KEEP IT IN THE FAMILY
Queen's Counsel and Prime Minister's wife Cherie Booth is leading the legal establishment's protests against Britain's record of imprisoning children. Conditions in Britain's child prisons 'were recently described by the chief inspector of prisons as "unacceptable in a civilised society" and "institutional child abuse"', said Booth in an article commissioned by the Howard League for Penal Reform.
Booth's proposal for a 'children's rights commissioner' sounds like a positive step - except that the reason that children started to be imprisoned in the first place was a consequence of the false doctrine of 'children's rights'. According to the 'children's rights' theory children, like adults should have control over their lives. Forgetting the difference between responsible adults and irresponsible children the obvious next step was to hold children punishable for their bad acts as well. In a Home Office paper titled bullishly titled 'no more excuses' Jack Straw ridiculed the ancient principle that children were incapable of harm - doli incapax - making the case for the reduction of the age of criminal responsibility to ten. Now Mrs Blair gets to preen her vanity striking a pose of mock outrage at the little boys and girls tossed into prison by her husband's Home Secretary.
Note, Minister's children arrested by police: The Prime Minister's son, Euan, drunk and disorderly; Home Secretary Jack Straw's son, William, dealing marijuana; Lord Irvine's son, stalking a teenage girl in Florida.
BRITAIN AGAINST IMPERIALISM?
'The problems we have to deal with now are consequences of the British colonial past', the previously mentioned Jack Straw, now Foreign Minister, told the New Statesman (18 November). Straw's confused thoughts on the ethical dimension in Britain's foreign policy were exposed in the article - intended to win over the sceptical radicals. Asked if his was a policy of 'liberal imperialism', Straw reasonably protested that he was no liberal, and went on to suggest that 'there's a lot wrong with imperialism'. But the Foreign Secretary's thoughts on the matter were unclear. He suggests that Britain's role in drawing the boundaries between India and Pakistan, Iraq and Kuwait, the distribution of land in the former Rhodesia - now Zimbabwe - and frustrating a settlement between the Arabs and Jews of Palestine had a negative impact. But for just that reason, he implies, Britain must intervene beyond its borders to right those wrongs. In each case of Labour-ordered air strikes since 1998, in Iraq, Sierra Leone, Afghanistan, and now Iraq again, the Foreign Secretary 'there's been a very good reason for military action'.
One hint of the crying need for British military action abroad is given in a different quarter, as Europe Minister Peter Hain is fighting back against the consolidation of a Franco-German alliance in the European Convention chaired by former French President Valèry Giscard D'Estaing. In particular, Hain is resisting the common European foreign policy proposed, he says, by 'countries that do not want a foreign policy'. (Guardian 21 November 2002). But Britain does want a foreign policy, full of military strikes and mobilisations, without which it would disappear into the sea of lesser European nations.
ASTHMATIC FISHERMEN, ARISE!
Sinn Fein's 2003 budget submission is a modest document indeed. The movement that once bought the British Empire to its knees is sadly exposed by its lack of positive political goals. They do want to see invalidity benefits extended to include asthmatics, and protectionist measures for Ireland's farmers and fishermen. The document's general thrust of building up Irish capitalism, though, might easily prove to be at odds with the wish that the Irish state would provide more welfare. Having wound down the military campaign against British imperialism, Sinn Fein's economic policies are nothing more than parish-pump socialism.
-- James Heartfield The 'Death of the Subject' Explained is available at GBP11.00, plus GBP1.00 p&p from Publications, audacity.org, 8 College Close, Hackney, London, E9 6ER. Make cheques payable to 'Audacity Ltd'