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Sunday 20 January 2002 > think of this as a "Leader" page > several thoughts on several different subjects - now read on >

Afghanistan:
Defeat for civilisation

We live in awful times. The full effects of Bush’s mistaken judgment in Afghanistan continue to ripple through the world. It destabilised relations between India and Pakistan. It threatens world peace, by threatening Saddam Hussein. Bush is now prayed in aid by Israel, for every repressive measure against Palestinian “terrorists”. The imprisonment and arraignment of the Taliban prisoners of war at Guantanamo Bay drives a coach-and-horses through international law, as well as the accepted norms of international behaviour.

The belligerent panic engulfed our own Ministers, who were complicit in the mistake: they made me ashamed to be British, ashamed to be Labour [ see my earlier comments ] And as the spurious ideology of anti-terrorism proliferates, it draws in more and more states, more relationships. We must ensure that the Leicester arrests, reported today [ check out The Guardian ] are handled with dignity and with principle, without abandoning the rule of law and of civilised conduct.

We are living through a collective madness , a loss of perspective, just as a child might lose its temper. We thought that certain established norms of justice were beyond challenge. We now know that our neighbours and friends (for that is how I think of the Americans) are capable of profound inhumanity and lack of principle. It will take many years for the international community to recover, and to re-establish confidence in the imperative of decent behaviour, which we had all taken for granted.

That sense of universal decency will only be re-established by taking human rights seriously. With over two-hundred nation or near-nation states now strutting the globe, it is only the simple, individualist, human rights perspective that can bring them all within a framework of comparability. If “world government” was the cry of the 1930s (now sounding oddly old-fashioned) then a common respect for an irreducible core of individual rights offers the clue to the global governance for tomorrow.

That is why I am devoting so much of my time to the human rights cause. Take at look at the website published by LIBERTY, and consider joining our ranks. And if you are member of the Labour Party, join us in the Socialist Civil Liberties Association (SoCLA) and work to uphold human rights, by argument and persuasion within the Labour Party.

Drugs Prohibition

A central, global, human rights issue is the legal prohibition of “narcotics”.

Narcotics was the name that that the Americans gave to drugs in the 1920s, when they first engaged the world in their own obsession with "prohibition" as a method of government. The rest of the world sanely refused to join America in its disastrous experiment of alcohol prohibition, which came to an ignominious end in 1933.

But by way of compromise , in 1919, the Governments of the leading European states went along with narcotics prohibition. The UK enacted its Dangerous Drugs Act in 1920, as did several other European states. The world has remained ever since in thrall to this monumental fallacy, this profoundly destructive political belief. The fallacy was given new life in 1966, by an American-led UN, resulting in the UK Misuse of Drugs Act 1971. As fallacies go, drugs prohition rivals the Flat Earth Theory, or the certainty that the Second Coming is scheduled for Tuesday week. It is self-evidently wrong and ineffective - yet it continues to command serious attention. And massive vested interests have now built up, committed to its mindless continuation.

The fallacy and failure of drugs prohibition is on too great a huge scale for most people to comprehend. It is prohibition itself that has funded and fostered the proliferation of criminal and terrorist networks throughout the globe. Terrorism in Afghanistan, as well as in Belfast, is deeply interpenetrated by the illegal drugs trade. By keeping prices high, prohibition generates gigantic profits for the dealers. With those profits, police and customs officials can be easily suborned.

The consequential global criminal conspiracy is presented as justifying public investment in repressive police and military systems, lending democratic legitimacy to huge coercive establishments. Further, it is prohibition that drives addicts to crime to finance personal consumption, thus "justifying" further repressive investment. Drugs prohibition has become an integral element in maintaining the coercive apparatus of state, in all leading elective democracies.

But that is not the worst of it. The worst is the personal indignity, and loss of personal freedom, which prohibition brings in its train. For prohibition brings law enforcement into the most private parts of life, the individual's very choice of personal consumption. It offends against the right of respect for private life, assured by Article 8 of the European Convention of Human Rights. Without demonstrating any cogent rationale, it extends the writ of the state into every living-room, every bedroom, every trouser-pocket.

The repeal of prohibition is a cause to which I have committed myself. In 1999, I published a short pamphlet, which I invite you to read Drugs: the defining liberal issue . And I invite you to join me. You can add your signature to a radical reform petition at Angel Declaration , which brings to together many who share the same commitment.

What do you think? Drop me a line.

“Dropout Students cost Ł150m”

This headline makes my blood boil. The National Audit Office considers that the 30,000 university students who “drop out” each year, at an average cost of Ł5,500 to the public purse, represent a waste of money < Daily Telegraph ]

Who are the NAO accountants, to make that judgment? Each of those students had the opportunity to explore university, to benchmark themselves against others, and to formulate assessment of themselves. For most of them, dropping out will have been a real disappointment. But does that mean that their experience was a waste of money?

Of course not. After all, the end and purpose of society is the full realisation of individual potential. There is no other ultimate rationale for collective action of any kind. Nobody has the right to prevent a student making the attempt, having achieved the necessary entry grades, to embark upon university studies. Nobody has the right to intervene and divert those 30,000 students into “vocational courses”, before they have even tested themselves in the crucible of their own experience. That would be a grave infringement of individual dignity. The NAO’s conclusion is an affront to human dignity.

It all reminds me of an earlier national audit of the breast-cancer screening programme, which challenged its continuation, because 94% of all women were given a clear bill-of-health. Cancer was identified in “only 6%” of the cases. That was not considered, the auditors said, cost-effective per diagnosis.

Yet there is clearly great value to be ascribed to the confidence generated in the minds of the 94%. Fear of breast cancer is clearly widespread among women: it is high upon the list of cancer worries. Programmes which reduce personal anxiety are themselves an effective form of preventive medicine [ my thoughts on NHS ] The screening programme should be extended, not abolished.

And watch out for those NAO Auditors. Their misjudgments could be lethal.

Government to cut workers’ rights

Industrial tribunal hearings are booming. The number of cases has risen from 29,000 (Yr 1988) to 130,000 (Yr 2000) , and public administrative costs are mushrooming. They cover both wrongful dismissal cases, and a range of discrimination cases, principally race and gender. Judge John Prophet, who heads the Industrial Tribunal system, has launched a powerful attack on the Government’s plans, claiming that workers’ rights will be significantly curtailed [ The Guardian ]

The Government is sensible to try to rein back the industrial tribunal process. Its effects upon employment relationships are universally negative, and destructive. My own solution would put an end to Industrial Tribunals altogether. The overwhelming majority of such cases are merely actions for damages, for breach of contract. The theoretical option of making a “reinstatement order”, and giving an employee his job back, has proved quite impracticable. Employers are simply pinned down in disruptive judicial proceedings, to the detriment of their firms, particularly with smaller firms. And the outcome is simply the payment of damages, at the end of the day.

I would create a quite different form of legal protection for employees. I would require every employer, following the termination of employment, to pay adjustment pay to every employee. To facilitate job transition, adjustment pay would be paid for three months at precisely the same level as the employee’s previous earnings, but the employee would not be required to work during that three-month period. That period would be devoted to job search, and the employer would be encouraged to assist with that search. Indeed, if the employee did start a new job before the end of three months, the obligation to pay adjustment pay would cease. It would be worth the employer’s while, to help with the job-search process.

Subject to the option of termination without notice for gross misconduct, which is a common law right of every employer, every employee facing dismissal would be paid adjustment pay. The archaic and unjust 1960s system of redundancy payments would be abolished. No employee would face the prospect of sudden income loss, upon termination of employment. For everyone, this would reduce the anxiety arising from the fear of unemployment. It is measure generated by, and explained by, my MDU theories [ you can read more at Multiple Differential Uncertainty ]

Certain legal actions would of course remain. Race and gender discrimination would remain actionable, both in employment and elsewhere: such cases would be litigated in the ordinary courts. Employees would continue to challenge, in certain cases, a “dismissal without notice”, as a breach of contract: that would also go to the ordinary courts. Industrial tribunals were created to deal with disputes arising out of 1960s concepts of job security and wrongful dismissal. That whole approach should now be superseded by a system which gives to employees the assurance of support in the adaptation to change. That is what adjustment pay would achieve.

Something rotten, in the state of Denmark

Immigration is said to be unsettling Danish society. The Danish Government is proposing measures aimed at reducing the number of “foreigners” entering the country. Asylum rights are to be curtailed. Immigrants would have to wait eight years before acquiring Danish nationality, not five as at present. No under-24 will be entitled to bring a foreign spouse into Denmark. Social welfare benefits are to be denied to new arrivals, “for the first seven years” – for full report, see Financial Times.

The management of international migration is the biggest single issue facing our generation. With globalisation, and rising living standards, millions are on the move, challenging all national institutions.

Yet no consensus is emerging on the fair management of migration, and each Government is free to dry its own rules, however illiberal, however xenophobic. I plan to apply my mind to the creation of an international lobby capable of countering moves like those of the Danish Government. Let me know if you would like to help.

Drop me a line.

Stop Rail Subsidies

This is the title of a remarkable, and radical, article by Sir Alfred Sherman. I know Alf. We worked together when I was a management trainee at Bovis, in 1970. He was a colleague and adviser to Sir Keith Joseph, later to emerge as Margaret Thatcher’s guru. Alf was Keith’s guru. He had been an influential left-winger in his youth, and he was on the way to becoming an influential right-winger. And he is nothing if not radical.

So I was delighted to read his latest observations, in The Guardian. They mirror my thoughts about rail travel, almost precisely, yet we have never discussed the subject. “The majority pay for a rich elite to use this archaic form of travel”, says his secondary headline. My thoughts exactly. “Rail passengers, comprising 8% of passenger journeys, for the most part represent the better-off people in the better-off parts of the country, and over half of them are in the London metropolitan region. 90% of taxpayers do not set foot in a train during the course of a year, yet they foot the bill”. Very concise. And true.

How can any democracy, in the long run, sustain the strain of rail travel? That is the question at the back of my mind, as I see my own Party increasingly crucified on the pursuit of an unattainable goal [ further thoughts at Embracing Roads ]