Anti-immigration Sentiments Alive and Unwell in Britain

'A spectre is haunting Europe', so begins the Communist Manifesto, 'the spectre of communism.' But communism has given up the ghost (yes, pun fully intended) and no longer roams the continent clanging about claiming to be the voice of the people, of the common man and the worker. It's place has been taken by a new phantom, one which is potentially far more terrible than the old Marxian spectre. All over Europe, from Sweden, through the Netherlands and Belgium, into France and around the old Eastern bloc, the extreme right wing is making a resurgence. For over sixty years it had lain dormant and we could all think it had been banished from Europe's streets by the Soviets in the inferno and ruins of Berlin, but, no, it has risen anew.

Even in a country as seemingly tolerant as Britain the tendrils of extremism have spread into the farthest corners. A report, due out tomorrow, shows that almost half of all Britons 'would support an anti-immigration English nationalist party if it was not associated with violence and fascist imagery[.]' The report contains a few more surprises, most significant of which is that anti-immigrant sentiments are not merely harboured by white Britons but by other ethnic groups as well:

'According to the survey, 39% of Asian Britons, 34% of white Britons and 21% of black Britons wanted all immigration into the UK to be stopped permanently, or at least until the economy improved. And 43% of Asian Britons, 63% of white Britons and 17% of black Britons agreed with the statement that "immigration into Britain has been a bad thing for the country". Just over half of respondents – 52% – agreed with the proposition that "Muslims create problems in the UK".'

 The report hints at the origins of these fearful attitudes: 'This is not because British people are more moderate, but simply because their views have not found a political articulation.'

Is Britain, so long sheltered from the worst outporings of hatred seen on the Continent, on the brink of falling prey to elected racists sitting among our representatives in Westminster? Jon Cruddas, the Labour MP who saw off the threat of the BNP taking his seat in last year's election, thinks so. He points to a 'very real threat of a new potent political constituency built around an assertive English nationalism.' Fortunately for those of us who stand with Mr. Cruddas on the bulwarks of tolerance and anti-racism, the British electoral system of first-past-the-post will prevent parties like the BNP or a Geert Wilders-like figure winning more than a handful of seats in the House of Commons. But if the voting system is changed to the alternative vote, what then?

Human Rights Safe Without Acts or Treaties

Labour's Shadow Justice Secretary Sadiq Khan wrote an opinion piece in yesterday's Evening Standard in which he reveals a curious understanding about the state of human rights in Britain today. It seems that Mr. Khan believes that human rights, which are in essence normative constructs and examples of current thinking of what it means to be human, will cease to exist in Britain should the Human Rights Act be repealed or should Britain leave the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR). Of course, he knows full well, for he is clearly an intelligent person, that in modern-day Britain human rights are as much protected by the deeply-held convictions of the British people and their elected representatives in Parliament as by acts of Parliament and international treaties.

What's more, Mr. Khan seems to contradict himself in his thoughts on the continued adherence by Britain to the ECHR. First he writes that Britain "As signatories to the ECHR, we cannot just walk away from it. But we can appeal against court rulings and propose reforms to its remit and operation." The latter part is ostensibly the case, except that to reform it would require the unanimous consent of all parties to the treaty, something Mr. Khan knows to be practicably impossible. And there is no appeal possible against the judgments of the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg. But where he contradicts himself is in the first clause of the above quote; he later writes, you see, "The [Human Rights] Act was designed deliberately to preserve the long-held doctrine of parliamentary sovereignty: Parliament alone can decide whether to repeal or amend legislation." If Parliament is sovereign, an opinion I share with Mr. Khan, then Parliament can most certainly decide to walk away from an international treaty. There is no force in the world that has legal right to prevent the actions of a sovereign body.

In fact, human rights would most likely be more strongly protected if they were repatriated. The ECHR and the Strasbourg Court have left the British public with the wretched feeling that human rights are not a product of the shared understanding by a society of what is right and what is wrong, but merely that of 47 men and women ensconced on a bench near the banks of the Rhine. To withdraw from the ECHR and abolishing the Human Rights Act that depends on it would not be the disaster Mr. Khan would like us to believe it would be, but rather gives the British people the chance to re-engage with human rights and to determine anew what they believe human rights to be. The ECHR is almost 60 years old and human rights, far from being eternal, are subject to change and so every once in a while a society needs to reflect on what those rights are.

Mr. Khan's insistence on the dire necessity of an international human rights treaty betrays a lack of faith in the goodness of the British people, who if given the choice, will not seek a return to stoning or witchburning, but will rather uphold those rights they believe every breathing human being possesses by virtue of his existence. They do not need an international treaty telling them what their rights are, they know that full well themselves. International treaties defending human rights are most necessary for people subject to tyranny and oppression - even though they are hardly effective in these cases - but a mature society like Britain has no need for them. On the long journey of human rights, Britain is in the vanguard and we should not let decades-old treaties hold back.

Democratic Revolts and Foreign Policy

David Cameron is in Kuwait today as part of his grand Middle East tour which also saw him visit post-Mubarak Egypt - the first foreign leader to do so. While some commentators have tried to make an issue of the arms-dealing business men accompanying the Prime Minister, the nature of this long-since scheduled trade mission has been irrevokably altered by the winds of popular change sweeping the Arab World. First the people of Tunisia, then those of Egypt set each a momentous - and not to mention largely bloodless - step on the pitfall-strewn road to democracy, and now the streets of Bahrain and Libya are a-thunder with the roar of protest and the clattering hail of bullets and screams of missiles. May they soon throw of the yoke and chains of tyranny!

Mr. Cameron, aware of floods of revolution sweeping the region, has signalled his support for the people yearning for their long-denied liberty: "We stand with the people and governments who are on the side of justice, the rule of law and freedom." Apart from such a standard, boiler-plate remark he also said something far, far more remarkable. Quote the Guardian:

But he indicated that the demonstrations presented a challenge for Britain as he dismissed as a "false choice" the old calculation that authoritarian regimes needed to be supported as the price of ensuring stability.
"For decades, some have argued that stability required controlling regimes and that reform and openness would put that stability at risk," Cameron said.
"So, the argument went, countries like Britain faced a choice between our interests and our values. And to be honest, we should acknowledge that sometimes we have made such calculations in the past."
He added: "But I say that is a false choice. As recent events have confirmed, denying people their basic rights does not preserve stability – rather, the reverse."
The prime minister said Britain and other western countries cannot impose any democratic model on the Arab world, but stressed: "That's not an excuse, as some would argue, to claim that Arabs or Muslims can't do democracy – the so-called Arab exception.
"For me, that's a prejudice that borders on racism. It's offensive and wrong and it's simply not true."

Why, you may ask, is this so remarkable? Not because he acknowledges that Arab or Muslim societies are indeed capable of sustaining democracy - that is a basic ability of any man, one of whose basic hopes is to live life as he, or she, wishes. No, it is so because of the implication for Britain's foreign policy. Mr. Cameron - if he is true to his word, and we have no reason to doubt him - will now have to base his policies on withdrawing support from such 'controlling' regimes While he does stress that Britain will not interfere and impose democracy as Tony Blair did in supporting the invasion of Iraq, his statements can be taken to imply support for any democratic movement in the Middle East - which is a form of interference in itself.

The Prime Minister, then, finds himself in the classical dillema of foreign policy: who to support and when? A basic tenet of foreign policy used to be that a state deals with government in power in another state, or at least refrains from dealing with any rebel movements. This is of course and out-dated outlook, a relic of the pre- Second World War, Peace of Westphalia years. But a catious - and in my view wise - foreign policy is based on non-interference. We deal with the government of the day, but do not support it, nor anyone else in any state, whether they struggle for liberty or oppression. Our values mean we do not prop up dictators in other states, but at the same time should mean we do not overthrow them. Let the people - in this case in the Middle East - do that, let them be the sole instrument of revolution. We will extend the hand of friendship in freedom when they succeed, but sadly cannot do that any earlier. They must determine their own fate, as we in the West have done.

Non-interference will appear to put the interest in stability over the value of freedom in the short-term, but in the long term it will show that only democracy organically grown will flourish. Artificial democracy, like the West's attempts at de-colonization and regime change, will wither as it has no fruited soil to take root in. Mr. Cameron seems to have understood that non-interference does not mean supporting dictators, but rather not supporting anyone, except with cautious and carefully-chosen words, either of warning or welcome.

Honour Bound To Resign?

Nothing has gotten me so riled up ever since starting this blog than the government's proposal to sell large swathes of English woodland to the highest bidder, even though it had already become clear that the funds the scheme would produce would not so much as approach the nearest reaches of the amount desired by the cutting-happy lords of the Treasury. So you can imagine my relief when news came last week that the entire plan was to be abandoned as the Prime Minister rose in the Commons to announce the salvation of those verdant cathedrals and those hidden, leafy mazes and those long-winding paths of gold and blue and green. No trees will now be cut to slighter size, but there is one who has now felt the axeman's sharp edge.

Caroline Spelman, the Environment Secretary, has been thrown quite publicly, as the Americans put it, under the bus by her own political master. One Labour MP described Ms. Spelman's renunciation of the sell-off as a '"humiliating climb down," adding: "The Right Honourable Lady has been made to stand in the coroner [sic] with the dunce’s cap." Another Labour backbencher could but barely contain his obvious amusement at her fate: 'If there is any personal sympathy for the minister today, it's because she has been publicly humiliated by the Prime Minister.'

Indeed I do feel sympathy for Ms. Spelman. No one deserves to be treated in such a disrespectful - and frankly dishonourable - manner by the Prime Minister in whose Cabinet she serves. But it seems that she must - at the very least in part - share the blame for the debacle it so rightly turned into. The Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) was the first to settle its budget with the Treasury back in the autumn, but it now appears the settement can be re-opened by the Treasury should the holders of the pursestrings feel it is necessary. So not only was Ms. Spelman called to defend a policy that was so unpopular that David Cameron let her hold high the banner for it, only to cut her down when push came to shove, her reward for doing it, the promise she could limit the cuts her department had to make, was wholly hollow and made too rashly months ago.

If Ms. Spelman had any sense of personal honour, she should resign as Environment Secretary. Having been sacrificed on the bloody altar of popular opinion, the trustworthiness of her words has withered to nothing. Whenever she now speaks out on anything, all we will hear is Mr. Cameron whispering to her the exact words she is to say. No politican, whose bond with her electors is based solely on trust, can be seen as a mere cypher for her master. Honour is in turn the basis for that trust and now she has lost her's, Ms. Spelman should give serious consideration to resigning her post. Such a dramatic act would show to the voter that she stands for something. If she then goes on to support the Government vigorously from the backbenches her voice will be that much greater when she inevitably returns to the Cabinet again in the future.

More on the Forest Sale

In only the second post I wrote on this blog back in October I commented on the British Government's proposal to sell large tracts of English woodland to the highest bidder. I saw little redeeming features in the entire scheme, as the sole objective I could identify was the need to raise money to cut down the ever-increasing deficit. But making money is never an objective worth pursuing in itself. Without any goal except the need to sell and sell what Harold Macmillan - that great hero of the small-c conservative - the 'family silver', the entire plan is daft. When Mr. Macmillan criticised Margaret Thatcher for her obsession with privatisation he was thinking of the railways and the utility companies. Just imagine what he would have made of this selling of the nation's natural heritage. To give the full quote:

"The sale of assets is common with individuals and states when they run into financial difficulties. First, all the Georgian silver goes, and then all that nice furniture that used to be in the salon. Then the Canalettos go."

And the Canalettos are going indeed. The first Eton-educated Prime Minister since 'Supermac' is behaving in the most unconservative fashion.

Having said all this, I read in the Guardian this morning that the scheme gets worse and worse by strides. Previously I assumed that the objective of the sell-off was to raise money. Not so it seems. This government is turning out to be so incompetent that even simple value-based arithmatic is beyond them. A government report "shows that government can expect the disposal of the land to cost £679m over 20 years but the benefits will only be £655m."

Selling off the woodlands of Britain had no practical benificial purpose but money and now even that is no longer a valid argument. No one stands to gain from this sale, not the public, who will inevitably lose some of the rights they enjoy now to marvel at the indescribable wonders and pleasures of nature, not the government, who will lose acreage and money to boot, and not the companies and charities who are to buy the land, as the report shows that private ownership and usage is economically unviable. Still the government is pressing forward on the matter.

Perhaps, then, I was too hasty before. It is not the (if only remotely) understandable motive of monetary gain that is driving the sale, but the ideologically blinkered concept that privitisation is always good and public ownership is always bad. I'll leave it to you, reader, to decide whether this is true, but I hope you can infer my opinion on the matter from my two posts on the great forest sale.