10 Feb 10 | Uncategorized
The Court of Appeal’s decision today to release material relating to the torture of “war on terror” detainee Binyam Mohamed is undoubtedly an embarrassment for David Miliband, the Foreign Office and the government.
The redacted evidence, itself a mere seven paragraphs, revealed reports that Mohamed, who has never been charged with any terror offence, was shackled during interrogation, subjected to sleep deprivation and suffered severe mental stress.
The paragraphs did not reveal any evidence of direct British intelligence involvement in torture, though the judges made it clear in the last paragraph: “The treatment reported, if had been administered on behalf of the United Kingdom, would clearly have been in breach of the undertakings given by the United Kingdom in 1972. Although it is not necessary for us to categorise the treatment reported, it could readily be contended to be at the very least cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment of BM by the United States authorities.”
So one can understand the Foreign office’s attempts to cover up the evidence: but at a time when Barack Obama’s White House has revealed far more disturbing details of the treatment of renditioned prisones than the ones contained in these paragraphs, it seems disingenuous for Milliband to claim, as he did, that the publication of these paragraphs would endanger US/UK intelligence sharing. Miliband’s lawyers even went so far as to have a paragraph redacted from the Court of Appeal judgement at the last minute, in a scrabbling effort to defend the reputation of the security services.
So was there a motive beyond this? Embarrassment? Shame? Simple control freakery? Possibly a combination of the three. Both Miliband and his Conservative shadow, William Hague, have spun the judgement as upholding the “control principle” on intelligence sharing. This suggests that there would not be any significant difference in approach to secrecy by any future Conservative government. Meanwhile, Miliband has ruled out a public inquiry into Mohamed’s case — unsurprising when one considers the lengths to which the government went to conceal seven tiny morsels of information.
Of interest, however, to Index on Censorship and civil libertarians is this line from the judgement: “[In] principle, a real risk of serious damage to national security, of whatever degree, should not automatically trump a public interest in open justice.”
Encouragingly, (and unusually) an English court has committed to free expression and exchange of information as a principle. Our politicians understandably recoil from the free flow of information (God knows it did them no favours in the recent expenses scandal), but now their hand has been forced yet again, isn’t it time that all the UK’s parties started taking free expression to their hearts? The revulsion at attempts to cover up torture, the disgust at the refusal to be open about expenses, and the popular clamour for reform of the libel laws should demonstrate to UK legislators that whoever commits to free speech and free information this Spring will win not just kudos, but votes.
26 Aug 09 | Index Index, minipost
A YouGov poll commissioned by Christian Aid said that half of UK adults think that policing of environmental protests is too heavy handed or involves too many officers. Of those surveyed, 18% said they were put off joining protests and 33% said that filming protesters is an invasion of privacy. Read more here
20 Jun 09 | Uncategorized
The Life and Death of Democracy, by John Keane, Simon & Schuster, £30
Democracy: 1,000 Years in Pursuit of British Liberty, by Peter Kellner, Mainstream, £25
The other day, as I was waiting to meet someone in the House of Commons, an old-school MP accosted me. “Isn’t it terrible, all that’s going on?” His implication was that the expenses scandal had unjustly dragged this venerable institution into the mud. “No, it isn’t,” I replied. “It’s marvellous.” Horrified, he skulked away. I am not in the habit of making sweeping utterances such as these. Perhaps it was more than a dozen years of disdain for the Westminster village that had been reined in, and could now be unleashed as I no longer considered myself part of the club.
That club, which contains MPs, peers, political journalists, advisers, lobbyists and other assorted hangers-on in London SW1, had until recently operated under a strict but unspoken code of conduct. Criticise MPs and parties as much you like but do not call into question the magnificence and munificence of parliament. We may dodge and weave a bit; we may wage illegal wars from time to time, we may not be very adept at scrutinising our executive, but when it comes to those perfidious foreigners, what a great story we have to tell.
From the moment I returned after being a foreign correspondent in the mid 1990s and entered the world of men in strange clothes and old habits, I was dispirited by the state of our politics. Thus it was with some anticipation that I delved into two erudite works on the history of democracy one covering the world, the other the UK. John Keane’s global anthology is a gargantuan feat of erudition. He moves deftly from ancient Greece (not the great citadel it is held up to be, apparently), to Machiavelli, to America’s founding fathers, who, the author argues, were originally wary of introducing representative democracy. Keane quotes one delegate from New Haven, Connecticut, opposing “election by the people” because they lack information and are “constantly liable to be misled”.
The author is at his most persuasive in knocking down easy assumptions. He points out that consultative assemblies flourished in the Islamic world from the beginning of the 13th century until the demise of the Ottoman empire. These assemblies, called meshwerets, were highly effective. He states that, contrary to “some old-fashioned, devoutly British, accounts”, which assume British birthright for parliamentary democracy, the venue for the first working parliament was actually northern Spain. He tells the compelling story of King Alfonso IX, a man whose fits of epilepsy earned him the nickname “the dribbler”, and who came up against the determined opposition of the local nobility. He sought to go over their heads, to convene a larger group of “good men”. And so “it was in the walled, former Roman town of Leon, in March 1188 — a full generation before King John’s Magna Carta of 1215 — that Alfonso IX convened the first ever cortes, as contemporaries soon christened it.”
Keane’s particular contribution to the debate is to emphasise the global, rather than the narrowly Anglo-Saxon, roots of democracy. His grasp of the present and his prescriptions for the future are less sure-footed. He reminds us that “democracy is not the timeless fulfilment of our political destiny. It is not a way of doing politics that has always been with us, or that will be our companion for the rest of our history.” He coins the term “monitory democracy”, suggesting that political engagement and emancipation are now expressed far more widely than through elected chambers, through the Internet, direct action, NGOs, the media and other bodies. He argues that political liberties and economic prosperity have little in common, but he develops neither this thought nor the many other questions that the past two decades of globalised capitalism have thrown up. Just why have so many people around the world willingly given up certain liberties in return for the promise of prosperity or security?
Peter Kellner’s account is specifically British. As a long-time surveyor of the political scene, he has an uncanny ability to convey the complexities of politics to a wide audience. His book is more of a compendium of historical moments, in which speeches or documents highlighting the successes of, or perils facing, democracy, are listed. The study is compiled chronologically, stretching from Athelstan the Glorious (c. 930) to Paul Dacre (the editor of the Daily Mail, 1998). Students of politics may quibble over some of the choices made from particular years or eras, but Kellner’s selection is invariably apposite, charting the great debates from the emancipation of slaves, to the Corn Laws, to the Irish independence movement, and closer to home, from Roy Jenkins’s proposals on electoral reform to Margaret Thatcher’s myopic Bruges speech.
Yet underlying Kellner’s account is an idealised assumption that we should be proud of our institutions. “The evolution of liberty in Britain has been appallingly slow,” he writes. “But once basic principles have been established, they have tended to stay established.” Perhaps the very fact that Britain has faced so few ructions has instilled in us a complacency that has dulled our sense of the inadequacies of our political system.
That system is now rightly the object of public derision. Yet I fear that derision could lead to a further weakening of our representative democracy, discouraging people from standing for parliament, leading to a new crop of MPs even less talented than the present group. Pride of place in Kellner’s anthology should surely go to Oliver Cromwell and his speech on 19 April 1653 dissolving the rump parliament.
“Ye sordid prostitutes,” he begins. “Have you not defil’d this sacred place, and turn’d the Lord’s temple into a den of thieves, by your immoral principles and wicked practices? Ye are grown intolerably odious to the whole nation; you were deputed here by the people to get grievances redress’d, are yourselves become the greatest grievance.”
As I write, in the week after the European election results, I marvel at the protector’s prescience.
This article was originally published in the Guardian
