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item0056A 860, 861
860
4 November 2003
Company Reform Coalition
This
is no conventional “lobby group”. The Convenor is tasked simply to convene
a Founding Conference, in
London,
at Easter 2004. That Conference will seek to mobilise
broad-based support for the formation of an international lobby to secure
the modernisation and reform of company law, in all the
leading trading jurisdictions of the world. It will be for the
participating organisations, at that Conference, to decide whether or not to
form an international lobby to take these issues forward.
“Company law” was not originally, in the 19th century, the
subject of international negotiation or treaty. The UK, France, Germany and
the USA led the way in developing new national systems of
company law, differing widely in detail if sharing certain common
perceptions and principles. Those national legal systems grew to become the
“constitution” of modern global capitalism, the legal framework within which
the modern corporate sector has flourished.
Many
of the wrongs of modern capitalism are to be attributed to defects in that
constitutional structure. Excessive secrecy, the lack of internal or
external accountability, the narrow pursuit of profit maximisation, the
abuse of limited liability, the abuse of private property power, the easy
proliferation of “artificial personality” and tax evasion, eroding the
resources and powers of nation states – these are all built into the 19th
century legal systems which still hold sway - see
www.tamethecorporations.net.
The
need is now for an international review of that network of
national jurisdictions. That can now be done only by multilateral agreement
– a new “negotiating round” of the kind deployed in other sectors – the
International Criminal Court, the World Trade Organisation, the Kyoto
Treaty, and many earlier precedents such as civil aviation. In reacting to
the most extreme abuses of corporate power, each nation-state finds itself
disadvantaged by the impracticability of unilateral action: no single State
can take the commercial or political risks of acting alone. States, by way
of their national governments, must find ways of cooperating
to remedy these great wrongs.
“Company Reform Coalition” is a working-name for
this group, working towards the London Conference at Easter 2004.
Individuals and organisation are asked to indicate their interest in
participation, by returning the slip below.
YES!
I want to stay in touch with the
Company Reform Coalition
qas
an Organisation
qas an individual
Name & Address (of Organisation if
appropriate)……………………………………….
………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..…....
………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..…....
…………………………………………………………..E-mail contact ……………………………..….
Roger Warren Evans - Convenor, Company Reform Coalition
- 23 St Peter’s Road Newton Swansea SA3 4SB - Tel 01792=360673 (B) =368003
(H) =368399 (Fax) - Mobile 079-6817-7564 E-mail
roger@warrenevans.net
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861
4
November
2003
LIBERTY
and the
Arms Fair
Katharine's View
Hi Dad
 I was surprised to see your
"take" on the searches and arrests of protestors
outside the East London Arms Fair. Personally, I don't buy the
argument that because suicide bombers operate in Israel (and very
recently now in Iraq) we can justify what have been used as long-term,
blanket powers in London in the name of detecting them here. There has never
been a suicide bomb attack in the
UK,
nor indeed can I recall any armed or otherwise deadly incident caused by a
collection of nuns, Quakers and anti-arms protestors. It is a methodology
that does not spread easily, or far, from the West Bank, and certainly not
without vehicles like trucks or planes, which clearly none of these
protestors had.
I am
convinced that these searches and arrests were carried out simply to ensure
the anonymous access of delegates to the Conference, and comfort
consciences. Ordinary civil liberties were casually overridden, in
that process.
 I am not convinced by that argument, because a potential
attacker would don a guise appropriate to the occasion, even if some our
protesters would be – admittedly – difficult to imitate. There was no
"precedent" for the 11/9 New York World Trade Towers attack. I acknowledge that, in
an atmosphere of tension and suspicion, it is easy to get these judgments
wrong. But the argument that “it has not happened here” does not convince
me, and does not alter my conclusion.
OK – but let’s take that further. Even if
(which I challenge)
the searches themselves could be justified, how could the arrests, removals
and the prevention of unarmed, peaceful protest be justified – after it had
been established that no weapons had been found? I'm afraid I find this a very
strange example for you to have chosen. I recognise (and
often share) your managerial instincts for the efficient securing of
public order. An example I'd expect you to have given would be perhaps
alcohol sale and consumption controls near stadiums before and
during football matches.
This is a much stronger point, which I accept –
one should distinguish between the use of stop-and-search powers and the use
of subsequent arrest/detention powers, once it had been established that no
weapons were present – I can still imagine possible arguments for arrest,
although none were I think put forward by the Met on this occasion.
I
do not see how a line can be drawn between the 'secrecy' of
these powers (which you accept was wrong), and the exercise of the powers themselves
(which you accept). I can
accept that the powers may need to exist and be used in emergency
situations - and I even accept that in such situations, it may make sense
for us to not generally be alerted to the fact. But their blanket
deployment over the
last
two years was clearly unnecessary and dangerous - "emergency powers" to detain
without reason, deployed for a period of two years, without any incidents in
the Capital itself to prompt, or to justify the continuation of such powers,
and seemingly not even any evidence of major plans intercepted. In fact, the
only time "They" did say there was a specific threat (i.e. at Heathrow), far from
using covert
powers and police operations, they sent the military to police the Airport
in
the most muscular of public displays of emergency power.
Here, I fully concur. The devious nature of the activation of these powers
(UK was the only
European state to declare and maintain a State of Emergency, derogating from
the European Convention of Human Rights) - and their covert operation for
two-and-a-half years throughout central
London,
was a grievous civil wrong against
UK
citizens. The
LIBERTY case exposed that devious practice, and Chakrabarti
(LIBERTY Director) was right to be proud of that achievement. There is
nothing between us on that – I was dealing with the specific “Arms Fair”
case which was before the High Court, where those powers were used in a
high-risk situation. But the argument against the Government on its broader
“anti-terrorist regime” is different, and its wrongfulness unarguable.
But
Dad – the analysis cannot end there. How did this “high-risk situation”
come to arise in the first place? If, as you say, an arms fair in London is
a likely terrorist target, then why give it permission to go
ahead - and why agree and to police it at public expense - when it could have been cancelled by the use of
those very same anti-terrorist powers? What was the pressing need for the
holding of such a Conference in London, at the risk of provoking terrorist
activity? Whose 'human rights' would have been infringed by saying that
such a Conference would have to be postponed, or relocated to a less
populous area outside the Capital? The rights of corporations or national
Defence Departments? They
do not have any. Even if there was originally a genuine rationale for
these emergency powers, they were nevertheless misused - and misdirected at
this group of protesters. And the discriminatory nature of their use is
demonstrated by the fact that only they suffered any actual interference or
restriction of their liberty, because of the calculated creation of an event
that was identified as a terrorist target.
 Even
in terms of the practicalities of policing “on the day”, it is not so much
the stopping-and-searching that I object to. Given that rigorous searching
procedures would have been operating for all delegates to such a Conference,
why not draw the perimeter for such searches further from the entrance to
the building, and then permit peaceful protest within a dedicated area
within the perimeter, but outside the building (I would even accept a
limitation of numbers in such circumstances)? Or search by all means at a
police cordon on the approach to the Exhibition Halls. The fact that
protestors would be present was well-known, well signalled in advance, and
should not have caught the Police unawares to the extent that they had to
use emergency anti-terrorist powers in place of routine planning and
security checking practices. This “risk” could have been managed by way
ordinary common-sense and good management – there was no need whatever for
these heavy-handed authoritarian methods.
The Government’s failing is all-the-more culpable, because they positively
contributed to the planning and hosting of the Arms Fair, as articles
testifying to Geoff Hoon's embarrassed silence on the matter, have
documented - embarrassed not least by the timing of it to coincide with
September 11th! Apart from the grotesque
insensitivity of the arrangements, if there was ever any obvious time not to
gather the arms traders of the world under one roof, then
surely this was
it. The Government was in a position to exercise a major, if not defining
influence over the timing, venue and other arrangements. See the following
quote from Gideon Burrows in The Guardian on September 9th, before the
arrests were made:
"This may look like a private exhibition, but it is very much the
Government's Arms Fair. The taxpayer is contributing more than £400,000
directly, and policing will cost over £1m. Two units within the Ministry of
Defence - one responsible for export sales, the other for research and
development - are sponsors. UK armed forces personnel will demonstrate
equipment. Tony Blair has been invited and Geoff Hoon, the Secretary of State for
Defence, is guest of honour. Among those the Government has
invited to come to London to buy arms is Syria. Yes, Syria - supposedly one
of the biggest threats to world peace and stability, a country the White
House accuses of having chemical weapons of its own, as well as hiding
Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction.
”For more than a year, church and community groups in Newham, the borough in
which the ExCeL exhibition centre is sited, have been writing to their MP (Jim Fitzpatrick), the Mayor of London and their local council, calling for
the Arms Fair to be cancelled. They would rather £1.5m of government money
was spent on improving their neighbourhood, one of the poorest in London.”
Read the Burrows account in full.
It
is clear, from this Gideon Burrows’ report, that this Arms Fair was a
Government-sponsored high-risk terrorist target – yet I repeat, the only
emergency powers deployed to protect the public from its high-risk potential
was to arrest those
who were protesting against it.
Dad -
I
understand you're trying to take a pragmatic line. But a really good
“manager” would have been taking the big-picture view first - prevention or
avoidance would have been far better than cure, when there was considered to
be so much at
risk - explosions or hostage-taking in a residential area of the Capital,
with senior international VIPs, Muslim and Israeli military presence, among
many other 'unstable' political States, armoury on display - the list of
risks is endless.
The problem with taking the
LIBERTY
case as the framework for discussing these
wrongs is that LIBERTY could only challenge the specific
actions of the Police, under the powers, towards the specific individual
complainants, on the day in question. The real wrongs lie in the broader
context of the authoritarian regime that is being constructed, out of recent
waves of illiberal legislation. In the Arms Fair case, a really good
manager’ - indeed a “managerialist” like you - who believes that risks must
be calculated and controlled to the advantage of all, would surely not have been
left having to drag protestors physically off the premises on the opening
day. There were many other more sensible ways of skinning this particular
cat - I'd say it was more of a cock-up, than an effective managerial
response.
Is it your case that the Police managed a potentially 'dangerous' situation
fairly, on balance, even though it meant infringing individual freedoms of movement and speech, by judicious use of the powers they had to hand?
Or
is do you think this was a good example of “political managerialism” - to
have introduced the powers, and to have allowed them to be used in this way?
Katharine is a tenacious advocate. I was of course responding to the
outcome of the particular LIBERTY case, and concluding (while donning the
High Court wig that I probably would have worn myself, given other twists in
the game of life) that I agreed with the rejection of the specific case by the High
Court. But on the broader point,
I accept Katharine’s analysis. The very
organisation of a high-risk event like the Arms Fair, at this time, in London, was an
example, of Governmental (yes, managerial) incompetence of a very high
order. Only the UK state is capable of such dislocated incompetence, and it
is most likely to arise in the tendentious space between Departments of
State and the corporate sector. The remedy lies in far greater transparency
in these matters, far better access for the media and the public. We will
only overcome these cock-ups, and these continuing wrongs, by greater
freedom of information.
What do you think? Are you with
daughter, or with Dad? Drop me a
line
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