"and yet you say this is a righteous government"

posted by k

Back in April and early May, voters took their responsibility seriously. Viewing figures were high when the party leaders debated plans and policies. The young people I knew, voting in a General Election for the first time, were particularly conscientious, reading on-line manifestos, attending meetings – even turning out applaud or argue with party leaders.

Some council officials hadn't expected the rush of voters. Polling stations ran out of ballot papers, made voters queue for hours and even turned them away at the end of their long wait. There were complaints, enquiries. Some polling stations faced a near riot. People wanted to be part of a democracy and were affronted when they lost their opportunity to affect the future of their country.

It didn't turn out like that. The politicians who found themselves in power quickly changed their views. The election result suggested divided opinions and fierce, unresolved debates. People really believed that a democracy gave them responsibility to think through political questions. On most days of the election campaign I found myself discussing political questions, sometimes with mere acquaintances or strangers encountered on a train. Most expressed frustration that no politician fully represented their views but they listened, read and chose the agenda that seemed nearest to what they wanted.

All we had to go on were the stated words and policies of the candidates. When politicians said they and their parties were opposed to torture, against arms sales, in favour of civil liberties or opposed to a surveillance society, we had to believe them. When candidates and their party leader signed guarantees to vote against any rise in students' tuition fees – and campaigned among students on the basis of that policy – they demanded our trust. They didn't give vague hints but firm undertakings.

In the early days of the Coalition, there were hints that promises would be ditched and that the views of the electorate counted for little. If the electorate as a whole had voted for uncertainty, which implies further debate, the result could be ignored. We were to be given stability and firm government. “Politicians know best,” was the underlying message.

Some buzz-words from the campaign persisted. There were frequent references to fairness, freedom and the big society. Perhaps there were grounds to wait and hope for the best. Quite a few tories attacked state repression under the last government. It seemed reasonable to hope they would take their own statements seriously. While the cabinet seemed to include too many public-school and Oxbridge-educated millionaires, surely they would notice the limits of their own narrow experience of life, at least to the extent of seeking advice from other party members?

Gradually hope faded. Ending detention of child asylum-seekers wasn't immediate and didn't mean exactly what it said. Guidelines were changed so that quite young teenagers, who arrived in Britain alone, could be deported to war zones. Deportations - by private companies working for profit - continued to be brutal. One man died - the investigation continues. Passengers who objected to what they saw as brutality were bundled off their flight and held under anti-terror legislation.

There's worse. Craig Murray joined the Liberal Democrats and campaigned for them because they opposed evidence from torture. His analysis of the recent speech by MI6 head John Sawers suggests that Liberal Democrat ministers now accept "evidence" gained from torture overseas, implicitly encouraging the continuation of torture.

ID cards were scrapped but a new form of surveillance was encouraged. Every e-mail, web-search or telephone call made by a British resident is to be logged for government scrutiny. The excuse is the familiar one: the everlasting War on Terror. The census will probably be ended but instead private companies will be paid to gather data. The companies used already carry out investigations on our credit-worthiness. I'm not happy that the government should keep a file on me whose details combine my family circumstances and religious practices with details of my bank accounts and recent purchases.

Then there are the cuts. Party leaders knew - or should have known - they were coming. All three candidates for chancellor agreed the cuts would be severe - worse than anything we had ever known in the post-war period. Yet the candidates continued to make promises. Education Maintenance Allowances for 16-18 year-olds would be preserved. All Liberal Democrat MPs would vote against any increase in tuition fees. Whenever a pre-election promise was questioned, the party representatives assured us they had all been costed out.

Now they insist it's all different. Apparently what you say to win an election is different from the actions you take when the election is - more or less - won. We weren't supposed to vote for the manifestos or the promises. We were simply supposed to select the most personable liar.

You can still read the manifestos of the Liberal Democrats and the Conservative Party. Traces of the parties' campaign promises survive on-line. They ring hollow now.

So do Coalition protests that they didn't know how dire the economic situation was. Four days before the election I wrote about the ways in which politicians from all parties were ducking the question of the economy in favour of offering minor bribes to voters.

There could have been a real debate. The voters were interested, eager to be involved. But the election was based on false premises and a series of policies and promises that were junked with little hesitation. What was the election worth? What was it about?

I suppose the election was about power - the government's power over us.

If our system of "democracy" is based on guesswork and false promises, how can we call it "democracy"? The people are supposed to have power - that's what the word "democracy" means. Without knowledge and honesty, we can't make the serious judgements required of us. But if we don't live in a democracy, what system are we in? I wonder how far I'm bound by the country's laws when they're passed by MPs elected on a platform of pretence.

Most of all I feel conned. I thought that words like "pledge" or "guarantee" stood for something. They didn't. Silly, silly me.

"Nothing ever happened."

posted by k

Harold Pinter died on Christmas Eve. When the news was released on Christmas Day, poters on the BBC's Have Your Say site rushed to condemn him, as though there were a peculiar merit in being first to condemn a man after he has died.

I don't understand that attitude. When icons of the right - even dictators - die, I try not to rejoice. I may sometimes feel relieved that people are free from fear as a result but there's something disgusting in publicly rejoicing at a fellow-human's death. Those who have suffered abuse or worse may be allowed their celebrations but these come from so twisted a world and so bad an experience that we should offer sympathy and understanding rather than trying to outdo them in shrieking hurrahs.

Many people disliked Pinter. He wasn't afraid of controversy and, like all of us, was imperfect. But he was willing to speak for those in need of help and for those who were threatened by state power. I wouldn't always agree with him but I admired his willingness to be engaged and to speak out, when silence would have been easier. I wonder how much his sympathy with oppressed people grew out of his experience as a Jewish tailor's son at school in the East End of London. He must have been fourteen or fifteen when the newsreel film of Belsen was shown in cinemas. Yet he became a conscientious objector in the late 1940s and, more recently, associated himself with Jewish campaigners who called for justice for Palestinians as well as Jews in Israel. These weren't popular or easy positions to hold.

Many of the swift attacks on Pinter target his work as a playwright, calling him "talentless," "shallow" and, of course, "intellectual." There's a laziness in most of the criticism. As a playwright, Pinter continually experimented and took risks. He also, in his early plays, wrote about working-class people - not nice, cosy, working-class people but people who were complex, hopeful, dangerous, often at odds with their society and one another. I'm no expert on Pinter's plays but they make me think - and that's high praise.

As a writer, Pinter cared about language and its relation to truth. The lecture he gave after receiving the Nobel prize for literature has, as its title, "Art, Truth and Politics." it was deeply concerned with two subjects: the way in which language can be abused to conceal the truth and the way in which government and the media prevent us from knowing the acts of horror which are committed on our behalf. Pinter's speech, famously, attacked the United States' role in supporting military dictatorships, and the way in which the United States' conduct is widely ignored. With corruscating irony, Pinter said:

"It never happened. Nothing ever happened. Even while it was happening it wasn't happening. It didn't matter. It was of no interest."

And that's true of so many horrors, from bombing civilians to starvation and the destruction of the planet. It's easier not to know. It's certainly easier not to think about the grief, the corpses, the injuries, the sheer mess of wars and bombings conducted on our behalf. Again in his Nobel lecture, Pinter quoted Neruda (writing of Republican Spain):

"Come and see the blood in the streets.
Come and see
the blood in the streets.
Come and see the blood
in the streets!"

Harold Pinter insisted that we see the reality, sure that if enough people saw what was really happening elsewhere, their common humanity and decency would ensure a gentler and more generous outcome.

Pinter's death came only four days after the death of another campaigning writer, the poet Adrian Mitchell. He too was concerned that people see and acknowledge the truth. His most famous poem, "To whom it may concern," was written about Vietnam but many of its words can be applied to all sorts of uncomfortable truths that we would prefer not to know. The economy is built on debt and injustice. We have prospered because other people starve. Our government sends its servants to lie, torture, maim and kill. Children born in this country are locked away because their parents are asylum-seekers. Even in Britain - even in peaceful suburbs - our fellow humans sleep in doorways and on pavements and don't have enough to eat. Lies are more comfortable. We can live in our cosy world where "Nothing ever happened" and choose the newspaper that tells us our lies of choice.

"the old lie"

posted by k

According to the Ministry of Defence, the army does not glamorise war nor target children under the age of 16.

This is a lie.

The army runs public, half-term recruitment activities aimed at children.

The army sends recruiters into school. When they were in their early teens, my children had to attend compulsory recruitment talks from the army in their state comprehensive school. Parents were not warned in advance. They encountered less obvious marketing ploys when at primary school. Again, there was an army presence in the schools.

The army uses our taxes to recruit our children.

"our far-flung battle-line"

posted by k (copied from a blog elsewhere)

Gordon Brown thinks the British Empire was a good thing. More than two years ago, he visited East Africa and called for a celebration of empire: for its ideas of freedom, tolerance and civic duty.

Some of the outposts of empire were the most beautiful parts of the world. In 1815, after Napoleon's defeat, the British took control of the little island of Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean.

It's the largest of the Chagos Islands - a small string of coral atolls with white sandy beaches. Twenty years later, slavery was abolished on the islands. Diego Garcia flourished: as a mixed race community it developed its own variety of French Creole. There were villages, a hospital, a church, a school, the means of livelihood by fishing and selling copra. By the early 1960s, there were plans for tourism.

Between 1964 and 1966, the Chagos islands were stolen from the islanders. The British government pretended they were uninhabited and leased them to the Pentagon. The United States military wanted a base in the area. With their usual attention to the meaning of words, they set up a camp there and called it "Camp Justice." In theory, it still comes under British law - or the law of the British Indian Ocean Territories.

You might expect British law to protect the islanders. But as the British government pretended the islanders didn't exist, they had to depopulate the islands. First the islanders were told to leave. But they didn't want to go. So the food ships were stopped. Men, women and children went hungry. It didn't work. The islanders wanted to stay in their homes. After that the British authorities had a better idea. They decided to scare the people by killing their dogs. The dogs were poisoned, beaten, gassed and even burnt alive - in front of the islanders. Children watched grown men torture their pets to death. That is what empire means.

At last the islanders boarded the boats that would take them from their homes. They were dumped on Mauritius in poverty. After some years (and some deaths) the islanders were offered a little compensation for the loss of their homes and way of life.

Labour and Conservative governments have systematically lied and tried to cover up the truth. They couldn't come to Britain to make their case. None of the islanders were allowed to live in Britain as citizens until a court ruling in the year 2000.

Ever since they were deported, the islanders have been trying to get back home. In the year 2000, the British courts also ruled that the islanders could return to the Chagos Islands, with the exception of Diego Garcia. Robin Cook, who was Foreign Secretary, said the government wouldn't fight the decision. But in 2004, after Robin Cook had resigned, the government used the royal prerogative to overturn the decision of the courts.

The islanders went back to court. Both the High Court and, today, the Court of Appeal have ruled that the government went beyond its powers and that the islanders should be allowed to return. But Margaret Beckett as Foreign Secretary won't let it go at that. She's appealing to the House of Lords.

After all, Diego Garcia was one of the bases for bombing Iraq and Afghanistan. Empire puts the interests of the ruling nation at war above the peaceable interests of colonised people.

The campaign of the Chagos Islanders goes on. So does the Empire. Freedom? Tolerance? Civil duty? ... Starving children. Killing dogs. Lying. Mr Brown, this was and is your government. What were you talking about?

"the Golden Journey to Samarkand"

posted by k










"O turn your eyes to where your children stand.
Is not Baghdad the beautiful? Oh stay.

"We make the Golden Journey to Samarkand.

[...]

"We travel not for trafficking alone:
By hotter winds our fiery hearts are fanned;
For lust of knowing what should not be known
We make the Golden Journey to Samarkand."

It's many years since I read James Elroy Flecker's strange play, Hassan. As I recall, it's a confection of orientalism, sado-masochism and fascination with absolute power. The doom of the main characters is romanticised and torture is treated erotically. The effect was doubtless heightened in the original 1923 production (after Flecker's death) when music by Frederick Delius was added. At the end, the audience is drawn away from the tragedy by the arrival of a band of pilgrims whose song includes the repeated line, "We make the golden journey to Samarkand."

Today no-one would escape from a world of torture and state cruelty to Samarkand. Samarkand is in Uzbekhistan and Craig Murray, who was the British ambassador there, has chronicled some of the horrors of Karimov's totalitarian regime. And there's nothing erotic or glamorous about it. Imagine a country in which the state compels children to work a 12-hour day picking cotton - or in which cotton workers are effectively enslaved for life. Imagine a country in which 1 in 6 people are employed by the security services, or in which the mildest grumble about the government can lead to imprisonment or death. Imagine a country in which dissidence can end in being boiled alive or in which confessions are extracted by the torture of children in front of their parents.

Now imagine you live in a country which expects its paid servants to turn a blind eye to such torture; which describes "confessions" gained in such a way not as true but as "operationally useful"; which treats the upholders of this regime as noble allies in the War against Terror. If you live in Britain or the United States, you don't need to imagine - you already live in such a country.

We live in a country whose government lies and lies again. We are expected to believe that 1 in every 200 male muslims is an active terrorist. Of course it's not true. But the government wants to persuade us to surrender our liberties. This is what John Reid said on a recent webchat:

"The truth is that all of our liberties are under threat from extremist terrorists who have a contempt for the liberties that we value so much. Therefore, we need to protect them and in a civilised society people accept that requires some curtailment on our own liberties. For instance, while everyone agrees on the desirablility of freedom of speech, most people agree that it has to be curtailed when it comes to racist remarks or encouraging hatred against others. It is that balance which is always difficult to achieve, but I am proud that in this country we are amongst the most libertarian in the world, though we are under one of the greatest threats from terrorism."

It's rubbish. You can't protect liberties by getting rid of them. And in Britain we are not "under one of the greatest threats from terrorism". Just compare daily life here with life in Baghdad.

Of course, terrorists exist. Terrorists may even get us. But it's unlikely. Our government isn't anything like as bad as the government in Uzbekhistan. But condoning the torture of other people in a distant country indicates a rottenness which will touch us too. I'm no longer so sure than it can't happen here. I've seen people slip quietly from firm ethics to acceptance of horrors. We have taken our first steps on "the golden road to Samarkand."





For the full John Reid webchat with comments, click here.



And for further details of Craig Murray and his book, Murder in Samarkand (now available in paperback), click here.