Down with
Groupism

All groupism is dangerous.  All collective categorisation is pejorative, provocative, destructive. Take it from a Welshman who knows...

• Groupism is a
  dangerous intellectual error. 

Hello Roger (from US PhD)

I enjoy your website - but more importantly, I am glad to see that there is some sanity here in the UK.   I'm an American here in the UK for a PhD - I just got here, and I am honestly shocked at how little liberty exists in Britain.  From ID card
talk and national registries and bureaucracies. to this recent proposal to quash nearly everything thru’ a concept of "anti-social behaviour" .

Honestly, I don't know how Brits put up with this level of government intrusion - perhaps it is the welfare state - it was brought in at the beginning of this century to prevent Bolshevism.  All this mindless trust of the Government - how much are people beaten down in their school/formative years - is it the Dickensian beatings?

America is not much better right now, I admit - with the blanket "terrorism" term
thrown around for everything.  But at least we have a Constitution as a bargaining chip (if it is not re-written by Scalia et al in the next few years…)

In short, I think I might visit your website again.

Regards
Al Cadge  (pseudonym)

Dear Al  

You are right to be astonished - we Brits have lost our way on the civil liberties front in recent years, and that is a matter of the gravest possible concern.  All political parties are guilty of a self-serving spinelessness which is unforgivable - no, it's not beaten into us, but the English are a subservient lot, well-accustomed to the ol' devil class, which casts its dark shadow over too much of English life, and induces an almost natural subordination to Government. 

Remember we have never had a "Revolution", the "People" have never beaten "the Government", historically.  I am sceptical about written Constitutions - indeed, you do not seem to be much protected by yours, at the moment (and it could get much, much worse...)  But one thing we do know - it's good to talk, and to debate - thanks for writing.

Roger WE

PS This is my rationale for the modern welfare state - spelt out for the students of my community...

Drop me a line

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Labour's
Fatal Faultline

We are beset by an ice-age of authoritarianism.  It is has been triggered by terrorism, but it is fed by Labour's insensitivity to the very concept of a "human right".  Blair, Blunkett, Hoon, Straw and Falconer have all proved themselves to be wanting in any "liberal" dimension, and seem almost to revel in their thuggishness.  The insidious and fallacious Blairite doctrine that rights must be balanced by "responsibilities" had given birth to a collectivist monster, the New Authoritarianism.

I hardly thought that I would ever find myself agreeing with Vanessa Redgrave, whom I have always considered a bit of a lightweight and a crank, politically.  But her perception, shared by her brother Corin, of Human Rights as moving to the centre of the political stage chimes remarkably with mine.  This coming Saturday they move to found a new political Party (somewhat clumsily called Peace and Progress), on the very same day that I seek to interest the Labour Party in The Politics of Human Rights

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Embedded Police

Labour is trailing its new communal law-and-order strategies for the next Election: see Blunkett's Press Release.  He makes liberal use of the term "embedding" the Police in the local community, just as BBC reporters are now "embedded" with the advancing Coalition troops in Iraq.

Now: I approve of these changes, in principle.  But there is not a single mention of greater democratic accountability for this rapidly expanding Police force.

• Without democratic accountability
  to representative local communal agencies, this expansion could be more threat than reassurance.

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Labour's
NEC Secrets

Ann Black of Oxford is a fearless scribe. Like Dennis Skinner, she is an elected "Left" member of Labour's National Executive Committee, and an active trade unionist.  But she is also rigorous in her regular reporting "to the outside world" what goes on within the NEC. 

Her personal commentaries are principally of interest to other Party members.  But I bring you November's "Black Report" because it bears worrying signs of a cocooned complacency within the Party which could still cost Labour the Election...

• You can find all her back-copy reports on her own website www.annblack.com

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Managing Migration
Joining the One Per Cent Club

Recent figures from the Office of National Statistics throw new light on patterns of international migration.  They explain the number of UK citizens who leave the UK each year - to live abroad. 

• 1994     125,000                   
  2001            161,000
  2002            186,000
  2003            191,000 

That represents less than one three-hundredth of the population, each year.  Each year, the emigrants leave 99.66% of their fellow-citizens firmly ensconced in the UK, albeit with an increasing propensity to travel.  These figures are very small indeed.

Compared with that, the incoming asylum figures are running at only 50,000 applications per year, many fewer approvals.  Another 150,000 enter each year on official work permits, and many more for the purpose of further and adult education – one of the UK’s strong “exports”.

These low figures are set to rise, for movements in both directions.  I belong to the “One-Percent Club”, which argues that all contemporary nation-states should be organised to accommodate population movements of at least 1% in each direction each year. 

We should be reconsidering the ground-rules of our institutions, most of which are designed to handle static, resident populations.  To  develop dynamic systems, to plan for greater mobility, greater flexibility and cultural diversity, is far more demanding.

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One Year Ago 
17 November 2003

Right Direction
Wrong Principle

"Alan Milburn has attacked the polarisation of “State” and “private sector”.  He argues that “the voluntary sector” should become “the third leg of the stool” in public service provision.

"But Milburn fails crucially to distinguish between the voluntary sector proper (where “volunteering” and “volunteers” are critical, both for funding and management) and the informal salaried not-for-profit sector, which does not rely on volunteering for its support. 

• "Woe betide him if tries to dragoon the great British army of volunteers into being the handmaidens of State enterprise.  He will quickly kill the geese that between them lay a lorra golden eggs..."

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Two Years Ago 
18 November 2002

Workers’ Rights
not Union Rights

"As a young Labour lawyer, I was a part-time Tutor and Examiner to the National Council of Labour Colleges, in trade-union law and industrial law.  As a result, I have always differentiated clearly between rights (a) which attach to the individual worker, and those (b) which attach to the trade union as a collective organisation.   

In Labour political debate, these two ideas are often confused, rolled-up easily together. After all, given the individual’s “right to join a trade union”, it is easy to argue that such a union should have the necessary collective rights to render it effective.  The conflation is entirely understandable, is misleading.

"The winds from the Continent are, I am glad to say, strengthening worker’s rights - rather than union rights.  Part-time and agency workers in the UK are benefiting mightily from EU initiatives, and long may that process continue.  I am sure that our systems are moving in the right direction, foreshadowing a major systemic re-balancing of the employment relationship, a new work settlement right across Europe.   "

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Never miss Steve Bell! His cartoons, from The Guardian - his wit and perception illuminate the absurdities of the political scene... He's no lemon

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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.