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Diary Note /0033
Wednesday 13 March 2002
for yesterday's thoughts

Drugs Reform,
Misleading Progress

The drugs debate is rolling forward. The LibDem Manchester Conference, combined with the Government's new guidance on the conduct of rave parties, and the success of the Lambeth experiment - they are all straws in the politicalwind. But they are profoundly misleading.

My position is simple. I seek full decriminalisation of all drugs and the use of alternative forms of regulation, confirmation of the individual right-to-consume, which I contend is assured by Article 8 of the European Convention of Human Rights, as part of an individual's "right to respect for private life". If you share that view, you can join others by signing (either in your own right or as representing an organisation) >> The Angel Declaration . With the Home Affairs Commons Select Committee likely to publish its report by the end of April, the momentum of public debate is certainly accelerating.

Why are recent developments misleading? Because they do nothing to confront the key civil rights issues, the key issues of political principle. These are the issues -
"Why are we still using prohibition at all, in this sensitive personal matter? Why do we not, as a society, simply offer assistance and medical treatment to drug addicts, as we help addicts in other sectors? Why do we oppress all drugs consumers, as fellow citizens, with a regime of criminalisation and deliberate social exclusion?"
The LibDems in Manchester, instead of confronting these liberal issues, merely advocated the legalisation of cannabis, leaving all other drugs for criminal networks to exploit. That is entirely illogical, and unprincipled. The Libdems argue for an extension of heroin prescribing, but that has always been legal (even if recent Government practice has been to suppress it). The LibDems, who might have been expected to address the issues of principle, ducked them. Commander Paddick's brave Lambeth experiment could of course deal only Police practice and could not go to any underlying principles. David Blunkett is considering removing cannabis possession from the list of "arrestable offences", but it will remain a crime capable of wrecking thousands of lives, destroying careers liable to being wrecked for any such crime, whether arrestable or not. That also avoids the issue of principle.

The ultimate ambivalence was to be found this week in Safer Clubbing, the Home Office guidance designed as a "harm reduction" measure, encouraging club proprietors to avoid overcrowding, offer free water supplies, provide chilling-out rooms, and trained first aiders. All sensible counter-measures, assisting teenagers to come to terms with Ecstasy and its stimulative effects. But that was not the end of it.

Safer Clubbing goes on to advise club proprietors on how to detect and regulate gun-toting in their clubs, recommending soophisticated gun-detecting search-arches,at £12,000-a-throw. But why are guns introduced to teenage rave clubs in the first place? They are brought in by criminal drug-dealers, determined to defend their retail "parish". And those dealers are in business only because we criminalise the drugs they sell. We have got our principles wrong. If these comparatively harmless drugs could be bought legitimately over-the-counter (not necessarily on the premises, but certainly outside) there would be no criminal dealers in the clubs - and no guns. No expensive arches would be needed.

The really valuable harm-reduction measure would be to remove the guns, and remove from our children the ever-present fear of criminal prosecution. For that, we must address the underlying error of principle we are making by upholding prohibition.The adult generations - all of us, youand me included - are ultimately responsible for exposing our children to these awful risks, both of violence and of social indignity.  By retaining prohibition, we promote crime, and a vicious international network of criminal corruption.

We are responsible, nobody else. The buck stops with us.

For earlier commentary, follow >>

Legalise all Drugs
Drugs: a cruel deceit
Drugs: the deceit deepens
Prohibition: the limits of coercion

Police Matter

The current spat between Blunkett and the Police worries me deeply. All my instincts, it should be said, are pro-Police. I am the classic scion of the middle-classes, who assumes that the Police are always on his side and who calls every policeman "Officer".

I come from a law-upholding household, in which my dearfather considered himself to be a pillar of civic order, a Calvinist Methodist by religion (and Calvin was very strong on the role of the Magistrate and civic authority, which ranked equally with the Minister and the role of religious authority), a long-serving Justice of the Peace, a non-practising Barrister, Chairman of the Cardiff Bench (Whitchurch), and a proud member of the Cardiff Watch Committee. The Watch Committee, which used to perform supervisory functions in relation to the local Police, was a great democratic institution which once used to keep local communities in effective touch with their local Police forces. So whenever any disputation flares, I tend to side naturally with the Police - 'though I recognise that is a real mark of a middle-classmind-set.

But I am appalled, in the current stand-off, at the way in which the Police are taking up the cudgels against an elected Government. I am firmly on the side of David Blunkett, who is right to demand (once more, after too many failed Labour and Tory attempts) substantive Police reforms. I am appalled at the behaviour last week of the Met Chief Sir John Stevens, when he used a public lecture to rubbish the administration of justice, blaming everyone in sight except the Police. Both Anthony Scrivener QC (former Labour Chairman of the Bar Council, of whom I was a close Chambers colleague for several years, while I was at the Bar) and David Bean QC (the present Chairman of the Bar Council) were forced into immediate public rejections of Sir John's attack. But that should not obscure Sir John's serious error of judgement in attacking the Courts as he did. That was completely out of order, and if I were David Blunkett I would find it difficult to trust Sir John's judgment again. Forme, hiscard is marked.

I was equally appalled by theaction of the Police Federation is organising a very public ballot against David Blunkett, engineering a 90% majority rejection of sensible pay-and-practice reforms from the Home Secretary. Those were gutter tactics, unworthy of an honourable and loyal force, without any admixture of common sense or good judgment. The Police Federation sent a message to the forces of disorder that that the Police were in open rebellion against the Government, and that "they would win". We're hard men, the message went, and democratic Governments don't frighten us.

Let's face it. Our Police have become a problem. This saddens me, and concerns me. My instincts are to express the same commitment to the Police that animated my dear old Dad. But I cannot. The problem is aggravated by the fact that the Police have been allowed to grow too far away from the communities which they police. Nominated quango police authorities offer no suitable avenue for police-community relations. The old Watch Committee, to which Councillors were elected by their peers, has been consigned to history. Too many police-officers are autocratic in style, pro-Right and anti-Left, intemperate in manner, superior if not elitest in their social philosophies, prejudiced and racist in their attitudes, paid and pensioned at levels beyond objective justification - and they openly reject any element of political democracy in their regulatory arrangements. There are of course many honourable exceptions - and as a pro-Police person, I cling to those exceptions and pray thattheymay again become the rule.

But as an institution, our Police forces now represent a gravely unreformed, underqualified, and autocratic institution, growing more and more remote from the communities they serve. Indeed, it is mistrust of the Police that animates other concerns, for instance about the use of "stop-and-search" powers, anothertopic of current debate. Mistrust of the Police fuels the intensity of much of the civil-rights debate as well, as with their draconic new powers under the Terrorism legislation. And that is, for the civilised traditions of English policing, a tragedy in the making. The restoration of that trust is, for me, a high political priority.

I recall I was invited, in the early 1990s, to join the Police Authority for the Swansea area, as the quango nominee of a Tory Government. I rejected the nomination. Not because it was a Tory nomination, but because the process was not a democratic one. My nose tells that, however successful David Blunkett is in addressing Police reform at UK level, we must also find a way of re-connecting our local Police with the communities they serve. I do not know the answer.

I am desperately worried about the situation we confront, in which one of the most seniorPolice officers feels able to make public attacks upon an elected Government, and in which the Police unions seem willing to espouse open rebellion by way of resistance to sensible reforms. In seeking root-and-branch Police reform, David Blunkett is in the right, and deserves our support.

Does anyone share my concerns with the stand-off that is developing, in Police circles? Drop me a line.

How Human Rights work

My growing concerns about the Police go to reinforce my commitment to the assertion of civil rights, human rights. My conviction is growing that the assertion of "human rights" offers, for future generations, the strongest potential bastion against the abuse of power by both public authorities and private corporations. Indeed, I predict that they will become a frontline defence against such abuse, overriding the "Constitutions" of nation states.

I offer this week two examples of how this is already happening. The first was on a grand scale, when the Russian Supreme Constitutional Court finally declared the legitimacy of the Salvation Army. The marvellous Sally Army, the Church that always opens my wallet and puts me to shame with its sheer practicality, open-mindedness and personal commitment, had been declared an illegal sect following its refusal to register with the Russian Authorities under new and ill-conceived 1997 legislation. But Russia is a signatory state to the European Convention of Human Rights (now incorporated into English law by Labour's 1998 Human Rights Act). And that meant that, if the Russian Court maintained their blacklisting, they would have taken the Russian State to court, in Strasbourg.

But the Russian senior judges sensed that, in Strasbourg, they would lose. The 1997Russian Act infringed ECHR freedom of religion, and would be held illegal. So they capitulated in advance, and annulled the orders made against the Sally Army. The senior Moscow Salvation Army officer, Colonel Kenneth Baillie, said - "We are thankful to God that our ministries have not been closed down. We only want to preach the gospel of Jesus Christ and to serve suffering humanity. Now we think we can continue in the great city of Moscow". Colonel Baillie is no doubt right to thank the Lord. But the victor (for me) was the European Convention of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms...

This week's second ECHR victory came from another part of the European family, namely Germany. The Kutzner family (husand Ingo and wife Annette) had faced the awful experience of having their two young daughters Nicola and Corinna taken away from them by social workers because they were considered, as parents, "intellectully and emotionally underdeloped" - too stupid, essentially,to raise their own children. An additional indignity was that it was Annette, the girls' mother, who had in the first instnance called in the social services, when she needed help with the pressures of young motherhood.

The conclusion is inescapable. It is an indictment of the German system that this case should have remained unresolved for five years, and that it should have taken an actual Strabourg hearing to determine that the Kutzner's "right of family" (under the marvellous, liberal, Article 8 of the European Convention) had been infringed by the German social workers. Five years of lost family life leached away, as the Germans refused to concede. But justice was eventually done - thanks to doctrine of human rights, overriding the German authorities.

With every passing week, more examples accumulate of the civilising influence of human rights, interpenetrating the entire administration of the state, and enabling us to learn from each other. But onething is clear: justice must be much more quickly done.

 

Oppressing Smokers

The human rights searchlight can sometimes illuminate unexpected corners of our lives. I am not a member of F.O.R.E.S.T (the "Freedom to Smoke" group) because I am suspicious of its funding arrangements. And I am not a smoker, nor have I ever smoked.

But I do consider that our society now infringes the "fundamental freedoms" of tobacco-smokers. Smokers should be allowed far greater freedom to engage in what is, for them, a pleasurable and reassuring activity. The case for smoking restrictions is gravely overstated. Of course, the enforcement of all humanrights involves striking a balance between conflicting interests and concerns. But in this case, we frequently get the balance wrong. I favour an outright ban on cigarette advertising, which has not yet been fully implemented. Many other constraints are simply unjustified.

Smokers everywhere are being oppressed, because the Government has espoused fragile theories of "passive smoking". Many public places now impose a complete ban on smokers, as do many railway companies, and many employers. Many B-&-B establishments and small hotels are entirely closed to smokers. And the justification is said to be the protection of non-smokers against the risk of passive smoking. That is nonsense.

That passive-smoking reasoning is spurious, and often misapplied. The risks of passive inhalation are very widespread in our industrialised,urban society, and there are many sources of potential risk. Cigarette-smoking constitutes one minor element in overall atmospheric pollution, in a society where pollutants are generated by road and air traffic, and by industrial emission. Asthma is certainly a problem, but will not be addressed by the many anti-smoking bans in position. It is wholly disproportionate to curtail the personal freedom of smokers in order to counter this particular inhalation risk. That is to get the balance wrong.

I accept that a 100%-ban may of course on occasion be justified e.g. on a single-compartment coach, or in medical establishments, or in very constrained working-places. But otherwise, good ventilation offers a perfectly satisfactory option, without infringing the human rights of smokers. Trains can easily have one or two smoking compartments. Modern offices can be properly ventilated: it is unnecessaryto place constraints upon certain employees, merely because they are smokers. This constitutes unjustifiable discrimination against an arbitrarily-selected category of employees. I abhor the sight of smokers forlornly standing outside London offices, forced to pass the time of day in furtive smoking. It is a sign of our failure to respect the dignity, and personal sovereignty, of our fellow human-beings.

UK Housing in turmoil

My favourite business is housebuilding. I have served both Bovis Homes and Barratts as the Managing Director of their London housebuilding arms, and I love the business. It is challenging, stimulating, creative, demanding. I have thought long and hard about the residential development industry, lectured and preached about it, advocated and promoted it. I love it.

So in the current housing debate, I cannot remain silent. For years, the statistics have spoken with one voice, to tell us that we need some 4 million additional dwellings over the next 20/25 years. For years, the political implications of this message have been studiously avoided and ignored. Yet the message is the inexorable consequence of economic growth, regional drift, household formation patterns, and increased longevity.

And most of those houses will have to be provided in the South East. Paul Barker is a courageous and innovative author, and this week he has restated the case for building on the London Green Belt "Get building, and forget the Green Belt" Independent on Sunday 10 March. I have long pressed successive Government to increase residential land-supply: I wrote and spoke on the subject throughout the 1970s and 1980s, but to no effect (I have traced one article from 1996,see Land and Freedom. But Labour is just as fearful as the Tories of Southern English middle-class backlash, and continues to preside over a high-price land market. This failure of poltical will now threatens growth of the Greater London economy, which is the primary powerhouse of the UK economy as a whole.

The Tory Government ducked this challenge in the 1990s, and the Labour Government has also ducked it. Armageddon cannot be long delayed. Both Governments have ducked it by taking refuge in the double-speak of "brownfield" land, redeveloped land which are entirely inadequate to meet the demand. The pundits say that, in a few weeks' time, a Rowntree Foundation Report will repeat the call for the liberation of land supply.

This time (I tell myself) it will be different. Thistime, with Labour strong in the polls, some Labour Minister of stature will advocate action, in spite of the risks of offending the middle classes. I fully accept that such action would have to be heavily "spun", to minimise NIMBY backlash. But our people must be housed, in particular our public professionals, at acceptable levels of price and quality. Tory thinking should not be allowed to prevent that.

And major innovation will also be required in the provision of rented housing. Council housing has now run its historical course, and Council stock is being steadily transferred to housing associations. Its headstone will say Born 1919 Died 2019, or thereabouts. Housing associations are proving to be constrained as a rental option, and outside London there is little private new construction for rent. That remains an institutional gap that needs to be filled.

Baise-moi

Are you protected from embarrassment and corruption by your poor knowledge of French? Do you know that my title means Fuck Me? And that it is the title of a new French film currently advertised, with its French name, on the London Underground?

I mention this, not because I am in the titillation business. It's because I want to bring home to you the importance of the authority imparted to a message by the mere mode of its transmission. I hear great nonsense peddled by the media (particularly the BBC) to the effect that they are mere reporters, mere transmitters of news, mere handmaidens of the art of neutral transmission. Don't blame us, gov. That is nonsense.

The impact of every transmitted item is enhanced or diminished by the mode of its transmission, and by the identity of the transmitter. The inclusion of a news report in a BBC World Service News bulletin is recognised the world over as enhancing its credibility. The same is becoming true, happily, of BBC News 24. Other media may, by adopting a message, diminish its credibility: one can think of many examples, but the principle is the same.

Indeed, the same is true, in differing ways, of all publicised messages. In the Baise-moi report above, it was the publication on the Underground that provoked the issue. For that carried the implication that the Underground authorities had approved it for publication - and that in turn meant (the Monitors ruled) that it was "likely to cause offence" to French tourists. If the same poster had simply been fly-posted on a hoarding (as it no doubt will be) the implication would have been absent, and the message acceptable. Legitimacy was conferred by the act of publication by the railway company, and the French tourists were its customers.

All messages, all nuances, all subtleties imparted by the transmitter of a message may be of significance to the receiver. And cynicism-on-TV is particularly damaging, because of the awesome strength of the TV medium. Cynicism about politics is conveyed by so many public commentators, both BBC and otherwise, and it is deeply corrosive influence upon our public life. That is true of the influence of leading BBC figures - the Dimblebies, the Humphreys, the Naughties, the Paxmans, the Warks, as well as the less important ITV presenters, and the prolific Second Division of news-readers who are unhappily deployed as interviewers. Secure in their high-salaried positions, they display an unconcealed contempt for political leaders and political leadership - and that impression is inexorably conveyed to the audience. The authority of their image projects that cynicism. And it makes a major contribution to the declining quality of our public life.

PS Foreign languages skills retain their relevance, in political matters. As the French Presidential elections hots up, we will hear more and more frequent references to a "federal Europe". Now - to the English, the term federal carries overtones of greater integration, the subordination of the nation state to greater "federal authority". Yet for the French, it means precisely the opposite. "Federale" means less centralisation, not more.

The French primary model is of a monolithic unitary state, along traditional French lines. By using the term "federal", a French speaker signals that he is rejecting that model and advocating a system of dispersed authority in which each nation-state enjoys a high degree of self-determination and independence. Both the French and English speaker may mean the same thing, but they use quite different linguistic paths to achieve their purpose. Translation is a hazardous process.

Coming to the flicks?

A happy story, just to finish. Even without Baise-moi, UK cinema-going rose to 144m visits in 2001, in spite of September 11. It was the best attendance since 1972, rising from 141m in 2000. Rock-bottom was reached in 1984, when there were only 53m visits. Nine out of ten of us now go to the cinema at least once a year, although the amorous ambitions of the 15-24 age-group lead the viewing field.

There seem to be two secrets of the sector's success. First, the identification of themes which are uniquely suited to big-screen presentation, and look silly on TV (I've already been twice to see Fellowship of the Ring and I plan to go again). Secondly, when you've found a winner, repeat it. Best attendances are triggered by Whatever II, or Wotsisname III. I wish the cinema proprietors continuing success. Theirs is a civilising influence.

What do you think? Drop me a line.

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PS One of you has asked me to give a date, for the publication of my New Socialist Settlement, to replace the crumbling Thatcherite Settlement, with which Labour is too closely identified. I know this sounds very pretentious - but I am working on it. Publication Date? Wednesday 20 March 2002.

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