It’s hard not to chuckle14 Jan 2008IF you are of the left, it’s hard not to chuckle at the plight of the Police Federation after it has been refused permission to march through Parliament Square in protest at the truncated pay deal which has been forced upon its members by the government. But it’s a temptation that is going to have to be resisted by all of us. After all, police officers are as much victims of this government’s attacks as anyone else and, as with other public servants, they have families to support, mortgages or rent to pay and bills that stack up just as fast as anyone else’s. The so-called “phasing” of their 2.5 per cent pay award, was merely a euphemism for a clear government refusal to accept the verdict of the pay review body and to hack police pay rises back to a below 2 per cent level as required by our cuts-fixated Prime Minister. It is however, gloriously ironic, especially given the behaviour of elements of the police territorial support group towards protesters in and around Parliament Square last Saturday, that the federation is being forced to adopt the subterfuge of a “mass queue” outside Parliament in order to get its point across legally. And it will come as no surprise that the federation is being careful to point out that it isn’t “instructing” officers to do anything specific, since any such instruction would be illegal. But there can be no doubt that the federation is justified in its anger about the government’s dirty little tricks with its members’ pay. The statement by Suffolk Police Federation chairman Matt Gould, that “police officers do not have the right to strike so we expect the government to act honourably in their dealings with us,” might seem to betray a weakness in the federation’s understanding. Mr Gould appears to infer that anyone who has the right to strike must expect the government to act dishonourably. Although, considered another way, this may just be a restatement of reality, in that almost every public-sector employee who cherishes the right to strike has, indeed, suffered from dishonourable conduct by this government, as witness Justice Minister Jack Straw’s dirty tricks with the rights of the Prison Officers Association and the mass sackings faced by PCS members. Human rights group Liberty director Shami Chakrabarti’s offer to represent the federation in a test case over its right to peaceful protest may at first appear to be a tongue-in-cheek offer with sarcastic undertones, but Ms Chakrabarti is making a serious point which should be taken on board by individual officers. When the right to peaceful protest is undermined by a dishonourable government in order to escape criticism and avoid resistance to unacceptable measures by that government, the structure of democracy itself is at risk. And it is perfectly acceptable for people to protest against that threat, whether they be police officers, prison officers, civil servants or any other group of citizens. Mass action is one of the only recourses open to inhabitants of a democracy whose government and opposition are both united in abusing the trust placed in them by the electorate. So, while it may be tempting for the trade union movement to offer tellers to the police in order to guarantee that the numbers on their protest are reported accurately, that not being a noted strength of the the Met, the temptation should be resisted. In the course of their wages struggle, individual police officers may learn something about the reality of life in Gordon Brown’s phoney democracy and that is a lesson which could benefit us all in the end.
Why Gordon Brown wants to hold down wages14 Jan 2008Gordon Brown has ratcheted up his attacks on workers? pay by demanding three-year below inflation pay deals in the public sector. These deals ? which Brown insists must be held below 2 percent even though inflation is more than double that ? would lock millions into effective pay cuts for the next three years. It is a further assault on the hundreds of thousands of working people in Britain who are already wondering how their wage can be made to stretch until their next payday. According to a poll for the Norwich Union insurance firm, almost three quarters of monthly paid workers ran out of money last week and are now paying for food and other everyday necessities with a mixture of loans, credit cards and overdrafts. But this situation does not seem to concern the New Labour government. Brown says he is attempting to hold pay below inflation until 2012 ? just as many economists are predicting inflation rates could rise to between 6 and 8 percent in the coming years. Inflation has been on an upward trajectory for more than a year, with the cost of transport, housing, food and fuel rising fast. Food prices are rising at an average of about 5 percent and some suppliers have just announced household gas and electricity bills will rise by 27 percent this year. That is why so many workers are finding themselves worse off compared to a year ago. Difficult Brown said he had taken the ?difficult decision? to prolong the pay limits because the government wants to ?break the back of inflation? and ?maintain stability? in the economy. He said that unless we all carry on tightening our belts, pay rises will be eaten up by higher prices and increased mortgage and rent payments. But wage rises are not what is driving inflation. Higher pay for nurses, teachers or street cleaners does not lead to higher prices. These are determined by much bigger forces in the world economy ? such as the rising cost of corn, wheat, gas and oil. Companies that increase their prices as a means of maintaining, or increasing, their profit margins are also driving inflation. Brown hopes that public sector pay restraint will start to affect rates in the private sector too. By holding down pay, British companies and their bosses can continue to line their shareholders? pockets with profits and dividends, while the government can hold down public spending. In turn that means that the government can keep down or cut taxes for big business and the rich. It means it can continue to subsidise bosses to keep them competitive with other countries? firms. All the talk of a ?tough year? does not seem to have filtered through to Britain?s wealthy. Boardroom pay at Britain?s top companies soared by 37 percent last year as directors were rewarded with inflation-busting increases in basic salaries, big cash bonuses and substantial payouts from share schemes. The surge in pay, which takes the average total pay for a chief executive to 2,875,000, is more than 11 times the increase in average earnings and nearly 20 times the rate of inflation. In 2006-7, for every 1 a worker earned, bosses took home 98 ? up from 93 the previous year. The picture for top executives in the public sector is not very different. A recent report into boardroom pay in the NHS shows that, among the trusts surveyed, the median average annual pay of chief executives was 123,300 ? up some 7.8 percent on the previous year?s report. Bosses are not the only ones exempt from the demands of tightening belts. Anyone who works in public services knows the enormous waste involved in outsourcing work to ?private contractors? ? the swathes of consultants who litter our hospitals and civil service buildings, and the failed multi-million pound computer schemes that were supposed to make the public sector more efficient. Brown has not called for any form of restraint from the profiteers of privatisation. For all his tough talk, Brown?s attempt to impose an incomes policy through wage restraint is a sign of the government?s weakness ? and an extremely risky strategy. Previous attempts to control incomes have resulted in major confrontations with the unions, and have even led to the collapse of governments, such as Edward Heath?s Tory administration in 1974, which was brought down by a miners? strike (see, ‘Incomes policy: a dangerous strategy‘). In that period governments talked of limiting prices as well as wages, and even suggested that their policy would benefit the lowest paid. Today there is no sugar to sweeten the pill. One effect of imposing a wage freeze on such a large number of workers is to make the idea of workers in a variety of services striking together extremely attractive. People rightly feel that all those who are under attack should hit back together, and that their union leaders should be co-ordinating the response. This feeling is widespread within the public sector but extends well beyond it. Over the last year millions of workers in the private sector have been able to secure pay deals that approach the government?s estimate of inflation. Skill shortages and the fact that many engineering, pharmaceutical, chemical and transport companies have been making big profits have allowed unionised, and even non-unionised, workers to make some gains. But it is possible that these same firms will use the prospect of a recession driven by a ?credit crunch? to follow the lead of public sector employers. United Therefore a challenge over pay in 2008 has the possibility of uniting workers in all sectors and in all unions. But for that to happen workers have to break the impasse created by the many union leaders who believe that workers? interests must come second to the needs of the Labour government. There is a heavy responsibility on the leaders of unions like Unison, which has over a million members in the public sector. Unison leader Dave Prentis responded to Brown?s plans to extend the pay limit, saying, ?This is the most unjust pay policy I?ve ever seen.? However, the experience of last year ? when the union refused to lead a fight over pay in local government and the health service ? shows that it will take heavy pressure from the rank and file of the union to make the leaders fight. And, as the dispute in Royal Mail shows, there must be an organised rank and file in the union to carry forward that fight when the union leaders waver or seek a shoddy compromise. Gordon Brown has shown that he has no intention of using his power to improve the lives of ordinary people. He wants to make workers pay for the crisis of capitalism. The best way to force the union leaders to fight is to back any group of workers that stand up for decent pay. A breach of the government?s policy in one area could lead to its collapse.
Generation ID: lessons in kiddyprinting14 Jan 2008The innocuous term ?kiddyprinting? refers to the controversial practice of routinely fingerprinting schoolchildren. Many parents are unaware of it because they have not been asked for their explicit consent, or in many cases even notified that it is taking place. There are no official figures for how many schools in England use some form of biometric identification system. Terri Dowty, director of Action on Rights for Children (ARCH), claims ?thousands certainly. But local authorities aren?t keeping any records.? Fingerprint templates do not count as sensitive data in the UK, she says, and so controls are limited. It was only after years of pressure from ARCH and, more recently, the Leave Them Kids Alone campaign that non-statutory guidance on the use of fingerprints was issued to schools in July 2007. Campaigners are far from satisfied and a House of Commons early day motion has been tabled calling for a full debate. But isn?t this alarmist when the fingerprints are only being used for library, catering and registration systems? Dowty argues that behind the issue of biometrics there is the question of what kind of information the databases themselves are storing: ?School canteen systems are storing information on each child?s individual school meal choices and library book reports are being generated that break down by ethnicity, age and gender what a child has been reading. This is a terrible intrusion.? There is also a security risk: ?Manufacturers say that they?re encrypting the fingerprints so the systems are secure but they won?t guarantee them beyond ten years. And that?s because with the developments in technology, in ten years? time the landscape will be unrecognisable. We are entering a stage where biometrics are becoming increasingly important for security-critical functions and if there does come a time when it?s easy to reconstruct fingerprints where you have access to accompanying personal data, it will be a bonanza for anyone who wants to forge identities.? Helping the police Jim Knight, the minister for schools and learning, also said this summer that the police could help themselves to the children?s fingerprints if they are trying to solve a crime ? regardless of whether they have ever previously been in trouble with the law. Dowty says it is turning us from a nation of free citizens into a nation of suspects: ?Why should we have our fingerprints or DNA stored if we have done nothing wrong?? The Criminal Justice Act 2003 gave the police new powers to retain DNA samples of anyone arrested for a recordable offence. As a result of increasing numbers of children being picked up for low-level offences and then routinely DNA-sampled, Dowty estimates that samples from close to one million children are now on the National DNA Database. According to Home Office figures, between 33,000 and 82,000 of these have never been convicted or even reprimanded. Going by Youth Justice Board arrest statistics, Dowty believes the figure is probably at the higher end of this range. In addition to the principle of routine DNA sampling, Dowty is also concerned about how reliable it is in practice. She says that people don?t realise how often mistakes are made with DNA samples, especially with techniques such as low copy number (LCN) DNA testing, where forensics try to generate a DNA sample from one cell. Far from being the infallible test of popular understanding, the FBI and others have, since 2001, urged caution when using LCN DNA sampling as a forensic technique. Database Central In an effort to predict which children will become delinquent the government now wants to collect children?s data in a central trilogy of databases containing medical information, school results, social work case notes and records from other public services. First, ContactPoint is an index of every child in the UK from 0-18 years. Second, the Electronic Common Assessment Framework (eCAF) will serve as an in-depth profiling mechanism; it is, in Dowty?s opinion, ?the most intrusive personal assessment tool?. And third, there?s the Integrated Children?s System (ICS), holding the social care records of each child. Dowty argues that: ?Because we?re so penny pinching we?ve developed this secondary prevention, which identifies all children from deprived areas as potential criminals and of course stigmatises the child completely.? She sees these surveillance techniques as just a technical fix for the real problems and dangers facing children, and believes they mask the chronic shortage of child protection social workers. ?In most areas there is something like a 20 per cent vacancy rate for child and family social workers and in some closer to 50 per cent,? she says. ?What we?ve never done is tackle this shortage and look at why so many are leaving the profession. We also have this obsession with managerialism and targets. We?re pretending that people with social care problems are susceptible to a production line approach ? and they?re not. It?s actually a very dangerous approach.? Dowty believes the government must be prevented from going any further. ?We must start enforcing laws on consent. It?s something parliament hasn?t looked at since 1969 and it is time we had a review. That?ll be a start,? she says. Further reading: - Action on Rights for Children: www.arch-ed.org
– Leave Them Kids Alone: www.leavethemkidsalone.com
– The advisory council of the Foundation for Information Policy Research (FIPR) has conducted a report on ?Children?s Databases ? Safety and Privacy?, downloadable from www.ico.gov.uk
Rude Awakenings14 Jan 2008NATIONAL DAY OF ACTION AGAINST IMMIGRATION POLICE STATE 6am. A cold autumn morning. A young woman and her two young children are woken by loud banging at the door. They know who it is; this is what they have been dreading for months. Eight to ten large, burly, aggressive men are outside. As soon as the door is opened they arrest the woman – who has committed no crime – and order her to pack her things. If she hadn?t opened the door they would have just smashed it down. She is terrified, her children are terrified. They are bundled into the back of a van and driven to a nearby compund where they are locked up. Then they are bundled back into the van and driven to a prison several hours away. Bogota ? Baghdad? – No, Bristol… it?s the routine morning removal of an asylum-seeking family to a detention centre. Answering the call-out from the No Borders camp (see SchNEWS 604), and marking UN International Migrant?s Day on 18th December, activists round the country simultaneously blockaded Immigration Reporting Centres – the bases used for snatch squad seizures of asylum seekers. Arriving at the centres in the early hours of the morning, the activists aimed to prevent Immigration Enfarcement Officers from staging dawn raids, in which families are often rounded up in preparation for removal to countries from which they have been forced to flee. In Bristol, activists arrived in time to lock onto vehicles, and a police officer was over heard confirming that a dawn raid had been planned. In Portsmouth, activists were locked on to the swing barrier and gates by 4.30am another dawn raid from that site was thwarted. Glasgow activists were in place by 5.30am when the Immigration Goon Squad arrived, who were unable to leave the car park in their vehicles due to a tripod, whilst other people d-locked to the gates. Newcastle activists dressed in Santa outfits, locked on to the gates and used arm tubes to prevent vehicles from leaving the car parks. Two of the Glasgow activists were cut free from their d-locks and arrested, whilst a tripod continued to ensure that vehicles could not leave the car park. Activists at the other sites were able to leave without any arrests taking place. In Manchester the local Immigration Reporting Centre, Dallas Court, had its gates locked with a motorcycle chain and a banner reading ?Caution snatch squads ? we are watching you? was hung. Later, at 10am, the Home Office in Marsham Street SW1, London was disrupted after activists blocked the entrance and unfurled a large banner declaring ?No Child is Illegal: Child Detention is a Crime?. Meanwhile, Nottingham activists were campaigning to stop the deportation of Jane Mary Mutetsi a Rwandan national who fled to Britain via Uganda after her husband was murdered following which she was subjected to a gang rape and severe beating by Rwandan soldiers in which she lost the sight in one eye, her left ovary and several teeth. Jane Mary faces deportation to Uganda, where it is rumoured that there is a warrant for her arrest.
One activist on the Portsmouth blockade told SchNEWS, ?It was crucial to directly intervene in this inhumane and secretive process. Dawn raid seizures are like a form of extraordinary rendition, targeted at individuals and whole families – and are taking place in British cities with barely any public awareness. These raids are carried out with maximum secrecy and the government relies on public ignorance of, or indifference to, their brutality. Where is the coverage of the two-and-a-half thousand people currently imprisoned without having committed any crime?. Where is the coverage of the dozens of children, some not even a year old, in prison? Where is the coverage of the real situation of asylum seekers who came here for peace and safety and are instead humiliated, abused, locked up, attacked and treated like dirt at every turn?? These bases are all around the country. There are no statistics on the number and regularity of the raids carried out because the government will not release the figures. But the fleets of vehicles blockaded on just one day this morning and the harrowing personal accounts of families show a large sale operation. Dawn raids are used to gain custody of whole families in order to imprison them before anyone has gone out to school or work. Every day, doors are kicked in and families are snatched from their beds and taken to detention centres, where they are punished for seeking refuge in this country. They are taken away from their houses, jobs, schools and communities ? their lives. The timing ensures no witnesses are present. So far ? except when detainees riot in the conditions at detention centres, there has been little mainstream coverage of this aspect of the UK?s inhumane immigration policies. Liam Byrne ? Minister for Immigration has admitted that these raids take place without warning in the early hours is because otherwise families due to be removed might attract public sympathy. Other activists have continually targeted the weakest link in the removal process ? the airlines. Up until recently asylum seekers were forcibly removed on ordinary passenger aircraft. While some detainees have been able to frustrate the process by forcibly resisting, many others have been jettisoned out to a uncertain and dangerous future sat next to cheerful holidaymakers off on their latest cut-price bargain citybreak. Following unwanted attention from campaigners, and an action at it?s Crawley premises during the climate camp, one airline – XL airlines – has now pulled out of a 1.5 million contract with the Home Office. Staff and pilots were leafleted and informed that they were ?flying people to their deaths?. Airline spokesmen expressed their ?sympathy for all dispossessed persons in the world? but claimed they ?did not understand the political dimensions involved? in such charter flights! Well they obviously need the education activists can provide then. Meanwhile one Bradford campaigner was arrested and is on trial this week at Horsham magistrates for ?aggravated trespass?. Hoping to step into the gap however are Asylum Airways, a pint-sized Austrian outfit, linked to British security firms, who want to use planes with padded rooms and specially designed seats enabling guards to strap down and restrain detainees. They?ve made their bid to the government who will surely lap up their ?blue skies? thinking, so watch this space… Activists don?t intend December?s actions to be a one-off, merely the start of a new wave of regular resistance to the racist immigration regime in general and the dawn raids in particular. - The main campaigning organisations: National Coalition of Anti-Deportation Campaigns ? www.ncadc.org.uk ? 0161 7406504
Refugee Council ? www.refugeecouncil.org.uk ? 0207 346 6700
Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants (JCWI) ? www.jcwi.org.uk ? 0207 2518708
No One is Illegal ? www.noii.org.uk
Barbed Wire Britain ? www.barbedwirebritain.org.uk
No Borders – www.noborders.org.uk
Has global warming really stopped?13 Jan 2008On 19 December the New Statesman website published an article which, judging by the 633 comments (and counting) received so far, must go down in history as possibly the most controversial ever. Not surprising really ? it covered one of the most talked-about issues of our time: climate change. Penned by science writer David Whitehouse, it was guaranteed to get a big response: the article claimed that global warming has ?stopped?. As the New Statesman?s environmental correspondent, I have since been deluged with queries asking if this represents a change of heart by the magazine, which has to date published many editorials steadfastly supporting urgent action to reduce carbon emissions. Why bother doing that if global warming has ?stopped?, and therefore might have little or nothing to do with greenhouse gas emissions, which are clearly rising? I?ll deal with this editorial question later. First let?s ask whether Whitehouse is wholly or partially correct in his analysis. To quote: “The fact is that the global temperature of 2007 is statistically the same as 2006 as well as every year since 2001. Global warming has, temporarily or permanently, ceased. Temperatures across the world are not increasing as they should according to the fundamental theory behind global warming ? the greenhouse effect. Something else is happening and it is vital that we find out what or else we may spend hundreds of billions of pounds needlessly.” I?ll be blunt. Whitehouse got it wrong ? completely wrong. The article is based on a very elementary error: a confusion between year-on-year variability and the long-term average. Although CO2 levels in the atmosphere are increasing each year, no-one ever argued that temperatures would do likewise. Why? Because the planet?s atmosphere is a chaotic system, which expresses a great deal of interannual variability due to the interplay of many complex and interconnected variables. Some years are warmer and cooler than others. 1998, for example, was a very warm year because an El Nino event in the Pacific released a lot of heat from the ocean. 2001, by contrast, was somewhat cooler, though still a long way above the long-term average. 1992 was particularly cool, because of the eruption of a large volcano in the Philippines called Mount Pinatubo. ?Climate? is defined by averaging out all this variability over a longer term period. So you won?t, by definition, see climate change from one year to the next – or even necessarily from one decade to the next. But look at the change in the average over the long term, and the trend is undeniable: the planet is getting hotter. Look at the graph below, showing global temperatures over the last 25 years. These are NASA figures, using a global-mean temperature dataset known as GISSTEMP. (Other datasets are available, for example from the UK Met Office. These fluctuate slightly due to varying assumptions and methodology, but show nearly identical trends.) Now imagine you were setting out to write Whitehouse?s article at some point in the past. You could plausibly have written that global warming had ?stopped? between 1983 and 1985, between 1990 and 1995, and, if you take the anomalously warm 1998 as the base year, between 1998 and 2004. Note, however, the general direction of the red line over this quarter-century period. Average it out and the trend is clear: up. Note also the blue lines, scattered like matchsticks across the graph. These, helpfully added by the scientists at RealClimate.org (from where this graph is copied), partly in response to the Whitehouse article, show 8-year trend lines ? what the temperature trend is for every 8-year period covered in the graph. You?ll notice that some of the lines, particularly in the earlier part of the period, point downwards. These are the periods when global warming ?stopped? for a whole 8 years (on average), in the flawed Whitehouse definition ? although, as astute readers will have quickly spotted, the crucial thing is what year you start with. Start with a relatively warm year, and the average of the succeeding eight might trend downwards. In scientific parlance, this is called ?cherry picking?, and explains how Whitehouse can assert that “since [1998] the global temperature has been flat” ? although he is even wrong on this point of fact, because as the graph above shows, 2005 was warmer. Note also how none of the 8-year trend lines point downwards in the last decade or so. This illustrates clearly how, far from having ?stopped?, global warming has actually accelerated in more recent times. Hence the announcement by the World Meteorological Organisation on 13 December, as the Bali climate change meeting was underway, that the decade of 1998-2007 was the ?warmest on record?. Whitehouse, and his fellow contrarians, are going to have to do a lot better than this if they want to disprove (or even dispute) the accepted theory of greenhouse warming. The New Statesman?s position on climate change Every qualified scientific body in the world, from the American Association for the Advancement of Science to the Royal Society, agrees unequivocally that global warming is both a reality, and caused by man-made greenhouse gas emissions. But this doesn?t make them right, of course. Science, in the best Popperian definition, is only tentatively correct, until someone comes along who can disprove the prevailing theory. This leads to a frequent source of confusion, one which is repeated in the Whitehouse article ? that because we don?t know everything, therefore we know nothing, and therefore we should do nothing. Using that logic we would close down every hospital in the land. Yes, every scientific fact is falsiable ? but that doesn?t make it wrong. On the contrary, the fact that it can be challenged (and hasn?t been successfully) is what makes it right. Bearing all this in mind, what should a magazine like the New Statesman do in its coverage of the climate change issue? Newspapers and magazines have a difficult job of trying, often with limited time and information, to sort out truth from fiction on a daily basis, and communicating this to the public ? quite an awesome responsibility when you think about it. Sometimes even a viewpoint which is highly likely to be wrong gets published anyway, because it sparks a lively debate and is therefore interesting. A publication that kept to a monotonous party line on all of the day?s most controversial issues would be very boring indeed. However, readers of my column will know that I give contrarians, or sceptics, or deniers (call them what you will) short shrift, and as a close follower of the scientific debate on this subject I can state without doubt that there is no dispute whatsoever within the expert community as to the reality or causes of manmade global warming. But even then, just because all the experts agree doesn?t make them right ? it just makes them extremely unlikely to be wrong. That in turn means that if someone begs to disagree, they need to have some very strong grounds for doing so ? not misreading a basic graph or advancing silly conspiracy theories about IPCC scientists receiving paycheques from the New World Order, as some of Whitehouse?s respondents do. So, a mistaken article reached a flawed conclusion. Intentionally or not, readers were misled, and the good name of the New Statesman has been used all over the internet by climate contrarians seeking to support their entrenched positions. This is regrettable. Good journalism should never exclude legitimate voices from a debate of public interest, but it also needs to distinguish between carefully-checked fact and distorted misrepresentations in complex and divisive areas like this. The magazine?s editorial policy is unchanged: we want to see aggressive action to reduce carbon emissions, and support global calls for planetary temperatures to be stabilised at under two degrees above pre-industrial levels. Yes, scientific uncertainties remain in every area of the debate. But consider how high the stakes are here. If the 99% of experts who support the mainstream position are right, then we have to take urgent action to reduce emissions or face some pretty catastrophic consequences. If the 99% are wrong, and the 1% right, we will be making some unnecessary efforts to shift away from fossil fuels, which in any case have lots of other drawbacks and will soon run out. I?d hate to offend anyone here, but that?s what I?d call a no-brainer.
Compare and contrast13 Jan 2008Given the dog-like determination of governments and corporations to conceal what what they are really up to, unofficial leaks are an effective way of holding power to account. For journalists, they are a crucial lever for getting information to the the public about what is actually going on behind the veil of official secrecy. Over the years, I’ve had my share of anonymous brown envelopes in the post, stuffed with photocopied documents revealing what officialdom doesn’t want you to know. So it’s good news that the foreign office official Derek Pasquill won’t be going to prison for sending secret government documents to the New Statesman political editor and ex-Observer journalist Martin Bright after the prosecution dropped official secrets charges against him at the Old Bailey on Wednesday. But how come Pasquill walked free from court while another civil servant, David Keogh, and a researcher, Leo O’Connor, were jailed last May for breaching the Official Secrets Act by passing a secret government memo to the Labour MP Anthony Clarke? The case against Pasquill collapsed after it emerged senior officials in the Foreign Office had privately argued that, far from damaging national security, the leaks had helped provoke a “constructive debate”. Potentially even trickier was the fact that the defence planned to call cabinet ministers such as David Miliband, Ruth Kelly and Hazel Blears to make its case. A couple of Pasquill’s leaks were about British involvement in US secret rendition – otherwise known as kidnapping – of terror suspects and the radicalising impact of British foreign policy on Britain’s Muslim community. But most were about the government’s policy of engaging with non-violent Islamist movements, both in Britain and abroad – and its relations with the Muslim Council of Britain umbrella organisation. Pasquill thought this was “appeasement” – and so did Martin Bright, who went on to write a pamphlet for the Tory-linked thinktank Policy Exchange, “When Progressives Treat with Reactionaries“, much praised by neoconservatives on both sides of the Atlantic. Partly as a result of the leaks and Bright’s efforts, government policy towards relations with Muslim organisations changed last year: the MCB was sidelined in favour of more pliable (and less representative) bodies such as the Sufi Muslim Council. Kelly, Blears and Miliband were among those backing the shift. Keogh and O’Connor’s leak, on the other hand, was of a document detailing White House discussions between Tony Blair and George Bush in April 2004 during the first US assault on Falluja in Iraq, when it is known that British commanders had expressed concern about the use of white phosphorus by US troops. Speculation was published about the document’s contents – which Keogh is said to have described as “abhorrent” and “illegal” – including claims that the US president wanted to bomb the al-Jazeera TV station in Qatar. The courts have imposed tight reporting restrictions on the actual contents of the leaked material. Could it be that the crucial difference between the two cases is that Pasquill’s leak suited a faction in the government, which used it to change policy – whereas Keogh and O’Connor’s leak was deeply embarrassing, not only to the British government, but also to the Bush administration, and so the two men were duly thrown to the wolves? Which would only go to show that it is political convenience, rather than any consistent application of the law, that determines when whistleblowers go to jail in Britain and when they go free.
Kenya: The Colonial Legacy Behind the Crisis13 Jan 2008As the once-peaceful African nation of Kenya has descended into an orgy of violence after its disputed election result, the reaction in the west has been one of outrage based largely on ignorance. Both politicians and the media have failed to fully understand the role of Kenya?s colonial past in the current crisis. Late last month, the government of ruling President Mwai Kibati declared that he had won the country?s election. But all the indications are that the election was rigged in the closing stages, after his main challenger Raila Odinga had surged in the early exit polls. With nearly half the vote counted Odinga had 57 percent of the vote compared with 39 percent for Kibaki. However, when the results were announced Kibaki had supposedly won by 46 per cent to 44 per cent. Election observers were quick to point out that Kenya?s election commission ignored undeniable evidence of vote rigging. For example, in one district Kibaki?s total went from 50,145 votes after voting closed to 75,261 votes the next day. ?The presidential elections were flawed,? said Alexander Graf Lambsdorff, the chief European observer. Within fifteen minutes of the announcement, Kenya erupted into violence. The world has watched in horror as one of the most stable nations in Africa has plunged into anarchy and bloodletting. Before the bloodshed started Kenya was in a position most African leaders would envy. Its stunning beaches, game parks and wildlife were the centre of a billion-dollar tourism industry. Its economy was growing at 7 percent. And compared to its warmongering neighbours – Somalia, Sudan and Congo ? it was at peace. Not any more. Up to a thousand people have been killed since the election, with hundreds of thousands made homeless. The reports coming from the country are horrifying ? no more so than when up to fifty women and children were murdered in a church in western Kenya. The people murdered in the church were Kikuyu, the biggest tribe in Kenya with about 22 percent of the population. The Kikuyu are also the tribe which historically has benefited the most since their country achieved Independence from Britain in 1963. Kenya?s first president and elder statesman Jomo Kenyatta, was a Kikuyu as is the current President, Kibati. Both were seen as favouring their tribe over others, when it came to political appointments, money and access. In a country still rife with corruption and poverty, it helps to have a relative in a position of power. Kibaki?s critics point to the fact that many of the top officials in his government ? including the ministers of defense, justice, finance and internal security ? are Kikuyus. Over the last five years, resentment has grown against him and the Kikuyu in general. Both the BBC and leading liberal newspaper in Britain, the Observer, were quick to argue that the political tensions in the country were sown a decade ago when Kibati?s predecessor as President, Daniel Arap Moi ? who had ruled practically as a dictator – was forced to introduce multi-party politics. Moi was not a Kikuyu, he was from another tribe called the Kalenjin, which makes up about twelve per cent of the Kenyan population. The Kalenjin, who are the dominant population in the beautiful Rift Valley that carves through Western Kenya, felt threatened by the move to democracy. Moi allowed the Kalenjin to undertake a killing frenzy against the Kikuyu in the area. Although disputes between the Kalenjin and Kikuyu, as well as wider tribal tensions are undoubtedly part of the current problem, there are other issues at play. ?You have to understand that these issues are much deeper than ethnic,? argues Maina Kiai, chairman of the Kenya National Commission on Human Rights. ?They are political,? he said, and ?they go back to land.? They also go back to the British. To understand the current crisis in Kenya you have to understand the devastating colonial legacy of the British and other colonial powers in Africa. Firstly, the country?s boundaries were drawn by the colonial powers with no regard for the ethnic breakdown on the ground. As Richard Dowden, the director of the Royal African Society, has quite rightly pointed out: ?Africans played no part in the creation of their nation states. Their boundaries were drawn on maps in Europe by Europeans who had never even been to Africa and with no regard for existing political systems and boundaries.? So you could argue that the current outpouring of ?tribalism? as it is being called in the Western media is the direct result of imposed colonial policies, stretching back decades. Although, as Dowden, points out, Kenyans now feel proud to be Kenyan, their tribal heritage is probably of more importance to them, than being Kenyan. So in the Rift Valley, the anti-Kikuyu feeling does not just go back a decade to the times of Daniel Arap Moi, it goes back all the way to independence, when the British government bought out Britons who owned huge, picturesque farms that nestled in the valley on prime agricultural land. Instead of redistributing that land to the people who had lived there for centuries, like the Kalenjin and semi-nomadic Masai, Jomo Kenyatta?s government gave much of the land to other Kikuyu?s. Even today many of the top farms in the Rift Valley are still owned by White settlers or their descendents. Resentment over land has built up over the past four decades, as it has in other parts of Africa. The British could have prevented this by establishing a system of fair land redistribution when they left, but they did not. For example, in 2004, the Kenyan government rejected demands by the Masai for the return of one million hectares of land leased to British settlers over 100 years before. Signed on Aug. 15, 1904, with the illiterate Masai using thumbprints, the document said the Masai leaders ?of our own free will, decided that it is for our best interests to remove our people, flocks, and herds into definite reservations away from the railway line, and away from any land that may be thrown open to European settlement.? Although the Masai had no idea what they were signing, they have failed in their attempt to get their land back. In 2004, the Masai tried to forcibly invade some of the farms, leading to over one hundred being arrested and at least one person shot dead by Kenyan police, who were protecting the farmers. When the Masai tried to march to the British High Commission in downtown Nairobi, they were fired upon with tear gas. “We’re now squatters on our own land,” said Ratik Ole Kuyana, a Masai tour guide. “I’d rather spend my days in prison than see settlers spend their days enjoying my motherland.? The government could not be seen to give in to the Masai, as scores of other ethnic groups in Kenya also have historical grievances against the British or the Kikuyus. Apart from land, Britain left behind a colonial machinery that invited corruption and the enhancement of the elite to the detriment of the poor. Caroline Elkins, associate professor of African studies at Harvard University and the author of “Imperial Reckoning: The Untold Story of Britain’s Gulag in Kenya? argues ?Far from leaving behind democratic institutions and cultures, Britain bequeathed to its former colonies corrupted and corruptible governments. Added to this was a distinctly colonial view of the rule of law, which saw the British leave behind legal systems that facilitated tyranny, oppression and poverty rather than open, accountable government.? It is the Kikuyus who have benefited the most from Britain?s legacy. Resentment against the Kikuyus is such that in Western Kenya it is the Kikuyus who have been forced to flee in heavily guarded buses from their homes and farms that have been burnt to the ground. As the International Herald Tribune reported ?It is nothing short of a mass exodus. The tribe that has dominated business and politics in Kenya since independence in 1963 is now being chased off its land by machete-wielding mobs made up of members of other tribes furious about the Dec. 27 election.? Kenya should feel let down by Britain in other ways too. In previous elections the UK has turned a blind eye to vote rigging and intimidation. To Britain?s credit it has poured aid money into the country, but has done nothing after watching millions being sliced off by Kenya?s ruling elite. And in the current crisis it seems the UK was taken completely by surprise about a conflict which was essentially of its own making, and it should have seen coming. And instead of sending out a peace envoy as soon as possible, it was actually the Americans who did so first. Gordon Brown reacted to the crisis with the words ?What I want to see is?? His words sounded eerily reminiscent of an old colonial master. It is a master that should shoulder some of the blame of a crisis that some now say constitutes genocide.
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