex today. Fox hunting hounds baying under government restrictions retain the old skills whilst still generating a few jobs - not to mention class hatred. Greyhound racing for the working class has almost disappeared. But dog-walkers by the thousands have entered the service sector alongside child-care for busy professional households. There are grooming salons with dog accessories, dog educators and dog psychiatrists. A beloved pet should be both beautiful, fit, well behaved and well balanced. With so much reported loneliness the demand for a dog’s devotion is unlikely to diminish. But the price of this unalloyed love can be high. Veterinary care is expensive. Anecdotal evidence suggests, contrary to good practice in human medicine, that too often pet diagnosis begins with costly testing such as MRI and CT scans only then moving on to simpler therapeutic trials with inexpensive medication. The Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons does have a code of ethical conduct, professional misconduct includes taking “advantage of your age and inexperience”. But, unschooled in diagnosis, who is capable of resisting the authority of the veterinarian and denying their beloved dog the suggested treatment? And how many people realise after hundreds, sometimes thousands of pounds spent on preventing the unpreventable, and far too late, that the kindest way forward would have been to ‘let their pet go’. Wolves by contrast are still unloved. Little Red Riding Hood doesn’t help their bad press. But there is something chillingly grand about them. They have not been subjected to ever more bizarre selective breeding. We don’t run after them with poo-bags. They don’t roll over to have their tummy tickled. They don’t sneak up to sleep on your bed or cover the sofa with hairs - at least not yet. “The Eurasian Wolf”, Rewilding Britain tells us, is “a vital top predator that can have a major influence on the landscape through influencing the behaviour of herbivores”. Quite so. The canine economy has proved productive, innovative and adaptive. Dogs both as workers and pets have established themselves amidst economic and home life. Their emotional ties to families look likely to defeat the future capacity of AI. And on the whole, canine evolution hasn’t turned out all that badly - apart, that is, from those dogs facing the hazards of poor ground clearance. The national emergency alert on 23 April was well timed. Many poor families with sick members have “a life-threatening emergency nearby”. We have reached a point where our public services are on the verge of collapse. We have become accustomed to the employed needing foodbanks. More widely, more insidiously, our political culture has become debased.
In the last five years, the Conservative Party has made two frightful choices of leader: Johnson and Truss. One after the other, they took forward the impoverishment of several million people placing the UK below other European countries by most economic indicators. Stark inequalities prevail, from health to housing to educational achievement. We now have a Prime Minister who lacks a personal electoral mandate. Polls suggest that most people in the UK have no confidence in their Government. Or more worryingly, their lack of confidence extends to politics itself and to all politicians as agents of social harmony, justice and wellbeing. If Sunak has any concern for democracy and Britain’s future, he must call a general election no later than this Autumn. Here is a short list of the reasons why. We are getting sicker and poorer. Our National Health Service is in intended decline. Speaking on a recent Andrew Marr show Sir Michael Marmot declared forthrightly: “If you had the hypothesis that the government was seeking to destroy the National Health Service....all the data that we’re seeing are consistent with that hypothesis” (a hypothesis he also described as “a sort of malicious undermining” of the NHS). Marmot is a distinguished Professor of Epidemiology and Public Health at University College London. He has been an adviser to the Director-General of the World Health Organisation and this year was made Companion of Honour by King Charles. What might be the motivation for undermining Britain’s flagship institution? Well space is being created for a developing market in healthcare. As the publicly funded service deteriorates, as waiting lists lengthen, as staff vacancies grow, those with money can, and do, ‘go private’. Current evidence suggests that we are heading for a second-rate NHS for the majority and private practice for those with the money to buy it. Private good, public poor, as the ideology goes. Look at dental treatment and social care to see where this takes us. As Sir John Major said in June 2016: “the NHS is as safe with them as a pet hamster is with a hungry python”. Conservative governments have failed to take adequate action to curb rising levels of obesity, ignoring both the link between poverty and ill health and the crushing demand diabetes alone will make on the NHS. Implementation of legislation that would ban the advertising of food with high sugar, salt and fat content before the 9pm watershed, and two for the price of one offers, has repeatedly been delayed. The food processing industry and supermarkets are free to encourage increased consumption and thus profit. Such delays placate the Conservative Party’s libertarian faction favouring the private sector whilst rejecting government responsibility for the public good. The government is refusing to address the crisis in our schools. Primary school class sizes are the largest in forty years. Schools are in budgetary crisis and in several fields of study unable to recruit teachers, not least in mathematics. It is typical of the Conservative practice of governing by unfulfilled announcement that in the continuing lack of maths teachers and of the salaries which might attract maths graduates into teaching, Rishi Sunak should now be sharing his daydream of maths for everyone up to the age of 18. But for parents if you have the money, there are always the public schools, or private schools or tutoring, to make up for any inadequacies in the underfunded State sector. Democracy itself is being weakened. Major institutions that balance and inform legislative power, the judiciary and the law, the civil service, and the Churches, with the support of the right-wing Press are either ignored or directly attacked. The first steps towards US-style voter suppression are being taken. On the spurious grounds of voter identity fraud, for which there is no evidence, at the local elections this May voters will be required to produce a visual identity document. A travel pass will permit an old person to vote but not a young one. The old are more likely to vote Tory than the young. Respect for human rights, a pillar of democracy, is diminishing. The civil right of citizens to vote is an expression of inalienable human rights defined in the European Convention of Human Rights - which the parliamentary Conservative Party wants the ability to contravene. There is also an assault on human rights and human dignity in the treatment of asylum seekers and economic migrants. Having made a shambles of our immigration procedures – we do not provide adequate channels for asylum seekers to enter the country legally - contrary to refugee conventions we criminalise those who arrive by non-regulated means of entry. The backlog in assessing asylum applications is as much the result of intention as incompetence. This hostile environment intended as a vote-winning policy in marginal seats is another step towards populist authoritarianism. Government has a cavalier attitude towards food security. British farmers currently provide about half our food needs. Here is Liz Webster, chair of Save British Farming: “The Conservatives with their BREXIT messed up our trade. This also impacted our labour supply because it ended freedom of movement. It also removed the cap and food subsidies”. Informed comment from a sector that on the whole foolishly supported BREXIT. The Minister for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, Thérèse Coffey, was booed at this February’s NFU (National Farmers Union) conference. Minette Batters, NFU President, attributed food supply-chain problems to BREXIT. It was refreshing to hear the truth. British farming has been blighted. Finally, we come to the genuinely existential crisis which threatens everyone and to which farming contributes: climate change. The Government has given itself permission to defy COP agreements including the spirit of COP26 held under British chairmanship. It has repeatedly caved in to lobbying by the fossil fuel companies including granting new licenses for oil and gas exploration in the North Sea. As a result internationally agreed targets for reducing carbon emissions in the UK, Net-Zero by 2050, will be impossible to achieve. The Government is generating flurries of announcements to hide that it is treading water. After 13 years, Tory rule has run its course. It is tired. It lacks talent. The Prime Minister’s judgement of who should be appointed to his Cabinet looks increasingly questionable. Scandal follows scandal. Senior Government Ministers follow each other onto the back benches. The vocabulary of politics, increasingly influenced by social media, swings from schoolboy jibes to dog-whistles to misinformation that fact-checkers can reveal as such in minutes. As a university lecturer in Nigeria, I learned a lot about corruption and heard many pithy expressions. Commenting on their own politicians Nigerians often said: “they no savvy shame”. Words that perfectly fit 13 years of Tory rule. The May local elections will give some indication of whether the public agrees. But most likely, despite predictable losses it will remain Party first, country second. We may well have to wait until the last moment, in the autumn or winter of next year, before the Tories finally savvy shame. See TheArticle 27/04/2023 We think of sanctions as an alternative to war. They are also a projection of power. States, corporations, and recently, individual citizens, are punished economically. The aim is to stop or curtail actions which are inimical to the interests or values of the sanctioning State or contrary to international law, or to both. In the long term the economic impact of sanctions may erode a belligerent State’s will or ability to wage war. So far so theoretical.
But after reading Agathe Demarais’ recent Backfire: How Sanctions Reshape the World Against US Interests, Columbia University Press, 2022, you might be surprised how little practice fits theory. Demarais recounts how sanctions have evolved since the 1950s including the variety of things that can go wrong and backfire on those who have imposed them. President Eisenhower, with the creation in 1950 of the US Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), instituted the use of trade sanctions as a way of achieving foreign policy goals. The first target was North Korea, a legacy of the Korean war. North Korea’s economic links with the USA were tenuous. The approach had to be multilateral: a UN embargo on oil imports and coal exports. After the revolution in 1959, Cuba was always a particularly American concern. 73% of Cuba’s exports went to the USA and 70% of its imports came from the USA. Yet Eisenhower’s embargo imposed in 1960 failed to achieve its goals. Despite an estimated loss over $130 billion in income, Castro died with his regime intact and was succeeded by his brother Raul. The Kim dynasty in North Korea survives. There are always ways of getting round trade embargoes. Fast forward thirty years to Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait, the lessons of Cuba and North Korea hadn’t been learned or were just ignored. Only a few days after Operation Desert Shield destroyed Saddam Hussein’s retreating army, comprehensive international sanctions were imposed on Iraq. They lasted from 1990 to1995 cutting off medical supplies and food imports. Estimates of Iraqi children dying of preventable diseases and malnutrition vary from tens to hundreds of thousands. An ‘oil for goods’ provision in 1995 permitted some humanitarian aid to enter the country. But Saddam Hussein was hanged in December 2006 as consequence of military defeat. Inflation is the most immediate result of even partial enforced economic isolation. It powerfully affects the poorest. According to Demarais writing in Backfire, American OFAC sanctions on Venezuela in 2018 caused the price of a roll of toilet paper to jump “to nearly 3 million bolivars, requiring a three-kilogram stack of 1,000 bank notes to pay for it”. Mass emigration followed. The regime survived. American companies shared a lot of the resultant pain from US sanctions while non-American companies were able to profit by filling the gaps created. Congress dealt with growing complaints from US business by legislation subjecting foreign companies to the same penalties for trading with Cuba. In a second 1996 Act, sanctions on Iran’s - and Libya’s - energy sectors were extended to include and enforce compliance by all international companies. This was the beginning of highly contentious ‘extraterritorial’ ‘secondary’ sanctions. The European Union, coerced by the Americans, had enough clout to stand up to them. It warned that they would initiate a dispute procedure in the WTO (World Trade Organisation) which most believed the EU would win. Clinton backed down. By the turn of the century, OFAC, without abandoning the blunt weapon of embargoes, was moving on to sectoral sanctions, focusing on technology and finance, applied now to Iran. The US was playing to its strengths, in particular the dominant role of the dollar in global financial services. Companies and individuals in pariah countries were put on a Specially Designated Nationals (SDN) list barring them from doing business - in dollars - with the USA. Information on banks’ customers and networks became critical. In 2012, under strong US pressure, SWIFT (Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunications), the over 11,000 strong cooperative network for international payments with its – today's - $5 trillion worth of transactions daily, 40% conducted in dollars, cut off Iranian banks. But come the Russian invasion of eastern Ukraine in 2014 and China’s increasingly autocratic behaviour both nationally and internationally, the USA - and European Union – squared up to two significantly more formidable targets. A second phase in the sanctions saga opened up. The Peoples’ Bank of China immediately began developing its own financial service, CIPS (Cross-Border Interbank Payment System), for international payments in renminbi. After its launch in 2015, CIPS attracted not only HSBC and Standard Chartered but also Deutsche Bank, Citi and BNP Paribas, the French investment banking group. In January 2023 Russia and Iran joined up to create their own payments network after SWIFT excluded some important Russian banks. The sanctioned targets were hitting back. Agathe Demarais indicates in Backfire that the growth of cryptocurrencies is providing sanctions-proof banking. China issued its own state-backed cryptocurrency in 2019, the digital renminbi. Today some 300 million Chinese citizens use mobile phones for such accounts, thus creating another doorway to comprehensive government surveillance. The Communist Party leadership now appear to be aiming at total control of the country’s financial system by displacing its two big tech firms, Alibaba and WePay, in the field of digital payments. So the not-so hidden logic of sanctions is the ‘decoupling’ of the world’s major economies, the fracturing of the global economy into competing economic blocs. China’s Belt and Road Initiative, its extensive investment in trade and infrastructure in Africa, its role in the global South’s association of big economies, BRICS, leaves little doubt which bloc will eventually incorporate the most States. One brake on such ‘decoupling’ is the crucial role of semiconductors and microchips in all economies and in military-industrial complexes. Put crudely ‘it’s the supply-chain stupid’. A key feature of decoupling is a policy of beggar - your- economic- neighbour (and rival) in microchip production. China controls 80% of the production/refining of the world’s vital rare earths used in semi-conductors present in a vast array of modern appliances. A F-35 fighter requires 417 kilos of these metals. But the USA predominates in the equipment, software and design of semi-conductors. A handful of such high-tech firms are collectively worth over $1 trillion. The bulk of mass microchip manufacture takes place in Taiwan and South Korea. In 2020 Chinese legislation restricted the export of 17 rare earths and Trump banned all microchip sales to Huawei and other Chinese companies. Skirmishes in a future economic war? Geopolitics are changing. A multipolar world is emerging. Sanctions have helped shape the present contours of international economic relations. Yet on the whole sanctions don’t achieve their goals, often harming those they are not aimed at and bringing about unintended consequences. States with a powerful coercive apparatus and a cohesive military show considerable durability. Even weak States like Cuba and Venezuela resist successfully. The most that can be said is that war, the alternative to sanctions, is far worse. Backfire is a fascinating must-read for those who contribute to making foreign policy, for those who suffer from it, and for us baffled onlookers who fear for our grandchildren’s future. See TheArticle 18/04/2023 Finland has just joined NATO. Norway was a founding member in 1949. Sweden wishes to join but to date is blocked by Turkey.
A few days ago, the Russian Ambassador in Stockholm, Ukrainian-born Viktor Tatarinsev, commented “the Swedes will undoubtedly be sent to their deaths in the interests of others” adding that joining NATO would make Swedes “a legitimate target of Russia’s retaliatory measures”. Putin had similarly warned that Finland stood to suffer “serious military and political consequences". You have to admire these three Nordics close neighbors of Russia, Finland with 800 miles of shared border. Their total population today is a mere 21.5 million. They are threatened by a Russian Federation of 146 million. St. Petersburg is about the same distance from the Finnish border as Aberystwyth from London. Defiance like this takes courage. Not the first instance of courageous Nordic foreign policy. In the 1980s while working on human rights and international development, I grew to respect Sweden and her fellow Nordics as international actors. My first encounter was with Birgitta Berggren, the southern Africa desk officer of SIDA (the Swedish International Development Agency) - at the time equivalent to Britain’s now defunct DfID. She was seeking assistance in funding the ‘home front’ of the African National Congress (ANC). A British passport meant I did not require a visa involving special checks to enter South Africa and my Church contacts would help. The 1980s saw an intensification of the Cold War and the final crisis of apartheid. In 1982 Nelson Mandela was moved off Robben Island to Pollsmoor prison where the South African National Intelligence Agency could sound him out more privately – most likely in the hope of driving a wedge between him and the ANC leadership. They failed. In November 1985 while Mandela was in hospital for a prostate operation, ‘Kobie’ Coetzee, the Minister of Justice opened the first government talks. Under pressure from Pretoria, the Frontline States with their many South African exiles had reached bilateral agreements with the apartheid regime that restricted or closed the bases of the ANC’s military wing. But in 1983 within South Africa, the UDF (United Democratic Front) had been launched. Made up of some 400 civic, trades union, student, women’s and church-linked organisations, despite repression, it gained ground becoming the key pillar of the ANC’s ‘home front’. Under the leadership of Prime Minister Olof Palme until his assassination in February 1986, support for national liberation movements in Southern Africa was a key element of the Swedish Social Democrats’ foreign policy. By the mid- 1980s, in contrast to the US and UK who were doing their best to make sure the ANC failed, Sweden was treating the ANC as a government in waiting. What mattered for most western governments was that the ANC was ‘Soviet-backed’. ‘Swedish-backed’ or ‘Nordic backed’ would have been just as accurate a description, especially when referring to non-military support. * Sweden had begun supporting the ANC’s “home-front” in the mid-1970s and in the 1980s sought to increase their funding via the trade unions and the Churches within South Africa. In the words of SIDA’s Lars-Olof Edström in Lusaka, Zambia in 1980: “ANC is no longer an exile organisation [but] very active inside South Africa. Support to the internal work must accordingly constitute an essential part of the Swedish assistance”. The Nordics’ intervention was both timely and strategically important. Between 1969-1995 SIDA’s regular assistance to the southern African liberation movements, using figures from Tor Sellström’s Sweden & National Liberation in Southern Africa Vol II, adjusted for inflation and converted to sterling, amounted to £100s of millions in current values. And this does not include money for cultural activities, information, research work and emergencies. Half of it went to the ANC. Many in the Churches inside South Africa were ready to help deliver financial assistance to the ANC. An influential group of radical Christian leaders supporting and consulting the ANC determined the spending priorities. They were led by Rev. Dr. Beyers Naudé, a prominent Dutch Reformed Church minister who had resigned from his ministry in order to oppose apartheid. He endured banning (severe restrictions on movement and political activity) from 1977 to 1985. Naudé, with influence in the Netherlands and internationally, then became secretary-general of the South African Council of Churches (SACC) and a key point of reference for the Swedish legation in Pretoria. Alongside him were the theologian Father Albert Nolan OP, who when elected master-general of the Dominicans had asked to be allowed to continue his work in South Africa, and Rev. Frank Chikane, who succeeded Naudé as secretary-general of the SACC. He survived an attempted poisoning ordered by the Minister of Law and Order, Adriaan Vlok. With the blessing of this Christian group Swedish money financed - non-military - needs of ANC activists as well as supporting organisations like COSAS (Congress of South African Students), the ANC’s youth movement. A Catholic network led by the Fr. Albert Nolan worked with the internal organisations of the ANC. The Grail, a lay Catholic women’s association, sheltered activists on the run, handing out Swedish money for travel and other needs. One need was a de-bugging device sourced in Croydon and delivered to the UDF. Thabo Mbeki, a future President of South Africa, speaking in a 1995 interview, said that the special role of Sweden “was to say that the people have got the right and the duty to rebel against oppression” and “as part of the recognition of that right...you support the people who are engaged in the struggle”. “You do not define what they should be”. Or become, he might have added. Sweden through the Churches and trade unions made a significant contribution to internal grassroots mobilisation. By the mid-1980s Church relations with the ANC extended from grassroots to the highest level. Thabo Mbeki travelled often to London so I was able to consult him in a variety of venues, mainly pubs. Meetings between the Southern Africa Catholic Bishops Conference (SACBC) and the ANC began with a discussion between Archbishop Denis Hurley, President of the SACBC and Oliver Tambo, the exiled ANC President, at the Great Western Hotel, Paddington, London - hugs, beer and sandwiches. This meeting was followed by a more formal one in Harare between the South African bishops in the SACBC and Mbeki. The Churches also established wider more complex links. Until the mid-1980s the European Economic Community (EEC), the USA and UK resisted pressure to impose sanctions on the apartheid regime. The EEC initiated, and was ready to fund, a face-saving ‘special programme for the victims of apartheid’ within South Africa. To this end they asked two representatives, one Protestant and one Catholic to a consultative meeting in Brussels. Rev. Beyers Naudé represented the Protestants. At the time, Father Smangaliso Mkhatshwa, secretary- general of the Southern African Catholic Bishops Conference (SACBC), was in prison and suffering torture. I was surprised to be asked to go instead of him. The array of EU officials that greeted us was even more surprised to hear from Dr. Naudé of the restrictive conditions which the Churches demanded before they would accept and distribute EEC funding. No money should go to Inkatha, an ethnic Zulu political movement shaping up for a civil war with the non-racial nationalist ANC. Germany, USA, and UK greeted Inkatha as an opponent to the ANC despite the risk of serious violence. Civil war came close during government negotiations between 1990 and 1994, with massacres involving Zulu militia trained and armed by the South African Defense Force. During the 1994 elections, the Nordics through the Churches continued their efforts to contain violence. Highly effective election monitoring, notably by international World Council of Churches’ teams, played a significant part in keeping campaigning and voting peaceful. I accompanied former President of Zambia, Kenneth Kaunda, monitoring in KwaZulu Natal, the main area of Inkatha support. Tensions were palpable but a ceasefire ordered by the Inkatha leader, Chief Gatsha Buthelezi, held. The ANC won 62% of the national vote, the Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP) 10%. In the bipolar world of the 1970s and 1980s, Swedish governments of different persuasions and the Nordics, had the courage to break the Cold War mould by making difficult ethical and political choices. In their support for the liberation movements, they had in the main the enthusiastic agreement of civil society. Human rights and development agencies, diplomats, anti-apartheid and women’s groups, trades unions and Churches interacted and worked together. The result and success of the 1994 elections was a vindication of their judgement. The closing lines of Tor Sellström’s magisterial study, Sweden & National Liberation in Southern Africa point to an anomaly worth pondering: “the great Swedish support to the South African struggle against apartheid has not become a fact worth mentioning in the textbooks... It would have been possible to point out the importance that also a small country like Sweden can have. But the textbooks are silent”. *See William M. Minter (Africa Today 1996), On Tuesday 21 March this year Israel’s Institute for National Security Studies (INSS) issued, in their words, an “unprecedented warning” in the form of a “strategic alert”. The gist of the alert was that the ‘judicial reforms’ proposed by Prime Minister Netanyahu and his ultra-nationalist and religious extremist coalition would “seriously harm the functioning of the IDF” (Israel’s Defense Forces), the economy, and “endanger relations with the USA”. The reforms would give the Government of Israel control over the appointment of judges and weaken the Supreme Court’s ability to undertake judicial review of legislation.
The unprecedented nature of the strategic alert is explained by the unprecedented level and nature of the protests against the proposed ‘reforms’ now entering their twelfth week. The numbers taking to the streets in Israel’s cities have been prodigious with the Jewish crowds predominately – but not exclusively - drawn from Israel’s professional elites. The INSS was in particular reacting to the increasing number of IDF reservists joining street protests and threatening not to turn up for military service. In two letters published on 16 March, some 750 Air Force, special forces, Mossad and military intelligence officers warned of imminent threats to stop volunteering for duty. The Likud Party Minister of Defence, Yoav Galant, publicly called for a halt to the reforms and was promptly fired by Netanyahu. President Biden, throughout his political career, has strongly espoused the view of Israel as a deserving democratic outpost in the Middle East and has acted accordingly. His relationship with Netanyahu has been warm. But Washington is continuing to express ‘concern’ about the proposed drastic judicial curbs. In a telephone call with Netanyahu, Biden expressed his belief that “democratic societies are strengthened by genuine checks and balances, and that fundamental changes should be pursued with the broadest possible base of popular support”. It is some measure of the Biden administration’s former inaction that this modest and diplomatic statement, barely a fraternal admonition, has had an impact on the INSS. This current outcry in Israel is new. It is not an extension of existing Jewish protests against violations of the human rights of Arab citizens of Israel, nor of those of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza, though some protestors may be supporters of B’Tselem, Yesh Din, and the Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI) Israel’s major human rights organisations. Neither do current protests seem a harbinger of calls for a new peace initiative. But there are very good reasons why peace and human rights ought to be on today’s Jewish protestors’ placards. Whether citizens of Israel, in Gaza or the West Bank, relations between Arab Muslims and Jewish Israelis - with Christians and Druze to a lesser extent - are at boiling point. The May 2021 evictions of Arabs from East Jerusalem and skirmishes around the Al-Aqsa Mosque on Temple Mount sparked street fighting between Jews and Arabs within Israel itself. This led to a wave of attacks and counterattacks on and from Gaza and the West Bank. 250 Arabs were killed, ten synagogues left in flames, 112 Jewish homes burned, and 13 Jews lost their lives. In October 2022 alone, 32 Palestinians and two Israeli soldiers were killed. This continuing high level of violence encourages narratives of the enemy within which carry with them the ugly prospect of civil war plus a third intifada. To date averting such dangers do not feature prominently amongst the protestors’ demands on Netanyahu. The dangers, though, were clearly spelt out in a prescient response to the May 2021 communal violence by the Catholic Bishop Declan Lang and the Anglican Bishop Christopher Chessun in the Holy Land Coordination: “unless the international community is willing to adopt a rights-based approach to its peace-making, Israel’s control of the occupied territories will become ever more entrenched, Palestinian rights further encroached upon and outbreaks of fighting increasingly likely. Israel’s security cannot be based on the permanent inequality and disenfranchisement of Palestinians.” (The Catholic Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales set up the international Coordination group in the late 1990s to act in solidarity with the Christian communities of the Holy Land). Since the 1967 war some 450,000 Jewish settlers have moved into the West Bank and 235,000 into East Jerusalem creating 279 new settlements. I once heard the late Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks speaking passionately about peace emphasising repeatedly that “peace is in everyone’s interests”. But the truth of that is called in question if it means, without redress, you lose your land, your home, your olive groves and your schools (currently 44 Palestinian schools are due for demolition), all to make room for Israeli Jewish families. The pre-conditions for a two-State solution have disappeared. Israel’s Minister of Defense, Yoav Galant, recently signed an agreement with Bezalel Smotrich, the ‘adjunct Minister of Defense’, giving Smotrich administrative authority over Area C, that is 60% of the West Bank - extracted for Religious Zionist Parties’ support for Netanyahu. A little over a year ago the Board of Deputies of British Jews described Smotrich, during a visit to the UK, as having “abominable views and hate-provoking ideology”. “Get back on the plane”, they wrote in a Hebrew tweet “and be remembered as a disgrace forever”. Five years ago Smotrich was advocating flooding the West Bank with settlers. Irrespective of how much control he will be able to exert over the territory, his annexationist intentions are obvious. The international context is also changing. The bilateral deals that the Trump administration brokered between Israel and the frontline Arab States are fraying. Jordan’s Parliament has voted to expel the Israel ambassador after a typically provocative speech by Smotrich in front of a map showing Jordan as part of ‘Greater Israel’. “There is no such thing as a Palestinian nation. There is no Palestinian history. There is no Palestinian language,” he said in Paris on 19 March. And China’s unexpected intervention to reduce the enmity between Saudi Arabia and Iran is a new move in the Middle East with unknown consequences. Meanwhile Netanyahu has been doing the rounds in Europe to garner support. Here, Rishi Sunak is echoing Biden’s mild diplomacy, speaking of the importance of ‘shared democratic values”. In December 2022, he told the Conservative Friends of Israel that Britain’s relations with Israel had ‘never been stronger’. Reading the 2030 Roadmap for UK-Israel bilateral relations, signed on 21 March by the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the State of Israel, you can see what he means. It commits to seeking a very wide-ranging partnership including trade, development, defense and security. To say the least, it is unfortunate timing. Foreign Minister Cleverly’s roadmap gives no hint of the cliff edge ahead nor that Israel is in - the INSS’ words - “a looming crisis”. After massive national demonstrations last Sunday provoked by the Minister of Defense’s sacking, a general strike with disruption of Tel Aviv airport and major ports shut down by striking workers, Netanyahu announced yesterday he was postponing the new legislation. It is not enough. Ultra-nationalists were already counter-demonstrating Monday night with violence threatened. Netanyahu is caught in a trap of his own making: requiring concessions to both anti-reformers, delaying until May with less drastic legislation, and pro-reform, granting his extremist National Defense Director, Ben Gvir’s demand for a new civil ‘national guard’. Netanyahu may continue to push for a decisive attack on Iranian nuclear facilities hoping to close ranks behind his inherently unstable coalition government. Iran is fast moving towards sufficient enriched uranium to make a nuclear warhead, and fear of the threat of nuclear proliferation is shared with Western allies. But whatever his next move to prop up his political house of cards, it is unlikely to reduce conflict or be without consequences for the Middle East. See also TheArticle 28/03/2023 The rule of law is the cornerstone of democracy. In Israel, the authoritarianism of Prime Minister Netanyahu and his extremist coalition partners seeking to appoint and curb the Israeli judiciary has brought more than 250,000 protestors onto the streets. In Britain, we seem less concerned about attacks on custodians of the law.
Last week it was Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s turn to call Keir Starmer, the leader of the Opposition, ‘a lefty lawyer’. It has become standard Conservative Party fare. Between 2008-2013, prior to entering politics, Keir Starmer was Head of the Crown Prosecution Service and Director of Public Prosecutions. From 2010 to 2013 he was the main legal adviser to the Conservative-Liberal Democrat government. He was knighted in 2014. When in early 2020 he was competing to be leader of the Labour Party, Corbynistas worried that his politics were far from ‘leftist’. ‘Lefty lawyer’ may be a handy alliteration but Sunak’s language is further indication of the Conservative Party’s continuing populist mindset. Starmer is known in the legal world for his record on human rights. The ‘McLibel’ case, a challenge to freedom of speech over a leaflet denouncing different aspects of McDonald’s corporate practice, is famous. After the case progressed through the British courts, Starmer in 2005 represented pro bono two environmental activists against the might of McDonald’s in the European Court of Human Rights. He was human rights adviser to the Policing Board of Northern Ireland and noted for his work – also pro bono - opposing capital punishment in several Caribbean and African countries. Is the promotion and executive enforcement of human rights law still being branded as ‘lefty’ repeating Boris Johnson’s ‘lefty human rights lawyers’ attacks? By that token John Paul II, Benedict XVI and Francis qualify for abuse as ‘lefty Popes’. Presumably the Conservative Party is in the business of conserving. But it has become hard to believe that conservatism aims to conserve the key institutions of UK governance and our – unwritten - constitution. In an unusual moment of anger, the historian of government and broadcaster Peter Hennessy, less well known as the cross-bench peer Baron Hennessy of Nympsfield, described Boris Johnson in a BBC interview as “the great debaser in modern times of decency and public and political life, and of our constitutional conventions – our very system of government”. Yet Johnson remains popular with the grassroots of the Conservative Party. No Government likes the constraints imposed upon it by law but dismissing with taunts of ‘fat-cat lawyers’ (yes – once used by Tony Blair), or more dangerously ‘lefty lawyers’, subverts one of the institutions by which we are all protected. It is not so much that Sunak’s playground jibes should be beneath his dignity as Prime Minister diminishing the respect he has gained for his diplomacy in Northern Ireland and Paris, but that such demeaning name-calling subtly undermines the law itself. From where did we get the binary division of ‘left’ and ‘right’ now so entrenched in the language of politics? It dates from 1789 when the French King’s supporters began sitting to the right of the President of the National Assembly with the revolutionaries to the left, though the occupants of the House of Commons benches can hardly be described in terms of royalists versus revolutionaries. Political Parties love binaries. The national argument about EU membership gave us Remainer/Remoaner v Brexiteer as well as ‘the people’ versus ‘the elite’. More appropriately on a global scale we now speak of democracy versus authoritarianism. Political Parties have problems putting ‘clear blue water’ between them. Johnson-style bluster, obliterating any nuance in different political visions within the Opposition plays to the back-benches and is amplified in social media and Sun, Express, Mail and Telegraph. The Opposition are then turned into a monolithic enemy. But today’s political divisions are not adequately expressed by terms such as left versus right. Right and left labels are even less appropriate when they are applied to religious believers. Catholics, for example, are held to be ‘right-wing’ if they hold pro-life, anti-abortion, views. Worldwide there are c. 1.3 billion Catholics, many of them may hold such views; this is a large number of people to designate as politically ‘right wing’. They may, as well as being protective of life in the womb, also have a strong commitment to peace, elimination of capital punishment, trade unionism, the environment, and ‘the preferential option for the poor’ - including refugees and economic migrants. These views are hardly right wing. Just one individual example. Amnesty International was founded in 1961 and in its early years campaigned exclusively in support of prisoners of conscience. It later broadened its mandate to promote all the human rights enshrined in the 1948 UN Declaration of Human Rights. Between 2007 and 2008, under pressure mainly from their US section, a woman’s right to choose was proposed as an addition to their UN ‘s list. The movement was split pretty evenly on the issue. In response, the late Bruce Kent, an internationally known peace-campaigner, went to see Amnesty UK to ask them not to go down the road of adopting access to abortion as a human right (which Amnesty did unequivocally in 2018). He pointed out that two of the key founders of the organisation, Sean Mcbride and Peter Berenson, were Catholics, and the result would probably be the loss of Catholic members. Bruce as General-Secretary of CND in the 1980s had been a great supporter of the Women’s Peace Camp resisting the placement of cruise missiles at Greenham Common. But, while very sympathetic to the concern for pregnant women’s health and safety, he did not view abortion as a fundamental human right. The 1980s were the last decade of the Cold War and CND was both under surveillance by British Security Services and infiltrated by them at Board level. So not right-wing but a dangerously popular ‘lefty’ then? Up to a point Lord Copper. There are few as courageous and honest as Bruce Kent but there are many others who do not fit into the crude political stereotypes that they are alleged to inhabit. You wouldn’t guess that from the parliamentary Punch and Judy of Prime Minister’s Questions. Instead of answering questions with bluster and aggression, in a poor imitation of Boris Johnson, Rishi Sunak would do well to douse what Lord Hennessy called the ‘Bonfire of the Decencies’. He described respecting those decencies as the ‘good chaps’ theory of governing. It needs to be revived if we are to conserve the best of Britain. Rishi Sunak is promising that the Home Office’s - in his words - ‘Stop the Boats Bill’ (the Illegal Migration Bill) will be unveiled within weeks and placed on the government legislative timetable. It is destined for the courts. This year, aspects of Suella Braverman plan to deport asylum seekers to Rwanda go before the Court of Appeal. We already have a sample of the Home Secretary’s preferred language, a foretaste of how she hopes to deal with legal challenges. An email sent to Conservative Party members in her name blames “an activist blob of leftwing lawyers, civil servants and the Labour Party” for the failure to stop the growing number of little boats heading for Britain. We are yet to hear that her denial of any knowledge of the email being sent has resulted in anyone being disciplined or sacked for failing to get clearance. We may be on the brink of a slippery slope. The Prime Minister should resolve now to respect our own Judges - along with solicitors and barristers - and to acknowledge their important role in a democracy, not least one whose constitution is unwritten. See TheArticle 14/03/2023 |
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