You are in the company of Roger Warren Evans, Welsh socialist lawyer and company director, on a journey to work out a new socialist order capable of generating equality and freedom for the world.  Nothing less will do.
    

 

 < Back to Home Page

You can sign up here, as a Member of LIBERTY

 

  
 


 Diary in date order Jan 2002 to date
but you also find this search engine useful, in keeping track of events

Renewing participatory democracy

My Little Red Book

A New Socialist Settlement

Bevan
Re-visited 

Multiple Differential Uncertainty

Who am I? Biography  

 

      040322   Make sure you have not missed
the previous edition  Check it out   
And the one before that?   
Other recent topics highlighted here

Week 13  Saturday
27 March 2004

This was a non-event...

I simply cannot understand the fuss that has been made about this occasion.  I do not object to the Madrid juxtaposition, because Gadaffi has been moving back into the diplomatic fold for at least three years now, sensitive to the disadvantages of his earlier aggression.  It is nonsense to suggest, as Blair and Bush have done, that Gadaffi is driven only by a new fear of the Coalition, following the toppling of Saddam. 

  • Blair and Bush are both trying to re-write history, to their own advantage. It will not wash...

Teaching atheism

Many good letters-to-Editors never receive the oxygen of publicity, spiked unceremoniously every day.  My daughter Katharine wrote to The Guardian in February, only to have it spiked.  And her letter has only just come to my attention.

In the context of drafting the new RE school syllabus, and in response to the zealous Mary Kenny, Katharine sets out her own perceptions - as an atheist.

LIBERTY and Me

My enthusiasm for LIBERTY and the human rights cause has prompted a few questions, from the more perceptive of you.   “How is it,” I am asked, “that with your liberal views you suddenly gave up and withdrew from Liberty, in 2002?”

I did not give up. I am still a fully-paid up Member, and Chairman of Liberty’s Constitutional Committee.  My “withdrawal” from the leadership was caused by the active opposition of a two-man ruling clique, who decided that my face did not fit their plans, and who conducted a powerful and successful electoral campaign against me.  

And just to complete the picture, in the secretive "battle of the slates", I have just received a copy of this year's Opposition Slate, for the LIBERTY Council Elections - indeed, I have been asked to circulate it, which I do.  If the incumbent LIBERTY clique ask me to publish theirs as well, I will gladly do so.

My position is this.  I do not object to "slates" in principle, indeed I think they can perform a useful function in an electoral system.  But they should be entirely open, not secretive, and all parties should have the same access to all voters' contact details.  Finally, there should be no abuse of office: incumbent officers should not parade their positions in order to intimidate would-be challengers, just to perpetuate their power.  None of this is true, of LIBERTY.

back to top

Mass Action on Drugs
planned for May Day

European drugs-reform campaigners are planning mass marches on May Day.  I am delighted to hear of the work of ENCOD, a Europe-wide grouping of drugs reform campaigns, targeting the infamous UN Conventions which prevent any liberalising initiatives in this field, enforcing adherence to crass prohibition.

back to top

Unacceptable
political tactics

Sadly, Lord Falconer is a fool.  A nice, cheekie chappy (as Lord Woolf observed) but a buffoon, lacking in political judgment. It was simply foolish to attempt to exclude the Courts from the judicial review process, in overseeing Asylum Tribunals.  The opposition was overwhelming, because the idea was deeply wrong, as well as foolish. You may even recall my own resentment of the proposal.

And Falconer's abject withdrawal does not rectify the wrong, because it does not excuse the attempt. This Government is regularly putting forward nasty authoritarian ideas like this, before being beaten back to a saner position.  Such political tactics are unacceptable. 

  • They demean the reputation of Labour, and of the Ministers who deploy them.

Spanish Socialist
good for diplomacy

Zapatero is good news.  Both on Europe and Iraq. The early moves of the new Spanish Prime Minister suggest that he brings a new political intelligence to the office that he now, however unexpectedly, occupies.

In Europe EU constitutional negotiations had been stalled by the refusal of Spain and Poland to abandon their "high" allocations of weighted votes, a residue of earlier rounds.  Zapatero has withdrawn from this blocking position, and  Poland has now done the same.  Irish diplomats are busy getting the negotiations under way again - as early as this week..

In Iraq Zapatero's simple plan to withdraw Spanish troops unless the UN is given a new policing mandate - that has galvanised diplomacy at the UN, with both the UK and the US busily adjusting their positions, to secure a new UN Resolution.  I think the Zapatero move will succeed, and that the long, hard struggle to re-build UN legitimacy will start.

  • Not bad, for Zapatero's first week in office, as Spain's Socialist Prime Minister.

back to top

Our Universal Inheritance

I was honoured that Dane Clouston of Oxford included me, as a WebEditor, in a Press Release directed at all top UK News Editors, following Brown's inconclusive Budget. 

Dane Clouston is one of the great enthusiasts of our time.  He focuses, as all effective enthusasts do, on one specific topic - in his case the escalating disparities of capital-wealth within the UK - and the need for "capital redistribution".  Dane campaigns as "Universal Inheritance".  We are accustomed to theses on income-disparity.  But as an Associate of the Chartered Institute of Banking, Dane asks that we examine the awful story of inequitable capital distribution, in personal terms.

Left Activists' Corner

I have three moderately-left political projects to engage your interest, in 2004 - nothing too revolutionary, you understand - and for your delight I retain the Royal Mail stamps for February, which are light-hearted and good fun...

(a) Company Reform Coalition targeting a major Easter pow-wow in London;

(b) Questors - the birth of a new profession, group planning expansion;

(c) Labour Links, seeking to unlock the resources of the Labour Party - and I seek the opportunity to speak to Party groups about Party reform

  • Let me know what you think    

back to top

Special Footnote

I love the online newspapers, which are my access to the world - share them with me - click through to their here -  I have added the English-language China Daily ... and I now offer you the leading English-language Indian paper The Hindu. 

They are all just a click away.

back to top

One year ago

We are hurtling through the year - and my cross-check on 2003 seems to throw up more and more about the Iraq War.  But I will try and give you a flavour of what else I was thinking about, in February 2003 - when Robin Cook was still Leader of the House of Commons...

House of Lords Reform

Return to my "Old School"

Regulating electronic surveillance

Exaggerating risks of terrorism

City dynamism ignored

back to top

Having discovered this remarkable NASA website, linked with the Hubble Telescope and the NASA Mars exploration vehicles, with its current photographs from outer space, I am reluctant to let it go

back to top

Never miss Steve Bell!  His cartoons, from The Guardian - his wit and perception illuminate the absurdities of the political scene...

      

Sheffield
 22 March 2004

This date and place will go down in political history.  For on this day there arrived in Sheffield the first of a new category of refugee. I applaud the Government's move to accept for UK settlement a number of refugees (just 500, in this first year) whose refugee-status has been determined by the United Nations itself (UNHCR) - and not by the UK at all. 

This is how it should be done, in the longer-term.  The UN should investigate and determine refugee-status, with every UN member undertaking to accept its fair proportion of the total, for settlement.  Having become closely involved of late with the UK asylum-appeal process, I am keenly aware of its inadequacy.  I am convinced that UN tribunals should be encouraged to develop specialist skills in making the asylum-decisions, country-by-country, and then negotiating with host countries for the appropriate reception of confirmed refugees.

  • I am glad to accord to David Blunkett great credit, for credit is certainly due.  It will now take real political courage to increase the annual quota, and encourage other countries to do the same.

Planning more housing

It looks as if the Government is girding its loins to “do something” about the parlous housing situation.  They clearly plan to enter the next Election with a can-do agenda for housing.  But do they know what to do?

This is my very own subject, my having spent 1974/77 as Industrial Adviser on Construction (much of which related to house-production) to the Wilson/Callaghan Government.  And I am sad that the Government seems to have learnt so little from our earlier experience.  

For the “housing problem” is an amalgam of several different problems, largely unrelated.  There are at least six, and each will need separate treatment. 

Hold onto your hats – because each one of these will require you to address quite different ishoos…

  1. Size of total housing stock

  2. Housing Land Supply

  3. Servicing land “for housing”

  4. Rising house-prices

  5. Building of housing for rent

  6. Meeting special regional needs

The task of bringing these together is massive, and difficult.  I know how to do it, because that was my job at the DoE, under Tony Crosland.  But I doubt if John Prescott, and the present generation of civil servants, know where to start…

  • And nobody ever asks me...

back to top

Why I am
LibSoc not LibDem

Every Libdem Conference drives home for me the differences which have held me in the Labour Party for over 40 years, even though my political journey began (as for so many Welsh) in a Liberal household.  For me, the LibDems have always failed to articulate the case for the primary collective, redistributive functions of Government.  The mandatory redistribution of wealth by Government, throughout a thousand different channels, constitutes the cornerstone of our civic order, however tattered it may currently seem.

The tragedy of New Labour is that it has lost the liberal, individualist philosophy which is the other side of the collectivist coin. Collectivism is acceptable only if it is informed, in its implementation, by a profound respect for every citizen, for human dignity and worth. 

  • I want my party to become the
    Liberal Socialist Party.

back to top

We should
spend, not save

I am indebted to Michael Howard, in the Budget Debate, for highlighting the fall in personal savings.  We are now saving just 5% of disposable income, as compared with the longer-term UK rate of 10%-12%.  We are now at the long-term US savings-rate, which is 6%.   For those on ordinary incomes, the truth is that spending makes better sense than saving. The much-vaunted institutions of market capitalism have shown themselves to be incapable of managing small savings, unreliable custodians of personal savings.

back to top

Iraq, Iraq…

With the tawdry Iraq “Anniversary” last Saturday, and my failure to join the Iraq March, I have been asked about my position now.  Having opposed the 2003 Iraq Invasion both for its illegality and its lack of wisdom, I now have to face the Realpolitik of 2004. 

back to top

Lords must go!

There is, quite simply, no solution to the Lords conundrum.  It was to be expected, albeit humiliating, that the Government would fail yet again to find a compromise.  And the issue is now to go to "appeal" - to the Court of Public Opinion, at the next General Election.  But what will Labour tell the people?

The only acceptable way forward is outright abolition of any second chamber, coupled with the radical reform of the House of Commons. There is no other acceptable political solution to the Lords conundrum.  Labour should ask the electorate to approve straightforward abolition.

What about joining me, in a Lords Must Go lobby?

Rescuing
Public Libraries

The public library service is in crisis.  Between 1992 and 2002, library visits dropped by 17% and book loans dropped by 25%.  Library book issues went down, while the commercial bookstores increased their sales. LIBRI  is a registered charity working to support and extend public library services in society, and will soon be launching a new website at www.libri.org.uk

And this week, libraries had their very own Lords debate, to which the excellent Libraries Minister Lord (Andrew) McIntosh replied...

For full Hansard record click here

back to top

Leave us alone

Is Blair right?  Did 11 September 2001 really change our world? 

I don’t think it did.  In my view, the invasion of Iraq was far more significant than 9/11, because it unleashed the forces of unilateral, global US interventionism.   

Gentle Massage
by Human Rights Act

Some important cases never make the headlines.  And the adjudication by the House of Lords in the cases of Colin Middleton and Sheena Creamer was not destined for the headlines, although it was creditably picked up by
The Guardian.  Both had committed suicide, in separate incidents, while in jail - and the issue before the Lords related to the scope of of the inquest juries' findings. 

  • Hardly headline-gripping stuff! But the Lords judgment demonstrated clearly how the leavening effect of the Human Rights Act 1998 is working its way, slowly but surely, through our Constitution, and our society.

back to top

Recent topics

Extending the Welfare State >>>

Territorial v Membership States >>>

EU migration socialist perspectives
                 >> One and >> Two

Asylum:  KEEP Judicial Review >>>

Iraq  the critical July time-slot >>>

MPs Select TWO per Constituency >>>

Community Interest Companies >>>

The Clousot State >>>

Labour improves Housing Benefit >>>

Child obesity could mean anxiety >>>

Injustice at Cross Hands >>>

 

And read my Big Theory itself, at Multiple Differential Uncertainty...

Or try my snappier and more practical analysis of the Corporations and the Left Coming to Terms

back to top

I enjoy dipping into informed US West Coast chat, always up to the minute, which can be found at www.metafilter.com.

040322   Make sure you have not missed
the previous edition  Check it out   
And the one before that?   
Other recent topics highlighted here

  
   

 

  
 

 
 Created by GMID Design & Communication

COPYRIGHT NOTICE
The originating content of this website is my own work, and subject to my copyright. But on one condition only, I hereby give my consent to its unrestricted reproduction for any purpose: the condition is that its source is subject to proper acknowledgment, giving my name, my assertion of copyright, and the name of this website as its source, namely: www.warrenevans.net - is that a deal?  Roger WE