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Renewing participatory democracy

My Little Red Book

A New Socialist Settlement

Bevan
Re-visited 

Multiple Differential Uncertainty

Week 25  Sunday
20 June 2004

Progressive Dissociation
My idea for the EU

The EU needs radical innovation.  The new “Constitution” already seems old-fashioned, obsolete before the ink has dried. Our politicians are playing games with the model of the old-style unitary federal state, and the negotiations have been difficult because their blueprint is already out-of-date.  Indeed, the very idea of “passing laws” to be implemented, at the same time and in the same form, for 25 nation-states, is inappropriate - it does not meet the requirements of this key international institution.  New creative thinking is needed.

It is the job of politicians to devise institutional forms which give expression to the views of their peoples.  And the current wave of Euroscepticism – while I do not share it, and consider it to be ill-informed and unimaginative – is running very strongly indeed.

My idea? Progressive Dissociation.  
Read all about it!

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Pensions 
TUC misses the point

When will the Government grasp the pensions nettle?  Public discontent rages on.  Ordinary pensioners are forced into the grip of means-tested State supplements above very low income-levels.  Private pension investments fail to generate confidence, and their lack of credibility is probably terminal.  Middle-age anxieties accelerate, causing growing distress.  Lobbies for benefits-in-kind flourish, because of the Government's failure to make provision for a satisfactory State Old Age Pension, payable as of right on a universal basis.  The TUC has now published an emotive attack on "pensions at 70", which wholly fails to grapple with the real issues, relying on appeals about those who will "die before receiving their pension".  17% of the population already die before reaching the pensionable age of 65.  That is not a rational basis for debate.

• I want to see a pension of £160 per week per person, disregarding marital or household status, payable at the age of 70.  Let me explain how it would work.

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The Politics of
Being a Student

You may recall that, having canvassed curious undergraduates during my unsuccessful Labour campaign for Swansea City Council a fortnight ago, I promised to set out my political stall for them.  Why should a successful student bother about “politics” at all?  That was the question.

I’ve now had a chance to think about it.  I have concentrated only on the “selfish” reasons, ignoring the moral or systemic political arguments that might come into play.  It makes good sense to take politics seriously, as a matter of simple self-interest. 

• This is my answer.

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The Internet
Regulation v Freedom

Mike Davis, our favourite Australian Cobber, argues that Internet regulation is impractical and a waste of time  Check him out.  My daughter Katharine replied to both of us, with a different perspective.  And now the indefatigable Mike has returned to the fray.

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I distrust
collective "identity"

UKIP, the Euro Election and Euro 2004 have besieged us with bogus concepts of "identity" - and more particularly "British identity".

This language is insubstantial, without meaning.  It generates the fallacious idea that there is such a thing as "British identity" - which I deny.  "Identity" is essentially a personal matter, of individuality, of personality.  An "identity" card does not designate your collective "allegiance" or adherence to anything or anyone: it merely records the distinctive features of your individuality, so that you as an individual can be identified.

There are other ways of describing different senses of allegiance, or a consensus view - during international games, when the Oscars are awarded, when a compatriot is honoured in some way, finds success.  But they do not engage my identity in any meaningful sense.  As race, culture and ethnicity rise up the conversation agenda, "national identity" is gaining spurious ground, journalistically and intellectually: it is a mischievous, divisive and useless concept. 

• Just like "institutional racism".

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Iraq enters
danger zone

The new UN Iraq Resolution exposes the Iraqi people to the greatest possible political danger. Their new US puppet "Government", lacking any democratic legitimacy, will on 1 July be entitled to sign "sovereign" contracts for the privatisation of oil and utility services, privatisation on a huge scale, as well as grant long-term leases for US military bases.  And the pressures on this puppet regime will be enormous, to accommodate American commercial and political interests. 

The nominated Iraqi "leaders" will rule only by grace of the American military, without any countervailing democratic legitimacy, and without the Police and military resources to defend themselves.  They will be stooges.  The new leaders have already made key concessions to the US, inviting the Americans to stay for at least a year after 30 June.  Many more concessions will follow.

• The UN has, misguidedly,
  legitimated the exploitation
  which will now ensue. 

NB  The early assassinations in Iraq, of senior officials of the new puppet regime, are a very bad sign.  I say that, without the earliest possible Elections (and there is no reason for waiting until January 2005), the situation will only worsen, and the UN dragged more firmly into the morasse of "complicity with the Coalition".

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Territoriality
> Membership

Regular readers of LivePolitics will know of my long-running preoccupation with the "territorial state", and its superiority over the newer forms of "membership state".  I raised with you last February the related issue of "extra-territorial" jurisdiction, where States claimed the right to operate lawfully outside their own territory. 

And all my political instincts tell me I should resist moves towards institutionalising the newer concept of the " Membership State".  I dislike the image of my country as an exclusive club, with "insiders" who are members, and others who are not.  For that approach carries huge systemic risks of global division, social and political exclusion, and awful military confrontation.

But popular opinion if firmly on the side of the "Club" view of politics, both here in the UK and other countries.  And it seems that I must turn my political imagination to ensuring that we get...

• ...decent, humane, Club Rules.

Where do you stand, on this strategic issue ?  Drop me a line

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The Fabians are a great, enlightened Left-Wing political community some 7,000-strong - and we have many skills among our number.

• Join the Fabians, right here...

PS  If, without joining, you would like to be added to the monthly Fabian Update e-mail list, just e-mail Fabian Research

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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

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Can there be anyone left cold by the sight of great ships?  The Royal Mail stamps for May mark the launch of the new Queen Mary..  Great ships bring out the best in everyone.

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

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

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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.

• Guardian
• Daily Telegraph
• Independent
• The Times
• New York Times
• Le Monde
• Die Welt
• Moscow Times
• China Daily
• The Hindu

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Libraries & LIBRI

I shall be at the London Seminar on Monday 21 June, convened by Culture Minister Andrew McIntosh. "How come?" (I hear you cry...)  Well - I am Secretary (and Founder Trustee) of the Libri Trust, a charity dedicated to the improvement and development of public libraries.  It is our recent report, Who's in Charge?, penned by the brilliant Tim Coates, that has triggered the Seminar.  I am delighted that the Government response has been so decisive.

Our immediate concern is to counter the catastrophic decline in book-lending and library usage which has dominated the last decade.  In the longer term, we plan to encourage communities to create and operate communal libraries, to supplement conventional State provision.

• Check LIBRI www.libri.org.uk

Asylum Legal Services "Guardian" Travesty

I was appalled to read The Guardian's leaked report of investigations into Licensed "immigration solicitors", and allegations of overcharging.  It was grossly partial and biased.

This sector is indeed a murky and complex one, in which I am daily engaged, working on a pro bono basis - I know how it works.  And I have no doubt that there are some Solicitors who exploit the system.  Friday's Guardian carries a wave of correspondence protesting - though principally at the Audit Report, rather than the Guardian coverage.

But the system itself is a shoddy and ill-conceived administrative scheme, which treats Solicitors shabbily and causes anguish to many hapless asylum-seekers, as they are abandoned by their Solicitors in mid-process.  I am currently in contact with eighteen asylum-seekers in Swansea who have been abandoned in this way.  I have to hold two "surgeries" every week, just to pick up the pieces, from this shoddy scheme. 

In some cases, I have simply had no option but to pick up the papers and go to Court to represent them myself, in their appeal proceedings. 

• Let me explain how it works.

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Where I am going
There is no way back

As a committed Labour politician, I have to decide where to go, following 10 June.  Voters and journalists can luxuriate in armchair comment, one way or t’other. 

But I cannot.  That option is not open to me.  I must decide.  And for me there is no question of “going back” to earlier Labour strategies: I am completely unconvinced by Frank Dobson, writing in Tuesday's Guardian.   He is guilty of an undifferentiated, unquestioning nostalgia, which would move Labour further away from its electorate. 

The problem, as I see it, is that New Labour has not gone far enough, and has now run out of steam - politically and intellectually.  I will stay in the Labour Party, and box my corner as best I can.

This will be my fivefold focus -  

• Defining a new, lean Welfare State, suited to a society of growing personal wealth, individualist rather than collectivist in character

 

• I find that, in responding to the doorstep taunts of Swansea undergraduates, I have also sketched out my model of the future, leaner welfare state: read Student Manifesto.

 

• Developing new institutional forms for Europe, to address the present discontents, and countering British isolationism;

 

• "Progressive Dissociation" - a new way of managing diversity, within the EU - seemingly a "Tory" formula, but I propose it as a non-party device to accommodate a wider range of institutional flexibility, without undermining the essential unity of the federal European Union.

 

• Engaging 1,000,000 citizens in the participative governance of our society, fostering further devolution of power and generating new sources of legitimacy for government;
• Solving current pressing problems of citizenship and immigration, designated as "migration management";
• Rebalancing power, as between natural and artificial persons, securing international company reform, and regulating the abuse of corporate power throughout the world.

I plan to use my personal resources more selectively in future, to focus on these five policy sectors.  What about “Human Rights”?  For me, human rights are not a specific policy-end in themselves, but they constitute the medium within which all issues fall to be addressed and resolved.

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A mischievous intellectual fallacy still lives on, namely that of "institutionalised racism".  New reports clearly suggest - surprise, surprise - that there are still racists among our policemen: see Observer 13 June.  It seems that Trevor Phillips, as Chairman of the Commission for Racial Equality, continues to beat the drum in opposition to "institutional racism".

Yet there is no such thing.  It's a cop out. The problem is that non-racist systems are being perverted: they become racist as practised by a significant proportion of the individuals involved.  The racism nevertheless remains that of prejudiced individuals, who bring to their defined jobs or functions racist presumptions which distort their judgments and their actions. 

The key problem lies with prejudiced senior officers, who personally tolerate racism in their ranks. There is nothing "institutionalised" about it. 

• It is plain, individual, wickedness.

Roman law
Irish abolish
Australians adapt

The Romans invented it, and all contemporary European countries have now abolished it.  The Irish were the last to do so, by referendum last Friday 11 June 2004.  It is the ius soli - literally, the law of the soil - the legal doctrine that every person takes his status from the territory of his birth. Civis Romanus sum.

The UK retained the law until the late 1980s, but it wreaked havoc with all forms of immigration control, and was then abolished.  Citizenship is now either inherited from ones parents or grandparents or granted by way the administrative process of naturalisation.

PS Our Big Australian Conversation has produced a gem.  Mike Davis reveals the intriguing Australian legal compromise, which operates a ius soli at the age of ten, when children born in Australia automatically acquire Australian citizenship. I knew nothing about that innovative rule.  But I remain reluctantly convinced that ius soli has gone for ever, and that we must find a new way ahead.

Read Mike

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Managing religious diversity

The drive for the creation of more Muslim state schools is entirely understandable, but it should be resisted.  We should meet the reasonable demands of Muslim communities in other ways.  We should review the institution of the state school itself, and ensure that each school makes reasonable provision for the weekday observances of all its pupils, whatever their religious observances. 

If it were open to the UK, I confess I would prefer to follow the secularism of the French tradition.  But for us, that option is simply not open: for 200 years, France has consciously adopted the principled separation of "Church" and "State", but we have not.  We have trodden the path of the integration of Church and State, starting with the Church of England: Catholics, Jews and Non-Conformists have followed, and secured denominational places in the educational sun.  It is inevitable that Muslims should claim the same right.

But the Muslim claim highlights the ultimate absurdity of the "English solution".  It is that very formula which must be reviewed, and existing practices also modified: the sensible course would be to disestablish the CofE, just as the Church has been disestablished in Wales. 

Religious observances and preferences continue to inspire mankind, and every multi-cultural society must develop appropriate institutional solutions - that is the political challenge that we face. 

• State schools should accommodate all the religious traditions which their pupils represent.

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Webmasters unite!  These are this week's Missing Persons, taken from The Big Issue.  If you recognise anyone, contact www.missingpersons.org or ring 020-8392-4592 - and this is surely a free service which volunteer Webmasters could offer more widely - put the idea around!

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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