Though Cowards Flinch

(Warning: this post is 3,931 words long)

Adam Wilcox has written two short pieces for Liberal Conspiracy which demonstrate his anxiety at the Papal visit – now in its second day – and his strong feeling that the Pope should be arrested. The second piece draws upon four main themes to his anxiety of the visit: 1) The Pope is not blameless on the sexual abuse cover-up; 2) paying for a wealthy church to visit is itself an insult to the taxpayer; 3) the Pope entering the UK when the Phelps family, for example, cannot, shows a level of hypocrisy – since their views on homosexuals are about the same; 4) the Pope should not be above the law, and certainly the British constabulary should not be complicit in the Pope’s being above the law.

In this entry I aim to discuss at length 1 and 4, while adding 2 into the latter, and 3 into a fifth element which discusses opposition to the views of Pope Benedict.

Is the Pope blameless on the sexual abuse cover-up?

Ever since the Pope was invited to visit the UK, a select few entered fantasy mode whereby attempting to arrest Benedict became the number one wet dream. The top names of those fantasists were Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens, whose words in the pages of newspapers and blogs were little more than PR folly.

Their fantasy entered phase two when they both decided upon a legal lackey to help bring their dream to fruition.

Enter Geoffrey Robertson QC.

It was not too long before the discussion among the three turned from arresting the pontiff on account of his supposed complicity in the cover up of sexual abuses, to opposition of the Foreign Office’s position on the Pope’s international standing and entitlement to Head of State immunity, to whether the Holy See fits the criteria of statehood.

That hasn’t put a fork in the spokes of the fantasy, for it is alive and well – memetically charged some might say.

But the fantasy, now infiltrated by reality, has caveats. Nonetheless, Robertson will not back down.

In a public seminar at the London School of Economics (LSE) recently, publicising his new book on the Pope, Robertson put forward his case for why the Foreign Office ought to change its opinion on the status of the Vatican, and his charge that the Pope was not ignorant of child abuse occurring under his watch.

Robertson makes note of a web of lies. When Head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Pope Benedict, then Cardinal Ratzinger, said that less than 1% of Priests were involved in the sexual abuse of minors in America. The very well respected John Jay College of Justice put the figure closer to 4.3%. The church replied saying that this was an American problem, which it most certainly was not.

There were notable cases in the US, cited by Robertson, such as Father Lawrence C Murphy and his abuse of 200 deaf choir boys, which, according to Robertson, led some Catholics in America to blame such things as the Jewish media, secularisation, and the Devil. But cases elsewhere started to emerge, necessitating the sum of $18m spent in Canada on a Truth and Reconciliation Programme for example. Additionally there had been 30 cases revealed in Melbourne, Australia, alone, and 50 cases of child abuse among Priests in Malta, to name only a few.

The sexual abuse scandal in the Los Angeles archdiocese would prove to be the event that awoke the sentiment that Catholicism and child abuse were almost synonymous – in spite of the fact that, as Marxist and Catholic academic Terry Eagleton puts it, praising Robertson on his book “[t]he first child sex scandal in the Catholic church took place in AD153, long before there was a “gay culture” or Jewish journalists for bishops to blame it on”.

Robertson levels the charge that Canon Law is a cover for Papal secrecy and that the Holy See exploits its privileged place in the UN while stopping at nothing to secure the good name of the church – even if that means turning a blind eye, or issuing weak charges, against sexual abuse carried out by Priests.

Attempting to debunk the claim that Pope Benedict has been a reformer of any revolutionary worth, Robertson notes that amidst the changes affecting Canon Law earlier this year, the Pope refused amendment to provide clear evidence of child molestation to police or ensure that the punishment to fit such heinous crimes as the inappropriate treatment of children by a Priest result in automatic defrocking.

Robertson’s appearance at the LSE was met with huge applause from a packed audience, and the first round of questions when he had finished his 45 minute talk looked to testify the fact that he had almost universal support in the room. But the second round proved rather different. A man, who went nameless, accused Robertson of mishandling his information: “5% have been accused” the man said, in response to the speaker’s earlier use of statistics, “not found guilty”.

In reply to something Robertson opened on, the anonymous man retorted that “Canonical law is not a parallel law [to the rule of law practised in most countries, but it] only deals with issues inside the church [the charge that it cannot involve police or civil law] is utter nonsense”. To everyone’s disappointment of a meaty dialogue between the speaker and the angry audience member, Robertson instead told him to buy his book and observe the appendix at the back explaining the operation of Canon Law – leaving it at that.

Another major point of contention between the speaker and his angry audience member related to something Robertson spoke of at some length, and is indeed the main element of charge levelled at the Pope and the accusation that he covered up abuse in the church. That element is the infamous “H” – now, of course, known to be Father Peter Hullermann.

Tristana Moore for Time magazine reported that Father Hullermann had been assigned to the Western city of Essen, Germany, in the 1970s where in 1979 he forced an 11-year-old boy to perform oral sex on him. Instead of being reported to the civil authorities he was sent to undertake psychotherapy with Dr Werner Huth, where he was diagnosed as a narcissist like other paedophiles.

Ratzinger at the time was Archbishop of Munich, a post he served from 1977-1982. Owing to this, and the fact that many profiles of him suggest he was a notorious micro-manager (Johann Hari, for example, and “a reader” of the Atlantic), accusations go forth on Ratzinger for having allowed a known paedophile to be moved from Essen to receive treatment in Munich – which Ratzinger reportedly approved of.

Since then, Father Gerhard Gruber, the then Vicar-General of the Munich Archdiocese, has taken responsibility for employing Hullermann from February 1980 until August 1982, and assigning him elsewhere – leading some to believe that Gruber has been scapegoated to protect the Pope.

This point cannot be substantiated upon, neither can the point about Ratzinger’s micro-management being reason to believe he knew of every odious act taking place in Catholic circles (no pun intended) in Germany, therefore to pontificate (an intentional pun) about it is purely conjecture.

While Hullermann made his way to Munich, a Jesuit Priest in Essen sent Dr Huth a letter informing him about Hullermann’s paedophilia before the Priest underwent therapy. Dr Huth set three conditions for Hullermann’s continued work; 1) he is not to work with children; 2) he is not to drink alcohol (for the reason that he used alcohol when abusing children); and 3) he has at his side at all times a mentor.

The same Time magazine article as cited above notes that Dr Huth made this clear to church officials, including to the auxiliary bishop in the archdiocese of Munich and Freising. But these condition were not met and in 1986 Hullermann abused another minor, for which he received an 18-month suspended sentence, before returning to the church carrying out pastoral duties.

In 2008, Dr Huth had been contacted and told that Hullermann was working with children in the Bavarian town of Garching an der Alz, supervising 150 alter boys. Huth quickly consulted with church officials, after which Hullermann was moved to the Spa town of Bad Tölz and made in charge of counselling services for tourists and visitors.

What all this proves is a series of very serious errors by individuals at the time. The same has been said by many others, even those who seek to clear the name of the current Pope, such as Thomas Bridge, who said recently:

I am not denying there were failings – at both the local and at the Vatican level – to get to grips with the problem [...] It [however] does appear that on the abuse issue at least [Pope Benedict] is devoting more time to actions than perhaps he is to words.

This sentiment is shared among many, who do not seek to excuse the actions of the Priests involved in abuse, but know that to claim Pope Benedict was complicit in its cover up is a point unable to be substantiated upon.

Of course, for those who say cover ups would have benefited the Pope – inasmuch as, in the words of Geoffrey Robertson referring to the report made by Judge Yvonne Murphy into the Sexual abuse scandal in the Catholic archdiocese of Dublin, it’s about keeping the good name of the church and Priests from scandal – this all runs contrary to the work carried out by Ratzinger outing child molesters in the church later on, initiating “strict new norms for dealing with sexual abuse cases”, and in his words “ridding the filth”.

Certainly the point that Benny has done a good deal addressing child abuse in the Catholic church is not lost on some of the nations top Catholic writers. Damian Thompson reminds us that it was Benedict who prosecuted Mexican paedophile Priest Marcial Maciel Degollado despite pressure from popular support, including “Cardinal Angelo Sodano and John Paul’s secretary, Msgr (now Cardinal) Stanislaw Dziwisz.”

Some members of the church were keen to shove the issue to one side for the reason that Degollado was a ferocious fundraiser, having secured assets worth around twenty-five billion Euros. In a line that can hardly be matched for its dry wit, Thompson notes that: “This old pervert was the most effective fundraiser in the history of the Church – and the most crooked since Judas Iscariot.”

Elsewhere, Thompson cannot hardly keep his dislike of the Pope John Paul II contained. In an article bound to wind up many supporters of the previous Pope, citing heavily from noteworthy writer John Allen of the National Catholic Reporter, the Vatican has not revealed the real Ratzinger story because “to make Ratzinger look good, they’d have to make others look bad [and] to salvage the reputation of Benedict XVI it might be necessary to tarnish that of Pope John Paul II”.

It is obviously not unknown to Thompson that:

In 2004, John Paul – ignoring the canon law charges against Maciel – honored him in a Vatican ceremony in which he entrusted the Legion [of Christ and the Regnum Christi movement] with the administration of Jerusalem’s Notre Dame Center, an education and conference facility. The following week, Ratzinger took it on himself to authorize an investigation of Maciel.

It is interesting how some have it that in order for the present Pope to retain his good name, others like Fr Gruber must be scapegoated, whereas for others the Vatican downplays the Pope’s good name to a degree in order to retain John Paul II with any dignity at all.

Thompson goes further still. In a piece, with a title also likely to have stirred crazy Pope John Paul’s supporters – Pope John Paul II ignored Ratzinger’s pleas to pursue sex abuse Cardinal – he begins:

Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger tried to persuade Pope John Paul II to mount a full investigation into a cardinal who abused boys and young monks, one of the Church’s most senior figures revealed yesterday. But Ratzinger’s opponents in the Vatican managed to block the inquiry. As the future Benedict XVI put it: “The other side won.”

The pervert cardinal was the late Hans Hermann Groer, removed as Archbishop of Vienna in 1995 following sex allegations. The source for the story is Groer’s successor in Vienna, Cardinal Christoph Schoenborn, an intellectual whom some commentators have tipped as a possible future Pope.

That’s quite a revelation, in my book – but it doesn’t fit the script that the Benedict-hating media have written, so we’re not hearing too much about it.

The point being that Ratzinger was not someone who simply wanted to brush all things scandalous under the carpet, he was not deterred by popular sentiment when outing child molesters. This is not a character trait of his that is spoken about too much, now that he is touring the UK.

Furthermore, key officials point out that keeping secrecy about church matters does not exempt bishops from reporting such unpalatable cases to the civil authorities – much like keeping a company’s secrets secret does not in any way mean they can remain unaccounted for by the law. Mgr Charles Scicluna, for example, speaking to Gianni Cardinale, has said that:

In some countries with an Anglo-Saxon legal culture, but also in France, the bishops – if they become aware of crimes committed by their priests outside the sacramental seal of Confession – are obliged to report them to the judicial authorities. We’re dealing with an onerous duty because these bishops are forced to make a gesture comparable to that of a parent who denounces his or her own son. Nonetheless, our instruction in these cases is to respect the law.

Back on the subject of Munich, after Dr Huth had found out about Hullermann working in Bad Tölz and had finished consulting with a church official, Hullermann was suspended of all duties, while the Archdiocese of Munich and Friesing admitted breaking church orders to ban Hullermann from all duties, and Hullermann’s superior, prelate Josef Obermaier, stepped down assuming responsibility for “grave errors”.

Grave errors indeed have been made, but to this day, no evidence has been brought to the table which can affirm the present Pope had any input or complicity in the covering up of sexual abuse in the Catholic church.

The law as regards the Pope

To strengthen his case against the Pope, Geoffrey Robertson calls into question the Holy See being designated as a state. In his article for the Guardian entitled Put the Pope in the Dock, he notes that:

papal states were extinguished by invasion in 1870 and the Vatican was created by fascist Italy in 1929 when Mussolini endowed this tiny enclave – 0.17 of a square mile containing 900 Catholic bureaucrats – with “sovereignty in the international field … in conformity with its traditions and the exigencies of its mission in the world”.

During the public seminar at the LSE, Robertson says that the Vatican fails to contain even the most basic tenet of a state: people. Looking at the issue Dapo Akande, writing for the European Journal of International Law, says that:

The size of population or territory are irrelevant for the purposes of Statehood. What is important is that the entity possesses those criteria as well as the two other criteria for Statehood – which are: a government in effective control of the territory and independence (or what is called “capacity to enter into legal relations” in the words of the Montevideo Convention on the Rights and Duties of States 1935)

Since the Holy See meets those other criteria it is legitimately a state. Nations such as Great Britain could kick up a fuss if they wanted, but it is not likely. The Pope, as a Head of State, therefore enjoys immunity under section 20 of the UK’s State Immunity Act (1978). In reply to the question Christopher Hitchens asked in May this year – Is the Vatican a Sovereign State? – the answer that Akande would give is “even if the Vatican is not a State, the Holy See (as a separate entity) has a special status in international law which gives it rights that are in some cases analogous to sovereign rights.” But regardless, whether Robertson, or anyone else, agrees or not, the Pope is a Head of the State of the Holy See, making the legalities of arresting him in this country extremely unlikely.

But actually, Robertson probably realises this. During the question and answer session at the LSE, an audience member enquired as to how one would operate an arrest on the Pope. Robertson, not expecting such a frank question, answered that one would probably have to do it under international criminal law in a country where the principles of universal jurisdiction are held, citing Germany or Belgium, but ruling out applicability to the UK (though this is a point of much contention, the debate of which Joshua Rozenburg recently added to). One would have to file crimes against humanity for the widespread systematic abuse of children and the doctrine of command responsibility, used against Charles Taylor and Slobodan Milošević, which is in article 27 of the Rome Treaty, where the commander of a state is liable irrespective of official capacity in the crime. The article itself reads thus:

1. This Statute shall apply equally to all persons without any distinction based on official capacity. In particular, official capacity as a Head of State or Government, a member of a Government or parliament, an elected representative or a government official shall in no case exempt a person from criminal responsibility under this Statute, nor shall it, in and of itself, constitute a ground for reduction of sentence.
2. Immunities or special procedural rules which may attach to the official capacity of a person, whether under national or international law, shall not bar the Court from exercising its jurisdiction over such a person.

Though surely, as the blogger at Heresy Corner seems to imply in an entry entitled Dawkins and the Pope, the judicial initiative would have to come from the country where the abuse took place, and further, as the blogger on the Church Mouse blog notes, the international criminal court (ICC) has no retrospective jurisdiction prior to its creation in 2002, and public or private prosecutions brought against Pope Benedict would first have to convince the Crown Prosecution Service that he was somehow responsible.

Even some of those most stridently against the Pope, PZ Myers for instance, accept that the likelihood of an arrest is low. Though Myers himself, commenting on the Heresy Corner comments thread, said that: “I don’t think anything will come of [the legal threats levelled against the Pope], either…but the effort should be made”.

Never wanting to be one spoiling the fun of those who demand the impossible, though it is quite clear that the Pope cannot be arrested in this country. However those who think he can be, should certainly stop complaining about how much the security is going to cost the taxpayer of this country (such as Terry Sanderson, President of the National Secular Society, who, recalls Andrew Brown, said on the comments thread of an article by Brown that “the security costs alone for the visit would far dwarf the £20m it will otherwise cost” – despite the fact that they will cost around £1.5m).

Which leaves me to quickly conclude this part by saying that since Theos – the public theology think-tank – found in an online poll of 2,005 adult Britons that “77% do not agree the taxpayer should help shoulder the bill for the four-day trip even though it is a state visit” and that “76% rejected [sic] taxpayer funding for the visit on the grounds that he is a religious figure” in order for this to be credible, all heads of state from any country should pay for themselves to make visits – maybe this should be worth considering.

Opposition to the views of Pope Benedict

According to Geoffrey Robertson in his public seminar, doctors in El Salvador must report to the police women who try to self-terminate their foetuses. Currently 1000 women await trial. Condom packets in Brazil are apparently stamped with a warning that they offer no protection against AIDS – these measures are not taken in the name of received wisdom, but are in the name of Catholicism. And it is right and necessary for Catholics and non-Catholics alike to oppose it.

A few days ago human rights campaigner Peter Tatchell made a documentary where he demonstrated the reasons why Catholics and non-Catholics should vehemently oppose the teachings of the current Pope.

He noted in the film that once upon a time Ratzinger was a very liberal academic theologian, well placed to promote the values of Vatican II – the hub of reformist Catholic sentiment. But his views began to change. The ball started rolling when a group of unruly students, at the time protesting in the university Ratzinger was teaching in, broke into the lecture theatre where Ratzinger was delivering a seminar, making a “profound impact” upon the future Pope. It was here, as Tatchell implies with input from Hans Küng – a former friend of Ratzinger – that Ratzinger began to appeal to more conservative thinking and started to become alienated with democratic procedures, thus “rolling back the liberalism of Vatican II”.

Tatchell’s parting shot is that Pope Benedict wants to shape the church in to his own conservative views – something Peter Hitchens recently warned right wing Anglicans not to be too impressed by, since a good deal of left wing Catholics are doing their best to make sure Benedict’s visit to the UK is a bad one; thus ensuring the death knell of conservative coloured Catholicism.

Damian Thompson, this time in his scathing critique of Tatchell’s documentary, says that:

The teachings of the Catholic Church on sexual morality are NOT innovations of Joseph Ratzinger. He inherited them, he is faithful to them, and even if he wished to permit artificial birth control, abortion or extra-marital sexual acts he could not do so.

This of course is very weak argument. Either you oppose the views of Ratzinger, or you dismiss his level of nonchalance. But for someone like Thompson, who has otherwise praised Ratzinger for his getting the job done on rooting out paedophile Priests, and his overturning the non-commitment of John Paul II, this is not the same character profile of Ratzinger who stays faithful to views he opposes – because this must be Thompson’s point: he cannot change those things he inherits, but would if he could do so. Otherwise, it is entirely acceptable to oppose the views of Ratzinger, since they are likely to be very similar on artificial birth control, abortion or extra-marital sexual acts as that of the Church.

And this is the point I would like to end on; claims that Ratzinger was complicit in covering up sexual abuse cannot be substantiated upon; he cannot be arrested as he enjoys the immunity of a Head of State; the Holy See fits the criteria for being a state; but by all means oppose the views of Benedict (or at least the views he has accepted), it is the privilege of Catholics and non-Catholics alike.

Shreen Ayob in her capacity as activist has called for opponents of stoning and flogging to gather to central London tomorrow to join support of Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani.

I have written a few items explaining why the case against Ashtiani is a perversion of justice, and how Iran is practising a judicial system contrary to Islamic teachings.

In my original piece on the case I speak about the exploited use of Article 105 of the Islamic Penal Code of Iran which states “The Shari’a Judge can act upon his own knowledge in the cases of [defending] the God’s Rights and People’s Rights and carry out the punishment constituted by the God and it is necessary that he documents his knowledge.”

Furthermore, I note how Iran, by exploiting a loophole in Islamic law, seems dubious measured against the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, to which Iran is a signatory. Article 14, paragraph 1 of this convention states that everyone be equal before the law, and be entitled to a fair and public hearing by an impartial tribunal established by law.

In another piece I point out the intimidation felt by Mohammad Mostafaei, the lawyer of Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani, at the hands of Iranian authorities.

In a piece on the Turkish premier Recep Tayyip Erdogan I mention the attempts by him and President Lula of Brazil to change Ahmadinejad’s opinion on the case, and their attempts to awaken the will in the Iran President to allow Ashtiani to be extradited to Brazil – an attempt which unfortunately failed.

And lastly, I mention Ashtiani as a reason why the UK left should forget George Galloway and question his support for the Iranian President.

For the pursuit of justice in Iran, I will give my support in Central London tomorrow.

In keeping with tradition, the final day of the County Championship season sees the publication of my annual CricketBlog XI, in which I pretend bloggers play cricket and reward the ones who have played well this season. 

Note that Carl Raincoat would have been in the side after a strong showing this year, but the rules do not allow for a member of the sport’s governing body, the TCF, also to play in the team.

Without further ado:

1) Chris Dillow, Stumbling and Mumbling

As dependable as ever, Dillow just keeps on going.  High quality performances day in day out.  You know he’s never going to stick around all day, and indeed there are occasions when he gives it all away just when he looks set for a massive one, but he very rarely fails at the top of the order, and usually gets you off to a good start. 

2) Bob Piper, Bob Piper’s blog

Piper’s form did desert him early on in the season, and there were times when he really looked a little past his best, but he’s more than made up for it in the latter half.  A good, solid, no-nonsense leftie, you know he’s always going to take it to the attack from the off, and he complements Dillow’s more measured approach.  His new look appears to have worked wonders, and he’s back, brimming with confidence and not a little brio, though it might be lager.

3) Cath Elliott, Too Much To Say for Myself

Everything you look for in a number 3.  Dogged, determined and single-minded in her pursuit of what she sees as important.  Especially good against hostile but erratic right-armers, she responds like for like with some blistering shots without ever losing her sangfroid.  A real professional, and a real team player who’ll hang in there for the greater good.

4) Paul Sagar, Bad Conscience

It’s early days, but this youngster looks like the real deal, and it’s that raw potential that sees him force his way into the team.  He knows how to build a long stay at the blog, and he’s just as capable of wearing an attack down with an almost Hobbesian batting style as he is of pulling out the big shots.  One to watch, though he does have to avoid that tendency to cut when it’s not needed.

5) Duncan Weldon, Duncan’s Economic Blog

Only back in the game mid-season after an enforced break, Weldon’s still building back up to full form.  Form, though, is temporary; Minskian class analysis is permanent.  Weldon’s style looks conventional enough, but he can up the pace and destroy an attack when he’s in the mood.  If there’s one criticism, it’s that he sometimes doesn’t look entirely focused on his own performance, so busy is he helping out others.

6)  Left Outside (w)

Every team needs a safe pair of hands behind the blogs, and LO has really come into his own this season, not withstanding a late season dip in form as transfer rumours got the better of him.  Things are now resolved in this department, and we can look forward to some really capable blog keeping for years to come, as well as the occasional explosive assault on the opposition.

7) Warren Mosler, Mosler Economics

A very exciting player, and one of only two overseas inclusions for this year.  Mosler is actually the only rightie in the team (though Dillow occasionally switch hits), but in truth, while he can put together substantial and often quite orthodox innings, he’s really in the side for his mix of googlies and doosras, with blogging that sometimes seems to defy logic but snares you in the end.  An exciting performer, and one who may well gain a higher profile over the next season or two.

8) Don Paskini

After a quiet season last time around, Paskini’s back with a vengeance.  A true all rounder, with some really substantial contributions on behalf the team, he can also deliver surprising hostile deliveries at the opposition when they least expect it.

9) Laurie Penny, Penny Red et al.

A tricky choice this one.  Penny’s always been a bit erratic, but the reality is that she can, on her day, be a star performer, with a dazzling array of  delivery styles. Her slower one does need working on, but it can only be a matter of time before she gets that too.  She’s still a youngster, and is vital to a team is showing signs of age, but as her profile grows she does need to guard against what many in the game have described as Toynbeeism.  Time will tell, but the next period in her development is crucial.

10) Kate Belgrave, Hangbitch 

First of the tearaway duo leading the all-out attack, Belgrave knows how to get stuck in.  Some fearsome deliveries up her sleeve, she knows how to dish the sledging out too.  New Zealand’s loss is Cricketblog’s gain.  Some problems abiding by the rules of the game, especially when it comes to showing her fanny, but despite all this her no-nonsense ‘up and at ‘em’ approach still refreshes the parts other cricketbloggers cannot reach.

11) Louise Whittle, Harpymarx

In truth, a quiet end to the season, and there have to be doubts about Whittle’s future in the team, but her performances in the Spring, especially when confronting the New Labour team, were outstandingly hostile.  We think she’s got a couple of seasons left in her if she works on her anger mismanagement and delivery technique.

Today, I was recalling the time I worked in a school in Essex about 18 months ago with a colleague. The school itself was populated almost wholly – with the exception of two boys – with children from the local traveller community, many of whom lived on the largest site of its kind in Europe.

I was saying how everyday was a constant battle with the local press, who were keen on repeating and adding to local anxieties about the community, and the local council too – who made it almost their entire electoral campaign to smear and spread loathing against the community.

Taking a quick peek on twitter I noticed that the blogger Mick Hall – Organized Rage - has an entry up about travellers from that community, who are currently having their homes “wrenched” from them, to quote his very emotive term.

Looking around, I can see very little on the subject, other than a piece by the Socialist Worker. My guess as to why is that the eviction has been a constant theme for a long time. The council were going to remove them a long time ago – it has only just been able to get word from the top and go ahead with their demolition.

It looks very real, and on a wider scale, than previous eviction attempts, and I’m sure it will get plenty of press attention, so I wanted to dip into my blog archive, and repost here some background on the site, and the attempt to remove the communities – at a time when this is becoming a running mode of action in Western Europe.

[original entry is here]

I smiled when I saw Antonia Bance’s ‘Why I’m voting for Ed Balls’ leadership at Labour list , because it’s very close in structure and content to my ‘Why I’m supporting Ed Balls’  from six weeks ago.

Here are the key chunks of both posts:

1) Personal leftie caveat

Antonia: I don’t write paeans of praise to middle-aged white guys in slightly crumpled suits……..So, I promise you this isn’t going to be one of those saccharine pieces that have filled our feed readers and bored us to tears all summer long.

Paul:  I’m one of the awkward squad. Determinedly leftwing, suspicious of all leader types, difficult to please, I know what I want from the Labour party, and I want it yesterday.

2) Reason why Ed Balls is better than other candidates

Antonia: My number one issue going into this leadership election is this: I do not want a leader who’ll compromise with the Tories and the Lib Dems on cuts.. ..Ed Balls has been the only candidate who stands strongly against this. The way back to power isn’t about showing that we’re a serious party who’d cut just as much but somehow more nicely, more carefully, just the fat, just efficiency savings… The way back to power is showing that there is an alternative….

Paul:  Ed Balls has also shown the best understanding of where we should be on the deficit.  He knows his stuff about how cutting spending now will take demand out of the economy at the worst possible time, and he’s prepared to stick it to the Tories straight on this. 

He knows, I think, that we have to make it clear where we stand on cuts, and that half-baked approaches which accept the cuts are necessary at all doesn’t make us ‘credible’; they make us look like would-be Tories who aren’t quite up to the job of being Tories.

3) Begrudging but then full support

Antonia:  Unlike most of these sorts of articles I’ll even tell you where I disagree with him (His comments about migrants devalued their contribution to the UK; to his credit he heard me out and explained his position. We still don’t agree.)

Only one candidate stood up and told us how he’d do it, and why. Go read what he said here. That candidate is Ed Balls, and I’ll be voting for him.

Paul: I’m a hard man to please, and Ed Balls has got a way to go still before his redemption from the sins of his association with some of the worst of New Labour is gained. 

 But I believe in second chances, and Ed Balls has earned it.

But it’s not just me and Antonia who’ve gone through this process of  begruding conversion, from distrust of a high-profile new Labour figure through to an assessment that, through his words and actions, Ed Balls has proved himself the best man for the job.

I’m actually quite suprised by how many self-respecting lefties have also made the journey. 

There’s Tim Flatman before he headed off to Sudan:

The results of my agonising: On leadership, Ed Balls 1 because he’s been best attacking Tories & offering alternative economic narrative.

There’s Duncan Weldon, a proper economist as well as Labour member:

Ed Balls is combative, capable of achieving things and seems to best grasp Britain’s immediate economic problems. He has taken the fight to the coalition and set out the “there is an alterative” economic case well……

[A]fter much soul searching, I’m voting Ed Balls one, David Miliband two and Ed Miliband three.

There’s Miljenko, who’s still making up his mind, but drawn towards Ed Balls by the clarity of his opposition:

This tweet has helped generate an interesting train of thought:

‘Right wing papers don’t win elections 4 the Tories but by being timid and pandering to them, we lost our true values’ @edballsmp……

Whatever else I have learnt today, I have learnt that Ed Balls really does know his stuff.

There are other lefties and down the land, many of whom haven’t yet made their final choice, who are veering towards the one candidate who’s put the ‘political’ back in ‘political economy’, and the ‘opposition’ back in being in opposition; while David makes bold but unsubstantiated claims  on how he can ‘take out’ the Coalition, Ed B’s been getting on with opposing the Coalition.

Many of those people may vote for New Labour Ed as a bit of a guilty secret, just as, in the end, they end up not quite being able to vote for the other Ed, the Ed who’s just a little too keen to distance himself from his recent past, and from the mistakes New Labour made.

Of course there are many more lefties who won’t or can’t bring themselves to associate their vote with a symbol of New Labour past.   Louise is having none of it, Carl’s thought about it and decided against it, and Phil’s thought about it even more before deciding against it. 

Had he acted on more of the advice I offered as his campaign manager, he would be in an even better position now in the leadership race. 

Realistically, it is too late to do too much more now, but I leave him with the bones of one more big vote winner from that advice:

[H]e will build on his recent acknowledgment that the Labour’s pre-election plans for spending cuts were wrong, by setting out precisely, and using his media presence to do so numerically, why we do not need cuts now, and the extent to which the Tories are lying about the ‘necessity’ for cuts.

He will develop an aggressive counter-narrative to the Tories ‘debt crisis’ claims, by invoking MMT/post-Keynesian theory where necessary, in order to start to portray the Tories as liars and cheats when it comes to economic fundamentals.

In particular, he will build on the lessons from this post by Duncan Weldon, as well as the comments that follow (from Vimothy and Duncan) about the need to adopt radical economic logic as part of a socialist counter-narrative.

This will, in any event, stand him in good stead if the leadership is not to be his, but if his performance sees him into the Shadow Chancellor post.

I’ve been toying with the idea of writing a proper book for a while, provisionally called ‘The Fifth Tradition of Labour’. 

I’ve never tried to write a book but, heh, there’s no point looking back in a few years and wondering what might have been, and the words flow quite well.  So why not?

As many of the bits of the book started out life as blogposts, I thought I’d copy in a bit of the main pitch here. 

The book proposal and some drafting is done, and its ready to send off to literary agents and the like.  There’s even an exciting and well-known person writing some bits with me, but whose identity must remain secret for the moment – not because s/he said so, but in order to maintain an air of mystery about the whole thing and thereby entice agents.

So if you’re a publisher or an agent who wants to get her/his hands on what will almost certainly the most talked-about book of 2011 (in my house), please feel free to contact me to discuss terms, or whatever it is you do at the start of the publishing process.

Here’s some of what I’m saying in my submission blurb.

The Fifth Tradition of Labour

The book is ambitious. 

It does nothing less than advocate the conscious development of a new ‘tradition’ within the Labour movement. 

It seeks to move beyond the old antagonisms betweenthose on the Labour left who believe in the parliamentary road to socialism, and regard themselves as ‘realists’, and the revolutionary left who believe that successive generations of Labour politicians have betrayed the working class, and that liberal and parliamentary democracy is incompatible with socialism. 

It sets this out in the context of an analysis of four different Labour traditions that emerged within the twentieth century, and seeks to show how much of the later disjuncuture within the labour movement arises from misunderstandings about what the state is, and how this relates to economic power structures. 

Epistemologically speaking, I seek to ‘decentre’ accounts (and folk memories) of political activism to show how the different traditions emerged and were then interpreted and re-interpreted according to the beliefs political actors and commentators brought to them.

While this is the theoretical framework for the book, it is not a book on political theory, and no specific chapter on theory is planned. 

Most of the planned chapters, the bones of some of which some I have already set out in at Though Cowards Flinch and The Bickerstaffe Record, get down to the real nitty-gritty of current operational codes and practice within the labour movement (and the non-aligned left), and show how these can and should be changed for the betterment of the labour movement overall.   The ‘decentring’ of the account will be woven into this exploration of the historical development of the four traditions.

This engagement with real practice – warts and all – is, I contend, what gives the proposed book its ‘Unique Selling Point’, grounded as it is in my own experiences of grassroots labour activism (and successful electoral campaigning to date), and a good understanding of how the (macro) political economy relates to the currently dominant economic narrative of the right played out national,  local and individual levels.

The different membership rates for an influential Centre-Left think-tank and an influential right-wing think-tank are quite interesting:

Compass (Centre-Left) (annual online rates)

Waged:  £27.50
Unwaged:  £12.50
CLP: £42.50
Trade Union / NGO / think-tank: £299

ResPublica (Right-Wing) (annual rates)

Bronze Membership: £250

Silver Membership: £1,000

Gold Membership:  £5,000

Premium Membership: £12,000

Partner: £25,000

Founder: £50,000 per year

On the right, money talks.

I’m interested in what fellow TCF blogger Carl has been writing about ‘epistemic closure’ in Conservatism, and his contribution over at the Res Publica blog is a worth a read, as is the defence by (presumably) a Res Publica staffer of British Conservatism against the charge that it is following American Conservatism. 

As I set out in a previous post, I too think Carl may still be drawing too many parallels between where the American and British Conservative movements are at the moment, but a couple of things I’ve read during the week has made me wonder whether he’s closer to the mark than I had thought.

First, there’s a throwaway line in one of Simon Heffer’s usual throwaway pieces at the Telegraph.  This time, Heffer’s going on about how the Labour party still doesn’t ‘get it’, and he opines:

[T]hat is not what the Labour elite seeks: it seeks more spending, irrespective of the economic and moral costs of borrowing, and irrespective of the return on such an investment in the form of better public services (my emphasis).

Heffer doesn’t go on to set out what these ‘moral costs of borrowing’ might be; it is just a throwaway piece of trollguff, after all.  Yet the very fact that he feels able to go beyond the TINA rhetoric, or even the ‘Labour people are simply stupid/laughable’ of the type employed recently by fellow Conservative commentator Iain Dale to counter the developing ‘there is actually an alternative’ argument that is starting to worry some of the new Conservatives. 

For Heffer now to link the idea of morality to balancing the budget, to start to portray Labour as the party of immorality, does look like a step towards the nutjob wing American Conservatism, in which Obama is portrayed not only as wrong, but as in league with the devil.

Second, there’s Paul Sagar piece on what he suggests is the end, on the part of the Tories, to the idea of a government committed to full employment.  The cross-posting of the piece at Liberal Conspiracy attracted lots of comments, and even more bile than is usual from right-wing trolls.

As it happens, I don’t agree with Paul that Osborne’s plans to cut a further 4bn from the welfare bill, and his associated comments about receiving benefits as a ‘lifestyle choice’, represent the end of governments taking responsibility for employment levels. 

I think that responsibility was abrogated long ago.  Indeed, in my interview with Ed Balls, Ed firmly rebuts my leading question about whether Labour should adopt full employment as a goal of fiscal policy.  New Labour rode the boom, and so didn’t need to concern itself with employment levels, and so never bothered to reassert a commitment that Thatcherism had so openly dumped.

What drives Osborne to the kind of statement he made the other day about benefits is not the neoliberal policy ideals of the Conservative party, strong though they now are, but something much more deeply embedded in British Conservatism, and now perhaps infused with some of the ‘epistemically closed’ American Conservatism that Carl has identified.

What drives Osborne is both a desire to blame the poor for their poverty – to impose a ‘new Victorian’ morality – and a desire  to reassert his class dominance.

The re-establishment of very British, very un-American class relations, where the poor know their place and the rich use the concept of the ‘feckless poor’ to keep them, is the central theme of my earlier post on what is driving British Conservatism. 

That theme is reflected here, not just in what Osborne says, but in the way the right wingers defend Osborne,  as they attack Paul at Liberal Conspiracy.  The right wingers at LibCon are not concerned with Paul’s argument about the historical shift away from Keynesian thought.  What does concern them is the way in which Paul attacks Osborne for his welfare cuts by pointing out his class privilege, and how hypocritical for Osborne to talk of people doing nothing for their living when that is exactly what the lifestyle of his landowning class is based.

It’s a theme also reflected in his ‘classmate’ Cameron’s words from 2008 (quoted by Carl in his Res Publica blog comments):

We talk about people being ‘at risk of obesity’ instead of talking about people who eat too much and take too little exercise. We talk about people being ‘at risk of poverty, or social exclusion’: it’s as if these things – obesity, alcohol abuse, drug addiction – are purely external events like a plague or bad weather … Social problems are often the consequences of the choices that people make.

Now in power, those at the helm of the new Conservatism are merely putting into practice their long-embedded beliefs and attitudes to class relations.

Indeed, these two posts, and the reaction of the trolls to Paul’s post put my in mind of a piece I wrote two years ago this month ‘Let’s blame the poor. We might just get away with it’, in which – like Carl now – I suggested that what had started in the States as a right-wing reaction to the then ongoing financial crisis was already taking on social class dimensions in Britain. 

On that piece, I quoted a Times commentator, who said of the crisis:

Someone has forgotten who borrowed all the money. This is not a tale of City greed v the downtrodden working man. It is the triumph of mass consumption over class privilege; it is about the homes, but it is also about the cars, the flatscreen TVs, the racks of Primark frocks, the consumer detritus that litters a million British working-class homes. It is the lifestyle of people who a quarter of a century ago were struggling to fill the gas meter but who last year took a foreign holiday.

Two years on, the ruling class has triumphed.  The ‘downtrodden working man’ is again downtrodden, and ‘class privilege’ has been reasserted.  ‘Lifestyle’ is no long something that is to be accorded to the working classes; they are to feckless to deserve it.

The challenge that now faces the Left is to recognise this triumph in precisely the same terms as the right are doing.  Beneath the ‘we’re all in this together’ veneer, the new Conservatives are expressing their satisfaction – in word and now need – that we are not all in this together, and that the ruling class has secured its position, nor least by means a narrative imported from their ruling class cousins in the States.

Having recognised the terms, the Left should respond unashamedly in kind.   That is why Paul Sagar is right to go for Osborne’s jugular, and call him out on the rank hypocrisy of his class (the fact that he is right is also, I suspect, a reason why the right wingers seek to attack him in the way they do). 

As I said in my earlier post on the new Conservatism, the Left needs to develop its anti-toff narrative – not for the sake of humour (that’s why it didn’t work in Crewe and Nantwich) but because class war is deadly serious.

Labour have won the most seats from by-elections in Exeter and Norwich. Ben Bradshaw, MP for Exeter, has said “[t]his is a fantastic result for Labour and a fantastic result for Exeter.”

The claim by the Labour Party is that this shows voters already rejecting the coalition’s policies on cutting the deficit.

But it is also worth noting that the “Conservative-run Derby City Council has found itself lobbying against the Tory-led national government’s spending cuts” according to Chaminda Jayanetti for Liberal Conspiracy recently.

It is a strange set up, but the Tories have a minority administration, held afloat by the Liberal Democrats.

In any case, even in the early stages, tensions across the political spectrum have begun to play out as response to the way the Osborne axe has fallen.

As the severity of the cuts pervades through communites, the angry response will not wear political colours, but it should prove to be the impetus by which the Labour Party – post leadership election – set an alternative narrative to cuts. The welfare of people from all sections of society is, after all, Labour’s natural remit.

Laurie Penny has a typically passionate piece at the New Statesman, calling on us all to rise up, like the French are doing about pensions.

It’s decent as passionate invective, but I disagree with the concluding advice . Indeed, it worries me:

This week the French are striking in their millions in protest at a proposed pensions cut which looks like peanuts compared to the chunks due to be ripped out of the British welfare state next year. We might do well to heed the example of our former allies and exchange our bunker mentality for a little more spirit of ’68.

I disagree because the ‘spirit of ’68′, as it is generally conceptualised, is not one to which 21st century socialists should aspire.  

The movement of ’68 had an essentially libertarian focus, and contributed significantly to the Conservative consensus we now face, and which Laurie now expresses as a ‘bunker mentality’.  The ‘spirit of ’68′ became part of the problem, not part of the solution.

Here’s David Harvey on the matter:

Any political movement that holds individual freedoms to be sacrosanct is vulnerable to incorporation into the neoliberal fold…. The worldwide political upheavals of 1968, for example, were strongly inflected with the desire for greater personal freedoms…..

Values of individual freedom and social justice are not, however, necessarily compatible.  Pursuit of social justice presupposes social solidarities and a willingness to submerge individual wants, needs and desires in the cause of some more general struggle for, say, social equality or environmental justice. The objectives of social justice and individual freedom were uneasily fused in the movement of ’68.  The tension was most evident in the fraught relationship between the traditional left (organised labour and political parties espousing social solidarities) and the student movement desirous of individual liberties…..

…….

While it is not impossible to bridge such differences, it is not hard to see how a wedge might be driven between them. Neoliberal rhetoric, with its foundational emphasis on individual freedoms, has the power to split of libertarianism, identity politics, multiculturalism and eventually narcissistic consumerism from the social forces ranged in pursuit of social justice through the conquest of state power.’ (A Brief History of Neoliberalism, p41, available on Google Books).

To explain why the French marches remain more effective than British attempts at militancy, you have to look back not at 1968, but at 1789(as Eric Hobshawm did historiographically in his somewhat overlooked Echoes of the Marseillaise: two centuries look back on the French Revolution).

This is a point I made in an earlier post on how the British left should be gearing up to resist the government’s cuts programme:

In France, when the CGT union mobilises for one of its huge ‘manifs’ (‘demos’) in protest at plans to increase the retirement age, there is an acceptance on all sides that the scale of the turn out actually means something. 

The press reports in detail on the size of the demonstration in comparative terms, and the government responds in kind to dispute both number on demonstrations and percentages of the workforce on strike:

“Quelque 395.000 personnes ont manifesté en France pour la défense des retraites, dont 22.000 à Paris, selon le ministère de l’Intérieur, tandis que la CGT a fait état d’un million de manifestants…..

Ces taux sont moins importants que ceux de la journée d’action du 23 mars, date de la dernière journée de mobilisation, note le ministère dans son communiqué. La mobilisation avait été de 18,9% dans la Fonction publique d’Etat, 11,1% dans la Fonction publique territoriale, et 7,9% dans la Fonction publique hospitalière.”

The lower turnout for the anti-retirement age rise demos in May – about half the size of March – was widely accepted as being the end of the line for the 60 years retirement concession.  The threat of an increase in solidarity, and the implicit risk of the action spreading into strikes and violence were recognised as low, so the government was empowered then to act on its plans.

Nevertheless, the fact that both side measured the ‘strength of feeling’ by counting the number of demonstrators and associated strikers gives an indication of the hegemonic validity, rooted deeply in French political tradition, of the demonstration as proxy (even potent symbol) for what may come next.  It remains enough to have the ruling Parisian classes discussing the potential for working class foment over a soirée au 15ème, and to ensure that the appropriate ‘coups de téléphone’ are made the next morning.

There is no such tacit agreement – to allow demonstration to stand as proxy to revolution – in Britain.  We are kidding ourselves if we think that demos will spontaneously develop into wider actions, or that the government will think they might.

Reflecting on Laurie’s piece though, I begin to think there’s something much more fundamental at stake for the Left than the immediate tactics of cuts resistance, important though they are as a tone setter for the more general future of the Left in Britain.

Laurie’s invocation of the ‘spirit of ’68′ is, I suggest, reflective of a wider danger faced by a new generation of left activists, for whom Laurie herself seeks to be a ‘voice’.

This danger is similar to the dangers that faced young left activists a generation ago, when I was a young left activists.  Sadly, my generation succumbed to those dangers, as I set out here:

[W]hile we should celebrate and model ourselves on the successes of the 1980s Labour left, we should also take note of the failures.  These are failures which continue to have repercussions for the Labour left of today.

 Ina five point action plan article in Socialist Unity, Owen sets out this key failure, and its legacy, very well:

 ”The left has ceased trying to appeal to the working class as a whole. All too often we focus almost exclusively on small minorities instead. Part of this is the legacy of the New Left of the 1960s, a movement which essentially felt that the working class had lost its revolutionary potential. They replaced it with oppressed minority groups like ethnic minorities, gays, or even students.”

 I have covered the intellectual history of this drift away from the working class fully elsewhere, and this need not detain us long, except to say that Owen is right (and this reflects David Harvey’s excellent analysis) to say that some of the responsibility for this drift can be attributed to the post-Marxist developments of the 1960’s, which only really took hold in Britain in the 1970s with the arrival/translations of intellectuals like Chantal Mouffe and Ernesto Laclau. 

It is this ‘drift away from the working class’ which I fear is being repeated by Laurie’s generation.  This is, I suggest, why she uses the tube strike as a ‘hook’ for her article, but moves quickly away from it as she invokes a wholly different tradition of radicalism. 

The question arises:

Does Laurie really care about the working class solidarity expressed through the tube strike, or is it a pretext for  very different ‘call to arms’, centered around what my comrade blogger Dave Semple once called the ‘carnivalesque‘ at the expense of the meticulous rebuilding of a working class identity and consequent solidarity?

This may seem harsh on Laurie personally, but it is intended in the best spirit of blog engagement (a spirit of honesty between bloggers who’ve never met and probably never will, well espoused in Barney’s cutting, but I know genuinely well-meant, comments about my intellectual honesty).

I like Laurie from afar, and I’ve sought to engage with her before about intergenerational learning (and not feeling guilty). It’s in this spirit of challenging blog engagement that I ask her to question her own rationale about her call for arms. 

I may be a middle-aged old fart, but I’m middle -aged old fart who still cares.