06.26.08
Posted in politics at 10:44 pm by Rob Fahey
The worst thing that has ever happened to British politics is the movement of both our leading parties to the centre of the political spectrum. With both the Conservatives and Labour occupying a centre-right position, the ugly face of centrist politics has been revealed. Devoid of strong ideals or leanings, centrist parties find themselves stuffed with politicians who don’t believe in a damned thing except gaining, and then retaining, positions of power.
On Labour’s benches, this much is perfectly obvious from the fact that the party has abandoned any concept of social liberalism. Stop and search powers, 90- and then 42-day detention without charge, increasingly harsh immigration laws and prison sentences, ASBOs, the reclassification of cannabis in the face of all scientific and social evidence… All things which fly in the face of what should have been the whole ethos of the Labour movement, but which have been convenient for a government keen to win headlines for being “tough”.
Earlier this week, perhaps the most utterly unpleasant Home Secretary the Labour administration has produced - yes, even more unpleasant than the arrogant, delusional and self-justifying David Blunkett - managed to come out with what is, to me, the single lowest ebb of everything this government has done from a liberal, progressive or even simply moral standpoint.
Do you see the picture on the right? That’s an image that was spread around the world in 2005, depicting two teenage boys moments before their execution in Iran. Their crime? They were convicted of being homosexual - the Iranians protested that they were “rapists”, by which they meant that the two boys had simultaneously “raped” each other. They were blindfolded, placed on the back of a truck, had nooses hung around their necks from above - and then the truck drove off. There are later pictures from this series, which I have not put here as they are, understandably, incredibly distressing.
Now here’s what Jacqui Smith, our delightful Home Secretary, had to say this week on the question of deporting homosexual asylum seekers back to Iran. “With particular regard to Iran… the evidence does not show a real risk of discovery of, or adverse action against gay and lesbian people who are discreet about their sexual orientation.”
Stonewall, a gay campaign group, reckons that 4,000 people have been executed in Iran since the 1970s for being homosexual. Jacqui Smith disputes that figure - but there’s little dispute over another figure which shows 140 people being executed under the current regime alone for homosexuality. Regardless, Ms Smith’s view is essentially that gay people in Iran are fine as long as they’re “discreet” - shut up, don’t talk about it, and hope every day that nobody with a grudge against you discovers your secret.
Of course, you may have spotted the essential logical flaw in her entire argument. Completely aside from being a disgusting thing for a public servant in a civilised nation to say, the whole statement misses the fact that by coming to the UK and seeking asylum on the grounds of sexuality, refugees from Iran have already given up the option of living “discreetly”. Besides which, if they could, they would - gay people all over the world choose to hide their sexuality in the face of repression because it’s more important to them to be with their family and friends. Those who run from Iran and other countries like it do so at great personal cost and risk, and only do so because they have been found out, or because the strain is no longer bearable - and in both cases, if they don’t face capital punishment for their sexual orientation before they leave, they certainly will upon their return.
Still - who cares about that, when there are headlines to be won in the Daily Mail and the Sun? Figures for the processing of asylum seekers make vital news in this era of focused xenophobia, when much of the population seems to make no distinction between economic migrants and those fleeing persecution. If the cost of making the Home Office - and by extension, this failing, morally bankrupt Labour government - look good is the lives of innocent people whose only crime is their sexual orientation, then so be it. They’re only Iranians anyway, the tabloids will probably assume they were gay terrorists.
By the way, the case that kicked this all off was that of a chap called Mehdi Kazemi, a young gay man from Iran who moved to Brighton to study English in 2005. In 2006, his boyfriend back in Iran (a nation in which Jacqui Smith maintains there is no “real risk of discovery or adverse action” against gay people) was executed for his sexuality - but not before naming Kazemi as his partner during interrogation (for which read “torture”). The Home Office’s reaction was to try to deport Kazemi back to Iran, and only an extensive public campaign on his behalf, as well as multiple legal appeals, made them reverse this decision.
Now Jacqui Smith wants to draw a line in the sand and prevent any more Iranians from escaping through the “loophole” which saved Mehdi Kazemi’s life from a brutal execution. The loophole which she wishes to close is that Britain has traditionally been a compassionate and thoroughly decent nation of people - and having destroyed much of that trust and decency within the nation itself, the next objective seems to be to snatch away any compassion in our dealings with the persecuted, vulnerable people who throw themselves upon our mercy at our borders.
Technorati Tags: asylum, Daily Mail, immigration, Jacqui Smith, Labour, Mehdi Kazemi, politics, The Sun
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06.16.08
Posted in politics at 7:09 pm by Rob Fahey
No, not the aftermath of George W Bush’s presidency - I’m not sure my webhosting plan, generous and economical as it may be, comes with enough storage for an in-depth discussion of all the issues arising from that particularly dark eight years in our recent history. (Eight years - can you believe it? I’ve lived in Britain for the vast majority of my adult life, and for all of that time, Dubya has been US president. I can distinctly recall, in my last year in Dublin, being told by a friend that Dubya was likely to be the next US president, and reading some of his quotes online. We both laughed. I think my laughter was a little more naive.)
Rather, the aftermath of George W Bush’s visit to London, from whence he departed today. Did you know he was here? Or rather, did you know that he was coming? Today’s press conference - and yesterday’s dinner at No.10 - were fairly high profile events, but compared to the incredible level of hype and pomp over the visit of French president Nicolas Sarkozy earlier this year, Bush’s arrival was preceded by a deathly silence.
Today, the only sign that the “Leader of the Free World” has been in London is a mess of metal barricades, police tape and left-over traffic diversions. Whitehall is covered in barricades that have yet to be collected, and the whole area around the U.S. Embassy at Grosvenor Square is a disaster of traffic diversions, heavy-handed police cordons and yet more metal barricades.
Over the weekend, Londoners were not only denied access to one of the city’s major thoroughfares (Whitehall, which is an artery for many extremely heavily used bus routes), but were also treated to a constant barrage of noise pollution thanks to the helicopters that circled over the centre of the city. Worse, however, is the fact that Londoners were also denied, once again, the basic right to protest and be heard.
Ostensibly, the blocking off of vast sections of the city was for security purposes; and certainly, one can see why putting Bush within bomb-blast radius of the crowds wouldn’t be a great idea (although I’d be more worried about the security of the innocents in the crowd than I would be about the man himself, a security concern I rather suspect the authorities don’t share). This, however, does not justify placing the man and his excessive entourage not only out of reach, but also out of sight and out of earshot. This was not security, it was a PR exercise - an attempt either to shield Bush from the proof of his deep unpopularity with the British people, or perhaps more likely, to prevent the world’s press from having a chance to point their cameras at a juxtaposition of the reviled leader’s “Farewell Tour”, and the crowds for whom his farewell can’t come soon enough.
Never mind the deep inconvenience that this trip caused for the people of London (especially compared to the visits of other national leaders, which are usually a cause for celebration and a festive atmosphere in the city centre) - the way in which the whole trip was handled by the police and security forces smacked of the American idea of “Free Speech Zones”, one of the most appalling additions to the lexicon of the neo-conservative movement in recent years. The right to peaceful protest is, I believe, absolute - it can be restricted for extremely clear and well-elucidated reasons of security, but to restrict that right simply for the purposes of PR and image-control is a shocking abuse of the powers this Government has gathered to itself.
Sorry - another shocking abuse. I suppose we should be getting used to them by now.
Technorati Tags: Bush, George W Bush, London, politics, policing, security
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06.15.08
Posted in politics at 11:56 pm by Rob Fahey
Ever since Ireland voted “No” to the Lisbon Treaty late last week, there’s been all manner of pot-bashing and shouting from the Eurosceptic lobby here in the UK about the result. This, apparently, is proof that the British public (in common, presumably, with the public of every other nation in Europe, bar Ireland) are being hoodwinked and deprived of their rights by not being given a referendum on the treaty. The inference is that our politicians know that the public would defeat the treaty, so they’re passing it through the backdoor instead.
At this juncture, it’s worth saying a few basic things. Firstly, the Eurosceptics are right. Secondly, they’re right for the wrong reasons. Finally, the proponents of the European ideal have, on this occasion, debased themselves with a shoddy campaign and a shoddier piece of legislation which skirts dangerously close to justifying the xenophobic, insular viewpoints espoused by the Eurosceptic lobby.
Why are the Eurosceptics right? They’re right because, inevitably, this treaty would have been defeated if it had gone to a referendum in the UK. They’re also right because the Government quite clearly chose not to have a referendum purely because it knew that the treaty would have been defeated. On many other issues, Labour is desperately out of touch with its electorate - on this one, however, it’s perfectly in touch with them, and choosing to ignore and bypass them because of it.
So why are they right for the wrong reasons, then? All you need to do is look at how the “No” campaign in Ireland was conducted - and the manner in which it won the vote - to realise that there was never going to be a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty, even if the government had called such a referendum. Of those who voted “No” to the treaty in Ireland, most were not voting on the content of the treaty - they were voting based on mis-information, manipulated fears and false beliefs.
A few issues dominated the No vote in Ireland, all pushed forward by relatively fringe political groups (the extremist Catholic movement, Sinn Fein and various others). Fearmongering from these groups convinced parts of the electorate that the Lisbon Treaty would introduce abortion to Ireland “through the back door”, along with legal prostitution and a relaxation of the drug laws. More insidiously, the Lisbon “No” campaign preyed on the ugly side of the Irish national character which has emerged in recent years - the extraordinary xenophobia and blatant racism which has confronted people from the new EU states who have moved to Ireland to work.
If you thought our right-wing press were doing a good job of treating Polish immigrants like shit in the UK, you’ve seen nothing yet. Ireland, lacking the UK’s background of immigration (although that’s no excuse for a country which was itself one of the world’s most prolific sources of immigrant labour for centuries), has reacted ferociously and disgustingly to the people who have entered the country to work. Much of the Irish “No” vote was a vote against immigration and against “foreigners” - the fury of small-minded people being cleverly directed by political campaigners morally corrupt enough to turn racism to their own ends.
In fact, I’ve only heard one honest, genuine and informed reason for voting “No” in the referendum thus far - from voters who simply did not understand the treaty, having made the effort to do so, and chose to vote No rather than accept a constitution-altering document whose small print they could not fathom. I’ll come back to this in a second.
Under these circumstances, can you see what would happen if the UK had a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty? There’s no way in hell we’d actually get a vote - or even a debate - on the merits of the treaty. Instead, we’d have months of scaremongering, with the usual suspects sprinkling fear, uncertainty and doubt into the minds of voters not over the treaty, but over Europe itself. The Sun, the News of the World, the Daily Mail and the Express would have a field day, stirring up every bit of xenophobic, anti-Europe sentiment they could muster, repeating tired lies over European legislation (they still haven’t got over the “bendy bananas” and “metric martyr” stories, both of which have been conclusively debunked) and muttering darkly about foreign influence taking our sovereignty away. The delicious irony, of course, is the arguably the most powerful man in UK politics is, er, Rupert Murdoch - a foreign national who wields his power, and disseminates his dislike of the EU, in this country through his tools of foreign intervention, the Sun, the NOTW and Sky News…
A referendum on the Lisbon Treaty in the UK would be defeated, not because of any problem with the treaty, but because of the emotive, manipulative and dishonest campaign which would be waged by the Eurosceptic lobby. That’s why we’re not getting a referendum, frankly - and it’s a terrible shame and a massive democratic failure, because frankly, there are tons of problems in the treaty which should be aired, which should be the topic of a national debate and which should, ultimately, be put to a vote.
This is where Europe is failing its citizens. Even as a huge believer in the ideal of an open, co-operating and unified Europe, I have misgivings about the Lisbon Treaty - but more than that, I am appalled by the manner in which the treaty has been created, presented and pushed through ratification.
The reason why debate in Ireland was dominated by scaremongering, and part of the reason why the same thing would happen in the UK, is because the Yes campaign simply didn’t have any ammunition to throw back. The treaty, as a piece of legislation, is utter rubbish. It is vastly over-complicated and completely unreadable to anyone who wasn’t directly involved in the negotiation of the document. It is an appallingly bad piece of law, a testament to the horrific belief that all law must be obfuscated by unnecessary verbiage and constant references to external sources and documents.
In other words, there’s nothing there for people to relate to - nothing that governments can point at and say “look, read it for yourself - this is the structure of the new Europe we’re proposing”. Instead, we’re asked to take lawyers, politicians and civil servants at their word when they tell us that some very clever people have drafted this document, and here’s what it does, and to ignore all the people who say it’ll do anything else…
Law doesn’t have to be this way. Look at the constitution of the United States of America - or better again, and closer to home, look at the constitution of the Republic of Ireland. These are simple, plain-English documents which define and rule over every piece of law ever passed in those nations, but they’re so simple that they can be taught to primary school children. In Ireland, in fact, the constitution IS taught to primary school children - I recall it bring printed on the inside cover of one of our textbooks, and having to learn passages from it for homework.
What the EU has done here is to take a fundamental document defining the future of Europe, obfuscate it so that nobody can read it, then shove it through national parliaments without public consent. This is shoddy, non-democratic and frankly insulting to the electorates whom these people serve. Here in Britain, it’s typical of our present batch of politicians, who seem to think that fearmongering or simply doing things behind people’s backs are a better way to proceed than standing up for the principles of the actions they’re taking. Take the Human Rights Act - a piece of legislation which is a fundamental protection of our freedoms and rights, but which our politicians seem happy to watch being eviscerated by the howling right-wing press, too afraid, apparently, to take a stand in the defence of such an important piece of law.
I believe in Europe - and as such, I don’t want to see Europe progress through hidden channels, back-room deals and treaties signed into law by politicians without consulting their people. I want a vigorous debate on Europe, a chance for the Eurosceptic lobby to be shown up for the frauds, xenophobes and liars they really are, and for the principles of European co-operation and the value it has brought to the lives of British people to be brought into the light for all to see.
That’s not what we’re getting, and it disgusts me - and for that reason, as painful as it may be to stand on the same side of the fence as the Eurosceptics, I sincerely hope that the Irish “No” vote sends this whole sorry shambles back to the drawing board.
Technorati Tags: Daily Mail, EU, Europe, Eurosceptics, Lisbon Treaty, politics, The Sun, racism, referendum, Rupert Murdoch
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