The request for and issuing of a warrant in the past week for Tzipi Livni, the Israeli Defence Minister during last year’s War on Gaza, by Palestinian Lawyers for Human Rights, has raised significant questions about the independence of the judiciary from the government in the United Kingdom. At a time when the Chilcot Inquiry is in progress, this clash between legal and political forces gives an interesting insight into the government’s respect for the domestic legal system and its commitment to international justice.
A private prosecution was launched against Ms Livni at a London magistrates’ court alleging crimes against the Geneva Conventions. To launch such a charge no evidential proof is needed. Once the charge is issued the police are required to arrest the defendant and bring them before a court, where the evidence will be reviewed and a decision made as to whether the prosecution should continue. All this action can currently be taken as the UK is one of a number of countries in which the jurisdiction of the courts can be used to prosecute genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes. This is the concept of universal jurisdiction. It is most commonly associated with the arrest of Augusto Pinochet, the Chilean dictator, who was detained in London at the request of the Spanish courts. Pinochet was never put on trial in Europe, but it importantly set a precedent that universal jurisdiction could give enforceability to international law and was more than just an empty symbol of ‘Western progression’. Its application leading to a warrant for the arrest of Ms Livni, has been described as a ‘peculiarity’ of the legal system by the government and readily labeled as an ‘embarrassment’, leading to calls for such action to ‘never be allowed again’. The government is now seeking to alter the manner in which universal jurisdiction can be applied in the UK. It is expected that the Attorney General, the government’s legal advisor who holds the power to halt the continuation of prosecutions (including those under the authority of universal jurisdiction), will be asked to approve warrants before suspected war criminals can be arrested in future.
Commenting on the incident, Tzipi Livni robustly declared, ‘what needs to be put on trial here is the abuse of the British legal system.’ The Times denounced ‘the targeting of Israeli ministers by the courts’ as ‘a disgrace’ and ‘a politicised campaign to harass the statesmen of a democracy.’ Undoubtedly, it was incorrect for the warrant to be issued without Ms Livni being present in the country, as this is a pre-requisite for application. All the same, her vociferous indignation does not exonerate the former Defence minister from the legitimate accusations that have been made against her (an independent UN fact-finding mission concluded that ‘actions amounting to war crimes and possibly, in some respects, crimes against humanity, were committed by the Israel Defense Force’). In keeping with its commitment to international justice, the British government’s response to the furore has been to consider permitting its legal advisor the authority to dismiss prosecutions without reviewing the evidence behind the claims. This decision could have huge implications upon the independence of the judiciary. Politicians must stay out of individual cases, not pass comment without good legal reason. It appears that the government is amending the law in order to dictate which prosecutions can go forward in future, their predominant motivation for doing so being to avoid further embarrassment. The Foreign Office has elucidated that Ms Livni could be a key player in a possible future peace process and that we must keep dialogue open. If Barack Obama’s presence and political capital could not shift Israel’s steadfast position it is unlikely that Britain will succeed where he could not, even if Ms Livni may be a more conducive partner for talks than Binyamin Netanyahu. Regardless, this does not absolve her of responsibility for her past actions, not to mention that the UN fact-finding mission called on the world to ‘end the culture of impunity’ which haunts the Arab-Israeli conflict.

The moves made by the government should be condemned in the most unequivocal of terms. Were the government to apply the principle in the manner they are proposing, the continuation of prosecutions would be subject to fluctuations in foreign policy. Considering brutal dictators from Saddam Hussain, to Islam Karimov, have at times been thought suited to the national interest, it is difficult to see how this will lead to anything other than a disturbing pattern of inconsistency. It has been argued that a policy of non-intervention between states has brought a modicum of equality in international relations, but this is a false dichotomy, equality of inaction does not benefit our national interest, the UK should look to lead when it comes to human rights and seek equality between citizens, not leaders. It is notable that those who have criticised universal jurisdiction as infringing upon national sovereignty, whose position the UK is now moving towards, have served in governments responsible for deaths on the greatest of scale and are fully committed to the belief that their actions were justified. Henry Kissinger who oversaw millions of deaths in Vietnam has described it as a ‘tyranny of judges’, George W. Bush has warned against the dangers of the concept being used as a political tool, but, they forget that it is not the principle that discriminates, it is those in power who are selective when applying justice. Both arguments are easily refuted. Firstly, the definition of war crimes used is largely similar to those in the Pentagon’s military manuals and on numerous occasions the U.S has asserted its jurisdiction over others’ citizens to convict drug lords and terrorists. Secondly, legal systems which meet international standards (decided by the UN) have appropriate means to appeal against convictions, where as, the alternative Kissinger and Bush propose is simply a ‘tyranny of politicians’, who do not consider evidence, nor submit their decisions to independent review.

At a time when human rights are being breached with impunity around the globe, the government should reject this inauspicious approach to the rule of law and make the arguments for the values of fairness, equality and justice that are inherent to our democracy, not consider them an embarrassment. It should stand up to those who seek to bully and show callous disregard for international law, not allow a possible war criminal to hide behind her position as a ‘statesman of a democracy’. Universal jurisdiction should be held up as a pinnacle of our legal system, if only as a symbol of hope to those who live in the most desperate of circumstances, that British justice holds their common humanity as its own.

Over the course of the past two months 30,000 people have joined the Labour Party, but this does not necessarily signal the new dawn that many within the Party would have you believe.
In their current Leaderless state it is easy to attack Labour by saying that they are lacking direction and a real purpose, without actually addressing the main reason why this is the case. The ineptness and at times downright tedium of the leadership contest does validate some of the criticism, but direction cannot come from a leader alone. It must be derived from principle and policy. Labour’s greatest contemporary problem is that they are currently bereft of both.
John Prescott, writing for the Guardian (1), reports that Labour’s research on its new arrivals attests that the majority of new members have joined in order to make a protest against the cuts in spending announced by the new government, Harriet Harman has made statements to similar effect (2). It is in the motivations of the new members that danger lies for Labour. If they are to rebrand as an anti-cuts Party, as it this which is attracting people to the Party, it is highly likely that they will only further decrease their electoral appeal.
In yesterday’s Prime Minister’s Questions (3), David Cameron, pointed out that the difference between Labour’s proposed cuts and those of the Coalitions is 1% per year over the course of the Parliament. For Labour to then grasp the mantle of being the main anti-cuts party would be a huge mistake. The public are well aware that it is they who amassed the huge deficit, and that they were also part of the mainstream consensus on cuts. To ignore this fact, as many of the leadership candidates have been doing quite brazenly (4), would make the Party irrelevant on the key debate of the day: What should be cut from government spending?
Fuelling the anger of new members by not accepting cuts without restructuring the movement constructively will leave Labour on the sidelines. It will further dent their chances of ever reattaining power, and, probably more importantly for the country, leave Parliament without an effective opposition, something which arguably blighted Labour itself for many years.
Labour’s greatest immediate challenge is to find its purpose. To become relevant again. Without real honesty from leadership candidates as to how the deficit should be reduced, finding a purpose which will also make the Party electable seems a distant hope.

(1) http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/jul/07/labour-party-engage-new-members
(2) http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2010/jul/07/new-activist-labour-harriet-harman
(3) http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00t164p/Prime_Ministers_Questions_07_07_2010/
(4) http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/politics/10181112.stm

Tony Blair has said this morning on ‘Daybreak’ that the police have better things to do than provide security for his book signing in London this week. 

Whilst he may undoubtedly have a point, such a response is becoming ever-more commonplace in the face of intimidating protests staged by left-wing groups.

INCIDENTS

Over the past year there have been several such protests. ‘Unite Against Fascism’ (a group who have ironically fooled people into believing the best way to oppose fascism is through intimidation, violence and political blacklisting), besieged the BBC in regards to Nick Griffin’s appearance on Question Time, as well as being involved in a number of violent skirmishes with the far-right English Defence League. 

Ireland’s branch of the ‘Stop the War Coalition’ (oft-described as a group of halfwit ex Sinn-Feiners) welcomed Tony Blair with a barrage of shoes and threats.

The National Union of Students were made to an issue a humiliating backdown after a couple of rogue, Unite Against Fascism affiliated, anti-discrimination officers threatened the Durham Union Society with the prospect of a violent demonstration if they didn’t withdraw an invitation to the BNP to participate in a debate on multi-culturalism (which the DUS were defending).

THREAT TO FREE ENQUIRY

Increasingly, as represented by Blair, events which go against the mantra of these far-left groups are being cancelled as the propensity for violence is too great a risk, as well as making the price of security an inhibiting factor. More worryingly these events are now not even being considered. Prohibiting people who disagree with the BNP, or figures such as Tony Blair, from having the opportunity to present a discourse which disagrees with their line of reasoning in a manner which is compatible with a liberal democracy and without any undertone of organised violence.

CIVILISED INTIMIDATION

On many occasions, once an event has been cancelled or prevented, spokespersons for the protest group come out and declare that said views of the group or individual “have no place in a civilised/multi-cultural/modern (delete as appropriate) society”, and that this is a victory for our “civilised/multi-cultural/modern society”. Frankly, it is not. It is a defeat for any society which would wish to call itself a home to free enquiry or recognise the constitutional rights of all its citizens. It alienates and prevents many individuals from becoming politically active, as activism is seen as in the ownership of those who can shriek the loudest, not with those who can present their arguments with the greatest coherence. 

LEARNING THE LESSONS

There are two lessons to be learned, firstly, left-wing groups should not mirror the tactics of the far-right groups they would have historically opposed - shutting down public meetings through violence and opposing freedom of association. Secondly, proposers of events which are opposed should not backdown, for what better use of the police’s time can there be than upholding the founding principles of democracy?

At least once a month, David Cameron (or another prominent Conservative Party member) receives a grilling regarding the Tories membership of the non-mainstream, right-wing EU group. The now-to-be-expected moral indignation of the average interviewer stems from the fact that the group contains a couple of political parties from Eastern Europe, whose members have at some time, made homophobic and/or anti-semitic remarks. 

Whilst these remarks are to be condemned, it does not immediately follow that the Conservative Party are now complicit in their discriminatory guilt. Tory detractors are not provided with a legitimate basis of attack. By all means, attack them for possibly being on the fringe of EU decision-making or for having weakened their power base within the EU, but it does not automatically follow that they are now a Party which holds extreme social views due to the political structure of the EU (or a bunch of nutters, as Nick Clegg so delicately put it).

Attacks of this nature are futile. Eventually someone with whom you usually disagree with (or even deplore) may just share a political view of your own. Nick Griffin is opposed to the Iraq War. Opposing the Iraq War does not make you a racist. Nick Griffin also believes immigration disproportionately effects the working-class, a view shared by Ed Balls. Ed Balls is not a racist.

This is a strain of thought seen all too often. Free speech advocates who do not wish to ban the BNP from all political debates, are viewed with suspicion by anti-fascist groups with totalitarian tendencies. Palestinian activists are quickly labelled anti-semites for even daring to ask difficult questions about the political situation in the Middle East, even though the same questions are regularly asked by those on the political right in Israel (notably settlers who favour a One-State solution). 

This pedantic name-calling should be given up in favour of proper, well-thought-out political scrutiny from all sides of the political spectrum.

Nobody likes an apologist. So why are the Liberal Democrats apologising for every decision the Coalition takes? Continue on this road and the party is heading toward electoral annihilation.

This apologist outlook has stemmed from the strategy the Lib Dems have operated with since 1997, namely, attacking the government from the left. The strategy must be broadly viewed as a success. Only a month prior to the election the party were ahead in the polls, and although they suffered a net loss in regard to seats, the party gained a notoriety amongst the public not witnessed for over 80 years.

But the strategy is now an albatross around the party’s neck. The problem was that policies became points of principle, obscuring the true values of the party. The previous strategy provided a demarcation with the Labour Party, but it was one largely based on opportunity rather than philosophy. This led the party into its current perilous position, into having to make u-turns on promises they couldn’t possibly keep were power to come. However, all is not yet lost. Positive aspects of the previous strategy can be kept, but only the parts which were based upon the party’s core principles, not those opportunistically based on the public mood of the time.

The new strategy of the Liberal Democrats should be founded upon three points. Firstly, the majority of the public support deficit reduction and recognise it is necessary. This means the leadership should concentrate less of its focus on pandering to the minority who disagree with any public spending cuts - that battle is already won.

Secondly, the strategy should be based on principle, not populist policies. A clear demarcation from the two other parties can be built upon the party’s commitment to civil liberties and freedom. It should not break from its pledges in this regard. It should vote for the removal of control orders, and continue its progress on removing unnecessary state interference into the lives of its citizens. People support politicians who trust them.

Thirdly, it should plough on with political reform. It is untrue that this is not a ‘vote winner’, as the more crass politicians put it. More than half of the population live in ‘safe seat’ constituencies, if the party wins the argument that it has removed the entrenchment of MPs, it will gain a lot of support and can truly be considered a reformist party.

The crucial point to the strategy is the focus on civil liberties. This provides a clear dividing line from Labour and highlights the Liberal Democrat role in the Coalition. It will attract the voters from the left, if more is done to repeal Labour’s stifling legislation, such as the Digital Economy Act, support currently lost to the Labour Party will return. At a time when China is on the rise, and the internet becoming the main forum for political dissent people will not stand for attacks upon their freedom in these new spheres. Simon Hughes should not be arguing in favour of an unchecked housing benefit budget to speak for the ‘soul of the party’, he should be speaking out for the party’s grounding in the principle of freedom for the individual from the state. If the majority of the public links the party to individual freedom and the drawing back of the invidious state, it will be able to see the party’s guiding philosophy in the coalition. It will recapture the party’s identity.

This strategy will, initially, be hard, but in the long run it will provide the carrot to party activists to stay with the party, and remind them why the Liberal Democrats are a party of principle. The reforming force for good and freedom in UK politics.

If the headlines and coverage of the New Statesman is to be believed, Britain, and the world, is locked in the grip of a virulent wave of Islamophobia. Should we believe these claims? Are Muslims around the world being persecuted, are they, as is often heard, on the cusp of a 1939-esque impending racial backlash? 

It is true that there are high-profile and very real cases of racism directed toward Muslims, the most high profile of which being the marches and campaign of the English Defence League in Britain and the fall-out from the Ground Zero mosque debate in New York, both of which have brought to the surface underlying tensions from the middle part of the last decade surrounding terrorism and the response to it from western governments.

The premise of my argument is that Islamophobia is not as great a threat as many commentators would have the public believe, so it would seem pointing out examples of the phenomenon would undermine my argument. This is not so. My argument is that the threat posed by Islamophobia is not an existential one, and that there are very real, if not draconian, defences against it becoming an existential threat. In the period after 9/11 the Labour government fell over itself to introduce legislation which shielded Muslims (part of the Labour core vote) from so-called ‘Hate Speech’, introducing the Religious and Racial Hatred Act (the detrimental effect this Act had has been covered elsewhere, most notably in Kenan Malik’s sublime ‘From Fatwa to Jihad’).

So if action has been taken by government, what is it that stirs the belief that Islamophobia is an existential threat? Firstly, it is only natural that people of a faith, or a race are protective of people they have an affinity with. Secondly, there has been an exponential increase in the number of organisations dedicated to recording incidences of hate crimes. The creation of such groups has led to forensic surveillance of public life for any incident or event which could be labelled a ‘hate crime’. There is now an entire industry dedicated to the pursuit, as well as countless central and local government reports, investigations and tribunals. Such fine-combing has led to an incendiary, uncomfortable atmosphere of political and public debate, one which has created fear. An atmosphere in which words are monitored and dissected for hidden meanings, in which any views which stray from the orthodoxy are compared to those held by demagogues and controversial figures. It’s death by semantic association. The consequence of which has been the reduction in the parameters of democratic debate. 

The claims that Islamophobia is on the rise, rests on the idea that nothing is be doing done to counteract the threat. As stated, this is not only untrue of the government, it is also untrue of the population as a whole. A vigorous trend of self-censorship has arisen. This is partly due to the violent reaction in response to the publishing of the Satanic Verses affair and the cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad in Jyllands-Posten, as well as being a result of the Racial and Religious Hatred Act. The causing of offence has not only been stopped by statute (at a protest in London a young man was arrested for wearing a T-Shirt emblazoned with one of the Danish cartoons), it has been self-imposed. 

A demonstration of self-censorship has manifested itself in the commonly heard remark: ‘You couldn’t say that about Islam’. I myself, heard these words uttered last year, after being informed of an offensive version of the Lord’s Prayer by a group of Catholics. The lack of willingness and ability to criticise Islam or the Prophet Muhammed has meant that it is now the norm to expect the causing of offence to be levelled down. It is seen as unacceptable to mock Christianity because you couldn’t make the same accusation or joke about the Islamic faith. Not only is this worrying for those who care about freedom of expression, it should also be worrying for those who want to effectively tackle racism. If Muslims are treated with kid gloves, a special case, this will only lead to resentment, which may manifest itself in unpleasant forms. It will feed the fire of those who preach separation, and say that there is an innate inability of those from different cultures to live side-by-side. If this language is adopted by the more liberal amongst us, as it has in the past through the previous government’s ‘multiculturalism’ policies, the fight against racism is already lost. People of all faiths should be treated equally, the law cannot have exceptions. The most damning example that this path has already been trodden, is that Nick Griffin can speak of the ‘indigenous white majority’ and not be met with howls of laughter. The idea that cultures are separate has become a firm part of our lexicon.

Another interesting example of self-censorship is present within the actions of the feminist movement. Very rarely will you see a feminist organisation leading a campaign for the betterment of women’s rights in a predominately Islamic country. Undoubtedly, the view that criticism of Islam is Islamophobic has played a part in stifling activism. So entrenched is this view in liberal orthodoxy that the opinion ‘women have few rights under Islam’, is deemed an ignorant one. This in itself is a shocking indictment of many over-zealous ‘anti-racist’ campaigns. A feminist movement so happy to blame ‘Lads Mags’ for inspiring a culture of sexism, is unwilling to criticise Islam for doing the same. This is well represented by the case of Ayaan Hirsi Ali, instead of being viewed as a hero by the Left, she is considered a pariah.

When commentators and anti-racist organisations over-exaggerate the existential threat that Islamophobia poses it has a damaging effect on public life. The freedom to ask important questions is curtailed, ancient and modern orthodoxies are left unchallenged. Those on the far-right are given extra credence as they are the only ones voicing the questions many others wish to ask, self-censorship having silenced them. Most importantly those most vulnerable are left without a champion, as issues of women’s rights are sidelined by the next debate over the ‘threat of Islamophobia’.

Recently, I’ve wondered why it is that so many ardent anti-fascists so vigorously opposed the war in Iraq, after all, fascists don’t come much bigger, or much uglier than Saddam Hussein.