HAGUE, STRAW AND THE 'FEAR FACTOR'
Not since the early nineties has the Police Federation been such an important platform for Britain's politicians. On 18 May Tory opposition Leader William Hague called for an end to the 'liberal thinking on crime that has dominated for the last 40 years'.
If Hague's comments are meant as a criticism of his own Conservative Party that ruled for 26 of those 40 years, they are misplaced - state powers have been increasing throughout under both Tory and Labour governments:
· 1974 Prevention of Terrorism Act suspends habeas corpus · 1981 British Nationality Act that removed the rights of British passport holders overseas to come to Britain · 1984 and 1989 Prevention of Terrorism Acts extended the rights of the police to detain without trial · 1986 Public Order Act creates new powers to ban marches, demonstrations and pickets, and to dictate their time, duration and size · 1994 Criminal Justice and Public Order Act undermines the suspect's right to silence creates new police powers of 'stop and search' and limits the disclosure of police evidence to defence lawyers.
But Hague is struggling to win the high ground of repression. An internal Labour Party memo 'Fighting the Fear Factor' in 1994 explained that a 'mood of anxiety about the future allowed the right to use the tactics of fear, enabling them to dominate politics for the 1980s and early 1990s'. With Tony Blair as shadow Home Secretary, Labour re- positioned itself as 'tough on crime' claiming that voters faced a choice - 'social cohesion versus social disintegration'. Current Home Secretary Straw's latest proposals are that people should be imprisoned in anticipation of their likely future behaviour, rather than their specific wrong-doing - an ominous step towards a totalitarian system.
Both Labour and Tory parties are struggling to paint their opposites as the party that is soft on crime. The consequence is a Dutch auction in which each is outbidding the other to scare the voters. Fear is a potent factor at a time of social atomisation. But it is less effective as a means of galvanising positive support. Despite their efforts both parties have suffered from dwindling votes as people withdraw from public participation.
Not surprisingly, the prison population of England and Wales has grown from 44,566 in 1993 to a massive 65,298 in 1998, making it one of the highest per head in Europe.
ALL THAT IS SACRED IS PROFANED
New Age mysticism met medieval reaction in the Prince of Wales' Reith lecture on 17 May. The Prince warned that genetic engineering breached a 'sacred trust between mankind and our Creator'. The heir to the British throne endorsed the 'precautionary principle' written into international treaties at the demand of green lobbyists. He asked 'what is there to prevent us treating our entire world as a "great laboratory of life"'?
It may be a revelation to Prince Charles, but the future is unknown. All action is experimental. Routine and tradition might try to hide that fact, but no one can see into the future. The demand that science should only proceed where knowledge is absolute is a demand for a return to faith at the expense of reason. Nothing could be more guaranteed to leave mankind at the mercy of the elements than an artificially imposed limitation upon scientific discovery. Scientific progress has laid the basis for a great extension of life and happiness, while obscurantism, in the service of ruling elites, has only led to misery and repression.
Of course the Prince has good reason to object to rational enquiry into hidden mysteries. By virtue of an accident of birth, Charles is heir not just to the Crown, but also to a fortune of £5 billion. His own income is drawn from the Duchy of Lancaster, with 128,189 acres of land yielding an annual rent of £10 million, and shares of £45 million yielding dividends of £2 million a year - having reversed the Duchy's dire condition in the eighties through aggressive restructuring. His 'Highgrove' farm is not just a model community, but also a registered brand on such products as organic beef, lamb, cereals, fruit and herbs, as well as products like 'Duchy Original' biscuits.
The genetically un-modified heir to the British throne is not the only member of the ruling class to come out against scientific progress. Lord Melchett, Greenpeace director and heir to Sir Alfred Mond's ICI fortune has turned organic gentleman farmer and appeared in court for up-rooting a less pure breed of rapeseed. Mark Brown, heir to Britain's Vestey family shares a £27 million trust fund from which he draws an estimated £44 000 a year, but is accused of being ringleader in last June's Carnival Against Capitalism. Financier Sir James Goldsmith's heirs Edward and Zac of the Ecologist are also supporting the Prince's stand against GM.
DUNKIRK SPIRIT
Sixty years ago on 26 May the British Expeditionary Force was evacuated from Dunkirk after Hitler's army forced them out of France. A humiliating defeat was turned around by government propaganda that a 'flotilla of tiny ships' had crossed the Channel to save our boys. 'Yes, these Brighton Belles and Brighton Queens left that foolish innocent world of theirs to sail into the inferno, to defy bombs, shells, magnetic mines, torpedoes, machine gun fire - to rescue our soldiers', broadcast J.B. Priestly on 5 June 1940.
But according to the Association of Dunkirk Little Ships 'the Mrs. Miniver story of owners jumping into their Little Ships and rushing off to Dunkirk is a myth. Very few owners took their own vessels, apart from fishermen and one or two others'. They were commandeered and manned by the armed services. Before the Dunkirk evacuation the Ministry of Information had struggled to persuade ordinary Britons that the war was anything other than phoney. The myth that ordinary men and women had been involved in the evacuation was seen by the propagandists to have broken down the boundary between civilian and military, and they fostered it assiduously. Reading the mood Churchill told the House of Commons: 'Let us brace ourselves to our duty and so bear ourselves that, if the British Commonwealth and its Empire lasts for a thousand years, men will still say "this was their finest hour".'
Ironically the British troops were saved by Hitler, who held back, while they departed. He told his staff that he wanted a 'reasonable peace agreement' with Britain immediately so that he would be 'finally free' for his 'great and real task: the confrontation with Bolshevism'. (Paul Johnson, Modern Times, p367) In keeping with the phoney war, Churchill was too nervous to repeat his speech for the BBC world service, which was spoken by an actor.
OTHERS THE SCOTS MIGHT BAN?
On 18 May Members of the Scottish Parliament (MSPs) debated whether they ought to be allowed to refuse entry to boxer and convicted rapist Mike Tyson. Others that the MSPs might consider banning could include actor GERARD DEPARDIEU, who admitted taking part in a gang-rape in a magazine interview, film director ROMAN POLANSKI who had sex with an underage girl, rocker CHUCK BERRY served time for pimping, all of whom are put into the shade by popular soap actor LESLIE GRANTHAM who served time for murdering a taxi driver. Famous sons of Scotland who might be refused visas to leave could include SEAN CONNERY, who unwisely advocated domestic violence in an interview many years ago, and sculptor and playwright JIMMY BOYLE, a graduate of the Barlinnie Prison Special Unit.
On the other hand the principle that one's crimes, once punished, are set aside might prevail instead.
-- Jim heartfield