We Can Care About More Than One Tragedy At A Time

One of the strangest responses we see time and again when an atrocity occurs is from those people who seem to say that mourning one tragedy means feeling nothing about another.  “What about x, y, or z?” they will say, seeming to imply that we can only care about one tragedy at a time.  Worse, it is sometimes implied that because you mourn the victims of a tragedy that you therefore support any reprisals carried out using that tragedy as an excuse.

On Friday, Paris was hit by terrorist attacks killing 129 innocent people going about their lives.  On Sunday, the French government launched airstrikes against Raqqa in Syria.  We know such strikes can kill innocent people as well as the Daesh positions they claim were ‘precisely targeted’. 

Yes, the former has had far more coverage than the latter.  But paying our respects to the victims of the Paris attacks does not imply that we support the airstrikes carried out by the French state.

Many of us have friends or relatives in France.  We may have been there on holiday.  It is natural that we have empathy for the people there, sympathy for the relatives of the victims, an interest in what is unfolding across the channel.

My daughter lives in France, so it’s only natural that I take an interest in events there.  We exchanged messages over the weekend, and although she wasn’t in Paris at the time she does live near where several arrests were made.  But just because her workplace observed a minute’s silence today does not mean she or her workmates support the airstrikes.

Social media of course limits the nuances of feeling and argument to bare headlines, and tends to polarise debate in ways that might not be intended.  But we owe it to ourselves and to the future to take some time to think a bit more deeply about a topic than is allowed in 140 characters.

Kenan Malik wrote for Al Jazeera in the wake of the Paris attacks an article that I recommend we pay heed to.  He warns against assuming a simple causal relationship between French foreign policy and the attacks:

“The terrorists did not target symbols of the French state, or of French militarism. They did not even target tourist spots. They targeted, rather, the areas and the places where mainly young, anti-racist, multiethnic Parisians hang out.

The cafes, restaurants, bars and music venue that were attacked - Le Carillon, La Belle Equipe, Le Petit Cambodge, and the Jewish-owned Bataclan - are in the 10th and 11th arrondissements, areas that, though increasingly gentrified, remain ethnically and culturally mixed and still with a working-class presence.

The other venue attacked was the Stade de France, the national football stadium. France and Germany were playing a game there on Friday night, and French President Francois Hollande was in attendance.

But the Stade de France, like France's national football team, also has great cultural resonance. "Les Bleus" - as the team is known - are seen by many as an embodiment of multicultural France, a team consisting of "noir, blanc, beur" (black, white, Arab) players. It was in the Stade de France that Les Bleus, led by Zinedine Zidane, a Frenchman of Algerian descent, famously won the World Cup in 1998.

What the terrorists despised, what they tried to eliminate, were ordinary people drinking, eating, laughing, and mixing. That is what they hated - not so much the French state as the values of diversity and pluralism.”

I want to reiterate that message: what was deliberately targeted was ethnically and culturally mixed areas with a working-class presence.  Places where mainly young, anti-racist, multiethnic Parisians hang out.

It is often said that the refugees are also fleeing Daesh, and that’s true.  It’s often said that Daesh kill more Muslims than anyone else.  It’s often said that Daesh kill more in the Middle East than anywhere else.  All that is true.  But remember also that those places targeted by the terrorists in Paris are places where French people of North African descent hang out, live, relax, and mix with people of other ethnic backgrounds.  It is specifically the shared multi-ethnic lived experience that the terrorists despise.

The victims included people of North African descent, people born in Morocco, people born in Congo.  And that was deliberate. That was the reason those locations were chosen.  So imagining that paying respects to the victims of those attacks in some way means you necessarily support some sort of monolithic Frenchness is very wide of the mark.

I was in a bar in France a few weeks ago, and saw this sign hung on the wall by the owner opposing racism and saying it wasn’t welcome in her bar:

"Racism prohibited here!"

She has doubtless expressed her mourning for the Paris victims today and in the past few days.  Should we interpret that mourning as a unity of identity with the French state and its foreign policy?  I’d suggest we have no basis on which we could do so.

Of course it doesn’t help that many of those wishing to express solidarity with
Parisians have chosen to put French flags on their Facebook and Twitter pages.  While those people may simply have picked an easily identifiable symbol for France, it has for others muddied the waters and caused them to assume that all solidarity with Parisians is also support for the foreign policies of the French state.  It’s for reasons like that that I have been careful not to use the Tricolore in that way.  Indeed, I am suspicious of flags in general.

I’d also ask people to consider that while someone may Tweet a picture of a candle-lit vigil for the victims of the Paris attacks in one moment, they may in the past have posted about the Middle East, about Gaza, about their opposition to Israeli oppression of the Palestinians, about their opposition to the arms trade. I have posted about all these things, yet bizarrely found myself defending a tweet about the minute’s silence for the victims of the Paris attacks. Don’t just assume people have only one interest.  Do you have only one interest? 

For example, I exchanged messages with my daughter in France over the weekend, but just this morning exchanged emails with an old friend in the Middle East.  So while I have family connections in France, that doesn’t exclude me from having connections elsewhere in the world.

So don't assume that observing a vigil for victims of one tragedy means I didn't observe a vigil for victims of another.  As a matter of fact I have observed vigils for victims of other tragedies, including those killed in Gaza.  As a matter of fact, I have done concrete things to offer mutual aid and solidarity to refugees.  And no, that doesn't mean I've neglected local foodbanks.  But why should we have to justify ourselves to those who see the world as polarities, either on or off. Those binary arguments are as myopic as they are fallacious.  

That is the thing about humanity – we can’t be pigeon-holed into hermetically sealed monolithic cultures.  We cross cultures, we share various interests, we share this world.  And that is exactly what Daesh hate.  Don’t do their job for them by trying to limit us and to separate us out.

My experience of being in the Question Time Audience

It has to be remembered that Question Time is a television programme, and although it is edited a little before it airs, the show has to have at least a degree of polish.  For that reason, there is a degree of briefing that the audience face.  Whether intentional or not, this will have the effect of choreographing the audience to a certain extent.

What happens is that you turn up early, you are given tea/coffee and sandwiches in a holding area, and you are greeted by Dimbleby and production team. Dimbleby then leaves, and the team talks you through the procedure, and primes you on etiquette. You are then given an A4 briefing sheet each, with 6-8 headlines each with a paragraph of explanation on the “stories of the week”. This is "to help you decide on your questions". Then you are issued with slips on which you can compose questions to be submitted.

The question slips are then collected, and the ones that will be called are selected. You are told that the questions selected will fairly represent the questions submitted. If your name is read out, you are taken away for a further briefing. I don't know what this entails, as I wasn't chosen, perhaps because I didn't stick to the topics on the briefing sheet. All the questions that were pre chosen when I attended matched the briefing sheet.  I suspect because more questions that match the briefing sheets are written on the slips than are rogue outliers, and so of course those selected did match the topics we’d been prompted on.

You are then ushered into the studio, and take a seat. A warm-up person does a run through, asking for hands up and questions you are likely to ask. This goes on for quite a while. It was interesting that two separate eccentric people with bees in their bonnet asked questions, and were never once picked by Dimbleby during the recording. It seems to me that this is one useful reason for the run through. He will have been told "Wild eyed lady in green on second row. Nutter." So, if you are outside the mainstream, keep it under wraps until the recording light comes on.

I assume that the panel are given similar briefing sheets - probably a little more detailed than the audience one - so that they are able to answer the questions.  The rationale will that it doesn’t make good TV if panel members say they haven’t heard a particular story or have no opinion on it. They may not know the wording of the questions they face, but they'll know what stories they're going to be asked about, and, if politicians,  will probably have had time to message their PR team for advice on the answers.

To stand a chance of asking a rogue question you need therefore to be called when hands are raised during filming.  However, these are meant as supplementary to the discussion already on-going, and Dimbleby of course steers the panel as chair.

The show is pre-recorded and shown later the same evening.

A brief word on Tommy Sheridan

My problem with Sheridan is summed up well by Scott MacDonald here: http://scottmac.org/2015/04/objection-to-robin-mcalpine-speaking-with-sheridan/

Other people will do as they see fit, and if they see fit to give credence to Sheridan, that’s a matter for them. 

Some say “hasn’t he paid for what he did? Don’t you believe in rehabilitation?”  The trouble with that is that he’s still not said sorry for dragging comrades and sexual partners through the courts in a vain attempt to salvage his own ego, and he’s still not admitted he was in the wrong.  He still talks about clearing his name, which means that he’s still calling his former comrades and partners liars  - people who were dragged into court at his behest, not through their own doing, even though he’s the convicted perjurer.

That doesn’t seem very rehabilitated to me.  Nor does it seem very comradely.

Yes, he speaks well.  But if that’s your only criterion for decency, then you’re in trouble.

So, go to his rallies if you want to.  But count me out.

Coburn, Racism and Race.

You’ll be aware by now that David Coburn, the UKIP MEP elected last May, is at the centre of yet another controversy caused by his foolish comments.  I hadn’t wanted to dignify his idiocy by giving either the remark or the man too much attention, but that ship has well and truly sailed, and the incident is now widely being used as a hook upon which to hang a debate about racism.

In the remote possibility that you were unaware, he is quoted as referring to the Scottish Government minister Humza Yousaf in these words: "Humza Yousaf, or as I call him, Abu Hamza".

Humza Yousaf was understandably outraged by the comparison, calling the remark racist and Islamophobic, and many have concurred, calling on Coburn to apologize, but some people have responded by saying it was a stupid remark in poor taste, but not racist.

So, what is racism?  Well, let’s start off with what it isn’t: it isn’t scientifically correct.  Race is not a biological or genetic reality.  Scientifically speaking, there are no races; there's only one human race.

The genetic differences between people from ostensibly different "races" are no greater than the differences between individuals from the same "race"; human "races" are not biologically meaningful entities. Whatever your "race", neither you reading this, nor I, differ by more than 7 or 8% of our genes from anyone else.

There is therefore no point in appealing to science to say “that can’t be racism; Muslim’s aren’t a race” (or the Irish, or West Indians, or whatever category is being contested). There are no biological or genetic races within humanity, because ‘race’ isn’t a valid scientific category.  Rather, it’s a social and political construct. 

So how do we define where the boundaries of these social constructs lie?  That vagueness is part of the inherent danger in the notion of race.

Take as an example, forms we have to fill in from time to time - diversity surveys attached to job applications, perhaps, or the National Census.

Forms hope to fudge the difference between a race, a culture, a nation, a population by talking of "ethnicity", but the truth is that there is little agreement on where any of those terms overlap and coincide. Many of my traceable ancestors were Irish, so is my culture Irish? Not really, since I have never lived there, nor did my parents or grandparents. Am I ethnic Irish? The problem is that ethnicity, like race, is difficult to define, and there are no objective rules for deciding what constitutes a race, or for deciding to what race a person belongs. The 2011 Census asked me to choose between being (amongst other things) White Scottish, Other White British, White Irish, Other White, and Any Mixed Background. The truth is that we can all tick that last one, but that none of them really formed any conscious part of my identity, of how I see myself.  If someone asked me to describe myself, at no point would I consider using the phrase “White Scottish”, although I suppose that is what the Census wanted me to tick.

Despite never having lived in Ireland and not possessing an Irish passport or accent, I have nevertheless been called Irish, and abused as having stereotyped supposed Irish traits, because I belong to the population group in Scotland that is descended from Irish Catholics.  It seems incredible now, but a teacher at my school used to regularly call me Irish, despite my attempts to correct her. She would attribute various negative traits to that Irishness – untidiness, laziness, explosive temper, and a disproportionate fondness for the colour green (she was an art teacher). 

It is my contention that this was indeed racist abuse.  It was abuse based on prejudices held by that teacher, and related to what she conceived of as congenital, genetic or inherent traits she claimed she saw in me that she believed were typical of “Irishness” (none of which I recognised in myself, including the supposed fondness for green!).  Sometimes she wouldn’t add any slur on the Irish character, but simply say I was Irish.  But that was more than just inaccurate, because I knew the attitude and implications that went with it.  Don’t misunderstand me, I don’t feel scarred or traumatised by these events.  I simply recount them as an illustration of my point: the race here was in the eye of the beholder; I did not feel Irish, nor did I consider myself Irish, nor did I consider my family culture to have been Irish.  But the fact of my ancestry was used by my teacher to make discriminatory remarks. It was racism.

So did David Coburn do something similar?  On the face of it his “joke” was that part of Humza Yousaf’s name is a bit like part of Abu Hamza’s name.  But there is more to it than that.  Wordplay, in order to be worth repeating, has to carry some sort of meaning.  Coburn wasn’t just repeating nonsense syllables, he was playing on a perception that has currency about Muslims and terrorism.

Nor was it equivalent, as a letter in today’s Scotsman suggested, to calling George Bush a terrorist.

George Bush is called a terrorist by some because of his actions, not because his funny foreign name sounds a bit like another man who is a terrorist, nor because there’s a perception that people from Bush’s cultural background are inclined towards terrorism.  There is no such stereotype. 

Humza Yousaf has no history of initiating or supporting foreign wars, as Bush has.  The “joke” Coburn made was based purely on the name and the cultural background of both men.

It’s quite clear cut as far as I’m concerned – Coburn’s remarks can be categorised as a racist slur.  It was anti-Muslim racism.  (I discuss the term Islamophobia elsewhere in this blog). 

Some have suggested that Coburn should be arrested for hate speech.  I think that would be foolish and counter-productive.  He’s a boor and a buffoon, and the best response is to tell him so, not to criminalise his actions.  UKIP repeatedly show themselves to be a party of pub bores, the type of person who you can imagine spouting half-baked theories and petty prejudices in a golf club clubhouse in 1970.  They should be challenged on their nonsense, not arrested.

Useful links: 

http://www.kenanmalik.com/lectures/multiculturalism_if.html

https://kenanmalik.wordpress.com/category/politics/multiculturalism/

If I Call You a Liberal

If I call you a liberal, I mean it in a specific sense.  Not to mean that you belong to a capital L political party, nor, as those on the American right do, to mean that you are somewhere to the left of wherever the speaker stands, nor do I mean that you are generous in some way.

Rather, I use it to mean that your position ignores the structural issues in the problem being discussed.  I use it to mean that you are seeing the problem in terms of individual behaviour rather than social construction.  I use it to mean you are missing some important systemic formation, such as class. Usually class.

For example, if you are complaining of media bias but are seeing that bias in terms of the individual behaviour of individual journalists, then your approach is liberal.  Here, Ed Herman explains why he and Chomsky believe a structural explanation is the one that’s needed. 

The liberal limits ideas to individual behaviour.  The liberal thinks that in order to free the media from bias, all that is needed is for individuals to behave better, more morally, more fairly.  While these aims may in themselves be laudable, they will have limited effect, as the structures will not have been tackled.  The liberal’s ideas therefore lack rigour.  If I call you liberal, I am saying your analysis lacks rigour.

This limiting lack of rigour defines the liberal response to the ills of capitalism for a reason.  Liberalism became a political expression of the capitalist class.  It offers a lack of rigour because it doesn’t want to overturn the privilege of the elite.  It limits the debate to a discussion of individual morality, because that way change itself is limited. Liberalism offers individual guilt that change has not come fast enough, but it does not offer real change.

If I call you a liberal, I don’t mean it as a compliment.

Accuracy of terms – lamenting the currency of the term “Islamophobia”

The following is definitely a case of trying to close the stable door after the horse has bolted, but I think there are real dangers inherent in one particular term that has wide currency: “Islamophobia”.

Given the misunderstandings that arise whenever I discuss this, let me lay out a few things first.

Although I am myself an atheist, I think it an important tenet that we strive to uphold both freedom of religion and freedom from religion. People should not be persecuted for their religious beliefs (or for their lack of religious belief).

We should also recognise that racism exists in our society, and across the world.  Muslims suffer racist oppression in a number of guises in the UK and across the world.  This is real, and we must deplore it and fight it.

Further to that, we should also recognise that “race” is a social and political construct, not a biological or genetic fact.  Muslims can and do therefore face racism.

But let’s look at the term Islamophobia.  It means fear or hatred of Islam.  Islam is a philosophy, a religion, a set of views and ideas.  It is perfectly possible to dislike Islam or aspects of Islam without hating Muslims.  Dispute and disagreement are part and parcel of having ideas.  Indeed, they are part and parcel of a healthy society.

The trouble with the term Islamophobia is that its net is too wide.  It is too easy for people to say that disagreeing with some aspect of Islam is akin to racism; too easy for them to say “you mustn’t say that: it’s Islamophobic”.

Questioning and challenging beliefs is not the same as hating the people who hold them.  I don't think there's anything wrong with hating or being afraid of a philosophy, a set of ideas. As an atheist, there is much I dislike about Islam. Just as there is much I dislike about Judaism.

But anti-Semitism is the term used for racism towards Jews; we don’t call it Judaismophobia.  Having disputes and disagreements with Judaism is not in itself racist.

If we need a term analogous to anti-Semitism to refer to racism towards Muslims (and I’d argue that we do), then a better term would be Muslimophobia.

If religious lobbies are permitted to suggest that criticising religion, criticising ideas, is akin to racism because of flabby terms like Islamophobia, then we’re storing up future problems for all of society. 

This fudging of terms is being widened out by the neoliberals in power to include not just religious ideas, but also political ideas. Disliking political ideas can now be hate speech.

The various pieces of legislation which add up to the "hate speech" laws have allowed, for example, Harry Taylor to be fined and given community service because an airport chaplain was "insulted, deeply offended and . . . alarmed" by cartoons he left in an airport prayer room. And allowed Stuart Rodger to be arrested and convicted for shouting "No ifs, not buts, no public sector cuts" at David Cameron.

Those in political power are using these sort of notions to limit what we're allowed to challenge. That's a problem for us all, from progressives within minority communities, to wider movements for defence against austerity attacks, and those advocating social change. 

It’s true that sometimes racists, like Pegida, like the BNP, try to obfuscate and say that they aren’t criticising Muslims, they’re criticising Islam. But that is obfuscation, and it’s made possible because terms like Islamophobia leave room for confusion.  Racist sophistry is one more reason that we need greater accuracy in our terminology.

I concede that this is a contentious issue.  And some would argue that there is already a perfectly good term for Muslimophobia – “racism”.  I disagree.  I think there is, sadly, enough particular anti-Muslim hatred to require a specific word.  I just don’t think that the term that currently has currency - “Islamophobia” - is at all helpful.

Philip Hammond and the "responsibility of apologists".

Philip Hammond, Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, was widely reported yesterday to have told a meeting of the defence and security think tank, the Royal United Services Institute, that "apologists" for those who commit acts of terrorism are partly responsible for the violence.

His words, in context, were:

"We are absolutely clear; the responsibility for acts of terror rests with those who commit them.

"But a huge burden of responsibility also lies with those who act as apologists for them."

We should be wary of this line of thinking for three reasons.

First, it continues to propagate the superficial and facile account of how “radicalisation” occurs, an account that does nothing to tackle the reasons that some people are attracted to Islamism and other terrorist creeds; secondly it raises the notion of restricting what the state will allow people to say, while being vague, yet again, about what constitutes being an apologist; and thirdly it seeks to widen the definition of “responsibility”.

How is being an apologist to be defined?  And who does the defining?

Definitions are important. It is quite easy, for example, to be accused of defending views you actually despise simply by opposing state intervention against those who utter the views. And which acts of barbarism are to be beyond the pale?  I consider the Israeli state’s actions in Gaza to be a reign of terror; will those who support the Israeli state be considered by Hammond to share the burden of responsibility for that violence? It seems unlikely.

But what of acts that attract wide consensus: don’t we all agree that ISIS are bloodthirsty murderers? Well, I certainly do, but we need to examine more closely what Hammond might mean by saying someone is an apologist for those types of acts.

A recent poll of 1000 Muslims in Britain got a lot ofcoverage. It was a Com Res survey for BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.  One finding that provoked coverage was the response to the question, “do you agree or disagree with this statement?”: “I have some sympathy for the motives behind the attacks on Charlie Hebdo in Paris”.

Much of the reporting picked up on the fact that 27% said they agreed with the statement.  But look at the question more closely. It’s vague.  The possible motives were not suggested; respondents were left to guess what the motives were.  Furthermore, importantly, note that having “some sympathy with” a motive does not necessarily mean you think that the motive justifies carrying out murder. 

It was assumed in the media that this 27% approved of the Charlie Hebdo murders, but the poll does not justify that reading.  Since motives were not suggested in the question, respondents were providing their own list, many of which perhaps even I would have “some sympathy” with. I say perhaps, because I don’t know – nobody does.  The question, however, does not ask people to agree or disagree with the statement that ‘The motives justify the murders’. So we don’t know how many, if any, of that 27% thought so.

Does Hammond have these people in mind?  Does he think a “huge burden of responsibility” for the Charlie Hebdo murders “also lies with” that 27%? If he does, then he is clearly just looking for people he can pin blame on. 

Let’s say the state decides to ban people saying something even as mild as that they have “some sympathy with” what they assume to be “some of the motives behind” an atrocity.  What effect would that have?  First, it would create resentment.  Some of those assumed motives might include just grievances.  But even if some of the motives are based on intolerance and bigotry (and let’s make no bones about this, there do exist some pretty unpleasant and reprehensible ideas), criminalising their expression will not stop those ideas - they will fester and grow, and their causes will not be addressed. Secondly, the act of state repression of the ideas will give them currency and a certain “legitimacy”; merely by seeking to silence them, the state will add weight to them.  “See how they suppress our beliefs!”

The ideas will still be there.  The reasons they arose will not have been tackled (indeed, they’ll have been exacerbated).  And the net will have been cast far too wide.

Let us not forget that the definition of “domestic extremism” used by the police has been ludicrously loose, and has been used to justify surveillance of journalists and that “dangerous” Green party peer, Baroness Jones.

If they can be caught up in these loose and meaningless definitions, then so can you and I.

What, then, is Hammond’s statement all about?  It’s about selling an idea that “radicalisation” is caused by “hate speech”, and that the way to stop radicalisation is to clamp down on what people are allowed to say.  But more importantly, it’s about the state wanting to look as if it’s doing something.

So what is “radicalisation”?

According to forensic psychiatrist Marc Sageman, who has studied the issue in some depth, “The notion that there is any serious process called 'radicalisation', or indoctrination, is really a mistake. What you have is some young people acquiring some extreme ideas - but it's a similar process to acquiring any type of ideas. It often begins with discussions with a friend.”

Kenan Malik picks up the thread in his article “The Making of Wannabe Jihadis in the West”.  He writes:

“Simplistic narratives about ‘radicalisation’ miss the complex roots of homegrown terrorism. Proposed solutions, such as banning organizations, pre-censoring online hate speech, increasing state surveillance, and so on, betray our liberties without addressing the issues that has made Islamism attractive to some in the first place”.

Instead, we need to look at the processes by which people might become “disembedded from social norms”, but to recognise that the “radicalisation” notion looks at them the wrong way round.  

Malik says “the ‘radicalization’ argument looks upon the jihadists’ journey back to front. It begins with the jihadists as they are at the end of their journey – enraged about the West, and with a black and white view of Islam – and assumes that these are the reasons they have come to be as they are.”

For Malik, we need to recognise that society has become fractured, but that the issue is not that the “Muslim community” has become disengaged with wider society. The term itself encourages a misunderstanding - there is no one “Muslim community”, any more than there is a “white community”, for example; instead, we should refer to a Muslim population. No, the issue is that wider society itself is fractured and atomised, with many individuals finding themselves adrift and looking for identity and belonging, and this includes, but is not particular to, Muslims.

The way to address this is not to drive in further wedges and intensify feelings of alienation, but to engage, to challenge, to demonstrate which ideas are ridiculous, not to drive those ideas underground.

But then maybe just saying all this makes me an apologist in some people’s eyes.

The ID Database Hasn't Been Thought Through.

It’s been interesting to see the reaction of SNP supporters to criticism of what is officially called the “proposed amendments to the National Health Service Central Register”. Not least because the SNP itself is officially opposed to an ID database; its stated concerns include some of my concerns.

Here’s an SNP press release from 2009: http://www.snp.org/media-centre/news/2009/feb/snp-confirm-scottish-id-card-opposition

So where are these current proposals coming from? They originated when Labour was in office in Holyrood, but come from the Scottish civil service. It should be no surprise that many projects originating from the civil service continue no matter which party is in power.

That being the case, why are SNP supporters so keen to defend the plans?

It seems that many believe that it must be OK if the SNP is doing it. Well, that kind of faith is touching, but I’m unable to share it. SNP supporters need to ask themselves if they are completely comfortable that there will be no “mission creep”, bearing in mind that this proposal is being driven by civil servants. They also need to consider a future when the party they trust so much might no longer be in power: are they just as happy with someone else running this scheme?

I’ve heard some interesting views on the proposals. That it “isn’t data that’s being held, it’s your name and address”. Well, that is data. The proposal specifically says the point of the exercise is “to enable certain data contained on the National Health Service Central Register (“the NHSCR”) to be shared with certain named bodies and for the NHSCR to hold additional postcode data”. So, data given to the NHS will be shared with other bodies - up to 100 authorities and services within Scotland. The information I gave to the NHS – even just my name and address - was specifically given to the NHS to assist the NHS in dealing with me. I did not give my permission to the NHS to share that information with other bodies.

It may be that I’m less trusting about handing over my information in this data sharing age. I’m not on Facebook, for example, precisely because I have concerns about how my data would be shared. Many people are quite comfortable about a degree of data sharing. But perhaps they are too ready to see the advantages and therefore too keen to discount the possible dangers. One of the possible dangers is that systems can harbour errors. Data can be lost, corrupted, or incorrect to begin with. If those errors have only one source, against which every service or public body verifies their information, then countless problems can arise. Individuals might find themselves “non-people” because somebody has entered their name incorrectly once, and the error is repeated over several bodies.

For example, I had an issue with a bank, on their correspondence to me, issuing me with an extra middle name that I don’t possess. I noticed that they had begun doing this this several years ago, and went into the branch with my passport to prove that it wasn’t my name. They duly changed it in their records, but just recently the same erroneous middle name has crept back into their correspondence somehow. Many of you will no doubt be able to think of similar examples. So far, this particular issue has caused me no problems. Yet. But it could. And how much more so if the central registry makes such an error, and that becomes the verified “truth” against which my bone fides is checked?

A central registry is just a bad idea.

Another response I’ve seen is that this is all voluntary. “An individual will give, of their own free will, their details if they want to access a service, and this will then be checked against the central registry”.

Well, that’s not quite right, is it? The central registry will already have your details – they’ll have harvested them from details given to the NHS. And in any case this talk of checking someone’s entitlement against a central database doesn’t sit well with me at all. It doesn’t sound very voluntary; it sounds like a compulsory ID card without the card. The card itself was never the real problem anyway, it was the central register that was the problem – and here it is all over again, in a new guise.

Before you dismiss this as nothing to worry about, read the handy briefing from Open Rights Group:

https://scotland.openrightsgroup.org/policy/2015/02/19/the-scottish-national-id-database-your-questions-answered/

Is There A Home For Me in Scottish Labour?

"In the US, there is basically one party - the business party. It has two factions, called Democrats and Republicans, which are somewhat different but carry out variations on the same policies. By and large, I am opposed to those policies. As is most of the population". - Noam Chomsky.



When I first voted, way back in 1983, I couldn’t wait to vote Labour. I was keen to be rid of the Tories. Little did I realise it would be such a long wait. And when Labour finally got into power in 1997, they turned out to be a government who admired Thatcher and continued her legacy. They proved to be a militarist government, taking us into wars that millions (including me) marched in opposition to. They were unrecognisable. So unrecognisable, that my long wait to be rid of the Tories didn’t seem to be over at all. They were still in power, just with a different name.  It seemed to me that Noam Chomsky's analysis of American party politics could equally be applied to Labour and the Tories here.

But now the Labour Party says it wants my vote.

Yes voters can find a home in Scottish Labour says @jimmurphymp. We disagreed for one day in September, but we agree on so much more. #bbcsp

— Scottish Labour (@scottishlabour) January 11, 2015

“Yes voters can find a home in Scottish Labour says @jimmurphymp. We disagreed for one day in September, but we agree on so much more.”

Well, let’s find out, shall we?

Trident.
A fundamental issue for me is getting rid of Trident. Do we agree on that, Scottish Labour?
No, Labour failed to support "a simple and non-partisan motion" on the renewal of Trident, in what CND called "a snapshot of the gulf between Westminster and the British public".

http://www.cnduk.org/cnd-media/item/2068-trident-debate-is-a-snapshot-of-the-gulf-between-westminster-and-the-british-public


Austerity.
What about austerity, then? The political ideology that seeks to punish the poor for the sins of the rich. Can we agree on that?

Well, it didn’t seem promising when Darling, before heading Better Together, said Labour’s cuts would be “tougher and deeper than Thatcher’s” were in the 1980s.

(http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/8587877.stm). But he was then replaced by Ed Balls, so what did Balls say? Well, he was keen to show he had “tightened Labour’s austerity stance”:

http://www.theguardian.com/politics/blog/live/2014/sep/22/labour-conference-ed-balls-speech-and-reaction-politics-live-blog

He had also said, if elected, Labour could cut £5billion in its first year of Government.

“Labour would not reverse billions of pounds of spending cuts to the police, hospitals, armed forces and local councils, Ed Balls has confirmed.”

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/general-election-2015/11326446/Ed-Balls-forced-to-admit-Labour-could-cut-5billion-in-first-year-of-Government.html

Jim Murphy, now Scottish Labour leader, was vociferous on the matter:

He said Labour must adopt the Tory spending cuts in order to appear credible, and said Labour should reject what he called "shallow and temporary" populism. Labour should accept £5bn of Tory cuts in defence (which was his brief at the time).

http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2012/jan/05/labour-party-spending-cuts-credible

But surely they wouldn’t vote to support Tory austerity measures?

Well, they did. Although Save the Children warned that the measure would push 345,000 more children into poverty, shamefully on 26th March 2014, Labour voted with the Tories in favour of an arbitrary and damaging welfare cap, thus ending Labour’s long weakened association with the welfare state.

http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/salman-shaheen/welfare-cap_b_5042380.html

“Asked whether Labour would cap the same benefits and use the same numbers as in the Budget, Mr Balls replied: ‘Yes.’.”

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/welfare-cap-will-push-345000-children-into-poverty-in-just-four-years-warns-save-the-children-9217442.html

http://www.savethechildren.org.uk/2014-03/welfare-cap-risks-pushing-345000-more-children-poverty

Tory Austerity II - Osborne's "Budget Responsibility"

Another fundamental for me is not voting to support George Osborne’s “Charter for Budget Responsibility”, (AKA deeper austerity). Do we agree on that, Scottish Labour?

No, they voted to approve it:

http://www.parliament.uk/business/news/2015/january/mps-debate-charter-for-budget-responsibility/


Neoliberalism.

I detest neoliberalism and what it stands for. Do we agree on that, Scottish Labour?

Miliband has reaffirmed the original neoliberal ideal, says Daniel Stedman Jones http://t.co/Bd47CRd5

— New Statesman (@NewStatesman) October 15, 2012

Oh dear.

(Useful link on neoliberalism and what it is: http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2006/lilley190606.html)

The Royal Mail.

I think the Royal Mail should be renationalised – Westminster could choose to do this. I think it should. Do we agree on that, Scottish Labour?

- “Labour rules out Royal Mail renationalisation pledge”

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-24327001

It would seem not.

The renationalisation of utilities.

I think rail, electricity, and gas should also be renationalised – again, Westminster could choose to do that. Polls show that the majority of the electorate think it should.

https://yougov.co.uk/news/2013/11/04/nationalise-energy-and-rail-companies-say-public/

The public wants it. Does Labour? Can we at least agree on that, Scottish Labour?

It seems that the best Miliband can offer is a replacement ombudsman.

“He vowed to abolish energy watchdog Ofgem and replace it with a new regulatory regime that ensures customers get a "fair deal".”

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-24213366

That’s pretty disappointing stuff, Labour.

The new Clause Four.

I note that you are rewording Clause Four of your Party Constitution. Let’s see if I find it attractive.

“To these ends we work for the patriotic interest of the people of Scotland”.

http://www.scottishlabour.org.uk/blog/entry/yes-and-no-voters-can-find-a-home-in-the-scottish-labour-party

Oh, no. That’s put me off straight away. I detest patriotism. My Yes vote was not about patriotism or nationalism, but about a strategy for breaking us out of the neoliberal cage that Westminster politics has become defined by.

The NHS.

One of my fundamental beliefs is in a health care system, free at the point of use. The NHS that means so much to us in this country was first introduced by the post-War Labour government, back in 1948.

Surely Labour can be trusted on the NHS?

Well, they told us this in the referendum:

“The NHS is safe with a No vote”.

Worried about the future of the NHS? It's safe with a No vote. #indyref #LabourNo http://t.co/yZBlwXaEAZ

— Scottish Labour (@scottishlabour) September 17, 2014

There was a No vote, so that means the NHS is safe, does it? (Cue hollow laughing).

No, according to Labour, it would seem not.

In fact, yesterday, I got a Labour leaflet telling me how much peril the NHS was in. Despite those words “the NHS is safe with a No vote”. Do they think the electorate is stupid, or has such a short memory?

But not only are they mendacious and cynical, they are also personally and individually up to their necks in private health. Here is a list of Labour politicians with financial links to private health firms, according to research published on 2nd March 2014 by Andrew Robertson of Social Investigations.  - Yes, Labour politicians.

Labour MPs with financial links to private health firms:

1. Luciana Berger: MP for Liverpool.
2. David Blunkett: MP for Sheffield.
3. Rosie Cooper: MP for West Lancashire.
4. Simon Danczuk - MP for Rochdale.
5. Alistair Darling: MP for Edinburgh South-West.
6. Frank Dobson: MP for Holborn and St Pancras.
7. Frank Field – MP for Birkenhead.
8. Barry Gardiner: MP for Brent North.
9. David Lammy: MP for Tottenham.
10. Jamie Reed: MP for Copeland.
11. Emma Reynolds: Labour MP for Wolverhampton North East.
12. Owen Smith: MP for Pontypridd.
13. Gisela Suart: MP for Birmingham, Egbaston.
14. Shaun Woodward: MP for St Helens South.

Labour members of the House of Lords with financial links to private health firms:

1. Baroness Billingham.
2. Lord Carter.
3. Viscount Chandos
4. Lord Darzi.
5. Lord Davies of Abersoch.
6. Lord Eatwell
7. Lord Elder.
8. Lord Evans of Watford.
9. Lord Filkin.
10. Baroness Ford.
11. Lord Gavron.
12. Lord Goldsmith.
13. Lord Grocott.
14. Lord Harris of Haringey.
15. Lord Hollick.
16. Lord Hunt of Kings Heath.
17. Lord Hutton of Furness.
18. Baroness Jay.
19. Baroness Kingsmill.
20. Lord Leitch.
21. Baroness Liddell.
22. Lord McConnell of Glenscorrodale.
23. Baroness McDonagh.
24. Baroness Mallalieu.
25. Lord Malloch-Brown.
26. Lord Mandelson.
27. Lord Moonie.
28. Baroness Morgan of Huyton.
29. Lord Myners.
30. Lord Noon.
31. Lord Puttnam.
32. Lord Sainsbury of Turville.
33. Lord Sawyer.
34. Lord Simpson.
35. Lord Sugar.
36. Baroness Symons of Vernham Dean.
37. Lord Warner.

http://socialinvestigations.blogspot.co.uk/2014/03/compilation-of-parliamentary-financial.html

It’s a long list. Can we therefore trust Labour to vote dispassionately on NHS matters? On the basis of that research, I know I don’t.


So, is there a home for me in Scottish Labour?

No, sorry Jim, there isn’t a home for me in Scottish Labour You are not a party I could ever vote for. On too many fundamental issues, you are sadly everything I despise.


Here is a selection of articles containing current Labour party thinking, with which I can't agree:

Labour will make cuts to welfare budget if it wins 2015 election
http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2012/oct/02/labour-cuts-welfare-liam-byrne

Labour support Iain Duncan Smith's fast-tracked emergency legislation to reverse the outcome of a court of appeal decision whereby jobseekers deemed were to have been unlawfully punished.
http://www.theguardian.com/society/2013/mar/15/dwp-law-change-jobseekers-poundland

Harriet Harman says: people feel 'resentful' of benefit claimants 'not pulling their weight'
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/9977158/Harriet-Harman-people-feel-resentful-of-benefit-claimants-not-pulling-their-weight.html

Senior Labour figure says: "The welfare state has a legitimacy problem in Britain"
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/apr/05/labour-draw-sting-welfare-or-lose-2015

"Why I, a Labour peer, am supporting a regulated market for NHS competition"
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/apr/23/regulated-market-nhs-competition

Labour backs Iain Duncan Smith's "universal credit".
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2316612/Universal-Credit-shake-make-sure-work-pays-gets-underway-Labour-finally-admits-sensible-idea.html#ixzz2S2gaOdOj

Ed Balls: Labour would cap state pension if it returned to power
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/ed-balls-labour-would-cap-state-pension-if-it-returned-to-power-8651196.html

Liam Byrne says benefit cap isn’t tough enough.
http://blogs.spectator.co.uk/coffeehouse/2013/07/liam-byrne-changes-tack-to-say-benefit-cap-isnt-tough-enough/

Charlie Hebdo and Causing Offence

"‘Je suis Charlie’. It’s a phrase in every newspaper, in every Twitter feed, on demonstrations in cities across Europe. The expressions of solidarity with those slain in the attack on the Charlie Hebdo offices are impressive. They are also too late. Had journalists and artists and political activists taken a more robust view on free speech over the past 20 years then we may never have come to this."

- Kenan Malik, "Je Suis Charlie? It's a bit late".

Two main streams come up whenever free speech is discussed, and I think they’re both misunderstandings. First is that people think free speech is peripheral, a luxury. Something we can have later, after other things are sorted out, important things like racism. It isn’t; it is the means to deal with these issues.

Second, people often misunderstand free speech itself. They think free speech means that each statement stands alone in a vacuum and cannot be challenged. That if you reply to what someone says, you are denying their free speech. You aren’t. Free speech is a two way process. It means that someone you dislike can say what they please, but it also means that you can respond. In that way, society at large can hear the exchange, can see the issues at stake, can learn from it. It will be easy to see who are the progressives and who are the racists, the reactionaries, because we will see the exchange.

And here’s the thing, free speech is either for everyone or for no-one. If you restrict it, if the state seeks to legislate on who gets it and who doesn’t, to put boundaries on it, then nobody has it. And this is where we hit the problem. People, for honourable reasons, will say it’s important not to offend oppressed groups. Of course, I want to be respectful; I’m on the side of the oppressed. But that reflex – shut down offence - misunderstands how a plural society can best operate. We are not a unitary culture, if ever such a thing can exist. There are many cultures, many ways of being in those cultures.

When people say it’s important to respect and not to offend oppressed groups, they are ignoring the fact that many of the writers who are vilified by fundamentalists, campaigned against, and often as a result shut down by mainstream society, themselves come from minority communities – Salman Rushdie, Monica Ali, Gurpreet Kaur Bhatti. This discussion is not confined to what you can say about minority groups, but also – vitally importantly – within minority groups. It won’t do to say that those are middle class writers and that their concerns are middle class concerns, because what you’re doing, what has been done now for decades, is that you are shutting down dissent within these communities. You are handing power to fundamentalism. Fundamentalism, traditionalism, hard conservatism becomes the only acceptable, the only authentic expression of that community. And this is an important point – mainstream civil society, with all its power and laws, its state and its institutions, NGOs, and so on, put their power behind demarking and imposing what is authentic, what is valid, what it means to be a Muslim, a Sikh, a member of an ethnic minority in Britain today. And progressive strands are edited out of that, by the state and civil society.

So that we have the bizarre situation where people from the Muslim Council are outraged that they are criticised for making homophobic remarks. We are in a situation where we have sectionalised, isolated groups saying “I want to say that about you, but you can’t say that about me”. Not, please notice, “You are wrong in what you say”, but “You have no right to say it”.

The heart of this debate is what we mean by free speech in a plural society. Malik is right: people holding placards about free speech and Charlie Hebdo are too late, because in many ways we have already lost the war.

The question of offence needs to be better understood. We need the ability to offend precisely because we have a plural society. We need, rather than sublimate, to openly confront and resolve. We need, rather than to suppress our beliefs, to allow those beliefs to confront each other.

Today, progressives are saying whatever the principles of free speech and freedom of expression, it is important not to offend deeply held sensibilities, not to offend religious and cultural mores.

But that has led us to a situation where we now may no longer have blasphemy laws, but where blasphemy laws have been secularised.

Our ability to challenge power and oppression has been limited, is being limited, yes, by reactionary religious and cultural sensibilities, but also by liberal relativism, and by progressives afraid of causing offence.



Recommended reading: "From Fatwa to Jihad: The Rushdie Affair and Its Legacy", by Kenan Malik.