David Miliband | ukwatch.net

Blair has no right to lecture on the rule of law

JamieSW — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 18:17:16 +0000

Britain’s foreign secretary, David Miliband, has been lecturing Russia on the need to respect Ukrainian and Georgian sovereignty. He doesn’t seem to realise how incongruous this sounds to much of the world, given Britain’s own disregard of international law.

In a similar vein, our former prime minister, Tony Blair, also caused wry smiles earlier this month when he visited Malaysia to give the Universiti Malaya’s 22nd Sultan Azlan Shah lecture on Upholding the Rule of Law: A Reflection.

Blair argued that this means “rules and procedures that are transparent, and rules of evidence that make sense and are fair. These basic principles apply universally and without them, the rule of law means little or nothing.”

As you can imagine, the topic Blair sought to address was a source of both amusement and disbelief among the Malaysians.

This is what the vice-chancellor of Universiti Sains Malaysia, Dzulkifli Abdul Razak, had to say: “It is quite obvious from casual observation that someone who has been known to have misled others, including the country’s parliament, has lost the moral authority to preach about the rule of law and good governance … One wonders then what ‘basic principles’ Blair had in mind when he gave an almost unconditional support for the unilateral decision to invade Iraq against the wishes of the international community and without the approval of the UN … Indeed, as late as April 2006, when an eminent British former law lord attacked Guantanamo Bay as ‘a stain on American justice’, Blair reportedly refused to follow suit. According to Lord Steyn, who just retired from Britain’s highest court: ‘While our government condones Guantanamo Bay, the world is perplexed about our approach to the rule of law. You may ask: how will it help in regard to the continuing outrage at Guantanamo Bay for our government now to condemn it. The answer is that it would at last be a powerful signal to the world that Britain supports the international rule of law.’”

The former Malaysian prime minister, Mahathir Mohamad, was characteristically blunt: “It is disgusting to see this criminal of the highest order being welcomed in Malaysia and worse still to talk on the rule of law when he broke all international laws and the laws of his own country by deliberately lying and sending young British soldiers to die in a war of aggression.”

Mahathir added that: “Saddam has been hanged, Karadzic was recently arrested, but this man goes around the world, lecturing on the rule of law.”

Roger Tan, a member of the Malaysian Bar Council, asked if, “by supporting and participating in the 2003 United States-led invasion and occupation of Iraq, I wonder whether Britain, being the world’s oldest democracy, still possesses moral authority in a comity of nations to lecture on the principle of rule of law.”

I visited the official Tony Blair website to read his own account of what had transpired in Malaysia. Unfortunately, I could find no mention made of the trip.

Security Services on trial

tim — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 18:05:30 +0000

A London court has ruled that the British government must disclose information that could support the claim that torture was used to extract confessions from Binyam Mohamed, a former British resident who has been held in Guantánamo Bay since September 2004.

The ruling by the Judicial Review—a special court that considers the lawfulness of a decision or action made by a public body—is a rebuff to Foreign Secretary David Miliband, who had initially argued that he was under no obligation to provide Mohamed’s lawyers with the information.

Binyam Mohamed has now been incarcerated for nearly six and half years. He was first detained in Pakistan, and then subjected to “extraordinary rendition”—Washington’s euphemism for its programme of organised kidnapping and torture—to Morocco. Here he was held for 18 months while his captors used torture—including slicing his genitals with a razor—to wring a “confession” out of him.

He currently faces trial by a US Military Tribunal, charged with conspiring to commit terrorism and providing material support for terrorism in an alleged “dirty-bomb” plot. He could face the death penalty if found guilty. The judges ruled that the information is “not only necessary but essential for his defence”.

Human rights lawyer Clive Stafford Smith, Director of Reprieve, who has represented Mohamed since 2005, told the press, “This is a momentous decision. Compelling the British government to release information that can prove Mr. Mohamed’s innocence is one obvious step towards making up for the years of torture that he has suffered. The next step is for the British government to demand an end to the charade against him in Guantánamo Bay, and return him home to Britain.”

In their ruling, the judges state, “It is a long standing principle of the common law that confessions obtained by torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment cannot be used as evidence in any trial.”

The Judicial Review was held at the end of July over five days in both open and closed sessions, also hearing testimony in camera from British Security Service and Secret Service officers who had been involved in the questioning of Mohamed while he was detained in Pakistan and elsewhere. The court’s 75-page open judgement was finally published last week, while a secret “closed” judgement has also been made.

Lord Justice Thomas and Mr Justice Lloyd Jones found there were compelling grounds that the “exculpatory” information should be released in confidence to Mohamed’s legal representatives. No order for the provision of such information has been made until a further hearing considers the issues of “national security” raised by the Foreign Secretary as grounds for its non-disclosure.

At the Judicial Review, Dinah Rose QC, representing Mohamed, told the court that by cooperating with the US in its unlawful treatment of her client, the security and intelligence agencies were “mixed up in wrongdoing”. It was also alleged that the US “provided the UK with the fruits of his interrogation”.

Rose said that a British agent—identified only as “Witness B”—had made a “veiled threat” to Mohamed while he was being held in Pakistan, to encourage his “cooperation”, with the implication that “we won’t help you unless you confess”. She also asserted that MI5 had “repeatedly” provided the US authorities with detailed information about Mohamed’s life in the UK, information that was then used by his captors during interrogation.

In his summing up, Ben Jaffey, another of Mohamed’s legal team, highlighted the contradictions in MI5’s accounts; one MI5 officer had said that British security and intelligence agencies “did not know” Binyam Mohamed’s whereabouts after he was flown out of Pakistan in 2002, whereas an MI5 representative had explicitly told the House of Commons Intelligence and Security Committee that it believed he was in US custody.

Seeking to justify its refusal to hand over information that could uphold Mohamed’s claim that he was tortured, the government told the court that the UK was “hugely dependent in a number of areas on US intelligence”.

Moreover, it was a “fundamental principle” that information passed between the countries not be disclosed to a third party without the consent of the country which had provided it. “Any disclosure, however limited, would seriously undermine this principle to the point that future cooperation between the UK and its most valuable intelligence partner, the US, would be severely jeopardised”, posing a “very serious risk to UK national security”.

Judicial Review findings

Binyam Mohamed’s case makes a mockery of the Labour government’s pretensions to oppose the use of torture and uphold human rights.

While claiming to uphold the Geneva Conventions and international treaties outlawing the use of torture, British military personnel, as well as officers from the various intelligence agencies have been implicated in the mistreatment of detainees in Afghanistan and Iraq. In the case of Binyam Mohamed, they have been caught red-handed.

The judgement records that “it was accepted on behalf of the Foreign Secretary… that BM [Binyam Mohamed] had established an arguable case (i) that over the period April 2002 to May 2004 he was first held by the United States incommunicado and without access to a lawyer or a court or tribunal in Pakistan, and then detained there or elsewhere by the United States until his arrival in Guantánamo Bay in September 2004 (ii) that he was subject to cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment by or on behalf of the United States during such detention and (iii) that he was subject to torture during such detention by or on behalf of the United States.”

Moreover, the legal hearing and court ruling establish conclusively that not only did the British government know about the mistreatment of Mohamed, British agents also facilitated this “wrongdoing”. The judges found that “The relationship between the United Kingdom Government and the United States authorities was far beyond that of a bystander or witness to the alleged wrongdoing”.

Even more damning, the court found “that on the basis that what was done was arguably wrongdoing, the SyS [Security Service] facilitated it in the manner and to the extent described.”

The court concluded that the “conduct of the Security Service facilitated interviews by or on behalf of the United States when BM was being detained by the United States incommunicado and without access to a lawyer in Pakistan in the period April 2002 until at least May 2002… The Court also concluded that the Security Service continued to facilitate the interviewing of BM by providing information and questions after 17 May 2002, in the knowledge of what was reported to them as to the circumstances of his detention and treatment in Pakistan.”

The Security Services then continued to provide further information and questions to their American counterparts, even when they knew that Mohamed had been moved from Afghanistan to a third country, where he faced serious mistreatment.

Mohamed’s lawyers have been pressing the government to release information and documents they held that might sustain his claim that the “evidence” against him had been extracted under torture. After an initial request for information was lodged by his legal representatives in April, government lawyers responded by saying the “UK is under no obligation under international law to assist foreign courts and tribunals in assuring that torture evidence is not admitted”.

Binyam Mohamed’s case was finally accepted for Judicial Review at the beginning of June. Recognising the urgency of his plight, Mr Justice Saunders agreed to an “expedited” hearing, saying, “If it is correct that in the course of an interrogation, in which material supplied by the Defendant [the British government] was employed, the Claimant [Binyam Mohamed] was tortured, then it is arguable that there is an obligation to disclose material which may assist Claimant in establishing before the American Military Court that he was tortured. Whether the Court should exercise its discretion not to order disclosure can only be determined at a full hearing.”

It was not until this application for a Judicial Review was accepted that the Foreign Secretary then grudgingly acknowledged government documents “could be considered exculpatory or might otherwise be relevant in the context of proceedings before the Military Commissions”.

Geneva Conventions

In its deliberations, the court considered whether the British government or its agents had contravened the Genva Conventions.

“The United Kingdom Armed Forces are trained in the laws of armed conflict set out in the Geneva Conventions. The Joint Services Intelligence Organisations’ training documentation states that the following techniques are expressly and explicitly forbidden: (a) physical punishment of any sort; (b) the use of stress positions; (c) intentional sleep deprivations; (d) withdrawal of food, water or medical treatment and three other specified techniques.”

Citing a 2007 report by the Intelligence and Security Committee (ISC), established by the Intelligence Services Act 1994 to examine the policy, administration and expenditure of the Security Service (SyS), Secret Intelligence Service (SIS), and the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), the court found that the SyS and SIS “must have appreciated that it [rendition] was contrary to the rule of law.”

The ruling also documents the fact that the government knew of the ongoing and persistent mistreatment of detainees being held by the American authorities, or those acting on their behalf.

From December 2001, British intelligence operatives were able to interview detainees in Afghanistan, if permission was given by the US authorities holding them. The first SyS officers arrived at Bagram airbase on January 9, 2002 to begin this interrogation.

A report from one such officer dated January 10, 2002 contained certain “observations” about the conditions under which the detainees were being held. As a consequence, on January 11, 2002, instructions were sent to all SIS and SyS officers in Afghanistan that all prisoners, “however they are described, are entitled to the same levels of protection.”

Despite claims that this merely represented an “isolated case”, the judgement records that there were reports of a “further isolated case” in March 2002, and in April 2002 an SIS officer was present at an interrogation of a detainee by the US military, who complained of being kept “in isolation”.

In June 2002, according to an ISC report cited by the court, the SyS had discussed with Foreign and Commonwealth officials a US report that referred to the “hooding, withholding of blankets and sleep deprivation of a detainee in Afghanistan”.

Again, in July 2002, a SyS officer reported to his senior management that whilst in Afghanistan, “a United States official had referred to ‘getting a detainee ready’, which appeared to involve sleep deprivation, hooding and the use of stress positions.”

The court ruling cited an official document that was sent to all Security Service and Secret Service officers in Afghanistan in January 2002: “With regard to the status of the prisoners, under the various Geneva Conventions and protocols, all prisoners, however they are described, are entitled to the same levels of protection. You have commented on their treatment. It appears from your description that they may not be being treated in accordance with the appropriate standards. Given that they are not within our custody or control, the law does not require you to intervene to prevent this. That said, HMG’s [Her Majesty’s Government] stated commitment to human rights makes it important that the Americans understand that we cannot be party to such ill treatment nor can we be seen to condone it.”

Such is the Labour government’s venal double-talk: not only has the British government tacitly accepted the use of torture by the US authorities from the beginning of the illegal wars in Afghanistan and Iraq (and benefited from the “intelligence” it produces), British agents have actively facilitated it. All that counts is that HMG must not be “seen” to condone it!

Striking a Chord: from Milibland to Johnson Land

Alex Doherty — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 10:16:51 +0000

What was extraordinary about the commentary surrounding David Milliband’s short, bland Guardian piece a couple of weeks ago was how little was made of its sheer banality. Beyond vague evocations of the need for change, his prescriptions were so resolutely non-specific that they could have been interpreted as justifying any policy programme from the wholesale privatisation of the NHS to the nationalisation of all major financial institutions. But what was depressing was not the age-old sight of a young and ambitious politician generating generic rhetoric in an effort to play to all sides of an argument, but the sight of commentators as intelligent as Sunder Katwala completely failing to call his bluff on it.

However, the content of Milliband’s statement does tell us something about the wider political formation. The fact is that any politician in the ‘developed’ world must make a predictable set of noises today. Whatever part of the political spectrum they hail from, they must offer to do something about the combined sense of political disenfranchisement and economic insecurity which any national citizenry must feel in a globalised economy; they must address the sense of a ‘loss of community’ which is so profound and so widespread, and yet impossible to diagnose within the terms of liberal political discourse; they must indicate that they know that something really has to be done about the environment. This is why David Cameron in 2008 sounds so much like Tony Blair in 1997. If your political position obliges you to acknowledge the various things which most humans inevitably find discomfiting about living with neoliberal capitalism, but without ever acknowledging that it is neoliberal capitalism which produces their discomfort, then there is not much else you can say (unless you plan to start blaming immigrants, the ungodly, or non-nuclear families). It seems very unlikely that any contender for the Labour leadership - least of all David Milliband - is going to do any different.

But still: the issue has been raised, so let’s have a think about it. Would changing Labour’s leader make any difference to anything? Could any of the touted candidates help, in however small a way, to shift the terms a little bit, in such a direction as to contribute to some eventual bigger change in the political landscape? Certainly not at the level of explicit policy or strategy. None of them have ever shown anything like the capacity to offer a coherent analysis of the crisis of political democracy and the catastrophic social consequences of neoliberalism, never mind developing or endorsing a policy programme which responds to these endemic issues. John Cruddas stands out as an exception, and although his potential candidacy is only for the deputy leadership, the quality of his political commentary in recent years (e.g. Towards a Progressive Immigration Policy) should be enough to make us pause and reflect upon what the Cruddas-Johnson ‘dream ticket’ might actually produce if were to become a real possibility.

Quantum Politics

So the issue is Alan Johnson. But let’s be clear what this means. The issue is not Johnson the man, or Johnson the political theorist or even Johnson the minister. The issue is Johnson the potential Labour leader, and there is no point in denying that the first job of a political leader in Britain in 2008 is to connect with voters through the medium of television. A tiny proportion of the electorate is actually swayed in any way by the perceived televisual personality of a party leader, but all the evidence suggests that is precisely those voters - middle income, middle England - in marginal constituencies, who are the only voters who really matter in a UK general election, who are swayed by such issues. Let’s be clearer still. When I say ‘swayed’, I do not mean ‘duped’. Rather, I mean that such voters make up their minds on the basis of a complex set of factors which are not easily quantified or rationalised, and hence tend to be mistrusted by political scientists (or their students, as most political journalists have been at one time), dismissed as ‘amorphous’, ‘irrational’, ‘emotional’.

The language of liberal political theory is quite incapable of grasping the reality of the complex cultural and social resonances between different groups and individuals which produce political identifications and decisions in a context like postmodern Britain, and this is pretty much the only language which the Anglo-Saxon political classes - journalists and politicians alike - ever get taught (just go look at the curriculum for an Oxford PPE degree or a Kennedy School programme). Hence they are generally incapable of grasping the complexity of those cultural resonances which political showmen like Blair can understand intuitively and the occasional political genius - Thatcher, for example - can figure out for themselves. Hence their habitual resort to the most unimaginative technique for trying to map such currents of emotion and sensation: the focus group.

It is perhaps no accident that Thatcher was a chemist by training: the logics of molecular matter are closer to the real processes of aggregation, disaggregation, stabilisation and dissolution which give rise to political identifications than are the rational calculations of liberal mythology (this is one of the lasting insights of the great French radical, Félix Guattari).

Contemporary politics is a quantum phenomenon, but mainstream political thought is stuck with Newtonian preconceptions, falsely imagining its basic units to be self-contained little atoms which bounce around in a vacuum, or else members of clearly defined groups which act together all the time. If that analogy is too confusing, then try thinking of politics like music. Ordinary English already has a phrase to capture the reality which I am trying to pin down: a politician must ‘strike a chord’ with her constituency. This is different from saying that she must look exactly like them or persuade them to think exactly as she does. Rather, she must offer something which is in harmony with the aspirations and self-images and daily experiences of voters. Harmony is not unity, but a sympathetic, non-discordant vibration between two distinct but compatible wavelengths. The politician need not be an object of identification or adoration, but must indicate, somewhere in the distance, a point of potential convergence, some sense that she is going in a direction which will not create obstacles to the voters’ ability to travel in the direction that they want to go in. This is not necessarily - although it could be - the same thing as offering herself as a competent manager or an intellectual heavyweight. It must often involve the politician presenting themselves as someone who is not so unlike the voter as to be entirely alien, but they need not be identical, and sometimes their differences can be inspiring rather than frightening. Above all, it must involve the politician convincing the voter that their desires are either shared, or mutually compatible. This is what Brown has so signally failed to do, and what we must ask is if Johnson could do.

Does this all sound far-fetched? Then reflect that not only was Thatcher a chemist: Tony Blair was an aspiring rock musician rather than a diligent scholar of political ‘science’ during his time at university, while John Major was the child of a music-hall artist and never went to university. They all understood something that the bright boys from the policy unit have never been able to get their heads around.

For while it all may seem very abstract, I think that this approach can help us to understand the strange parabola of the Brown premiership. Brown came into office with a cacophony of mixed signals, explicitly promising to continue and intensify the Blair project, while clearly implying that he had other intentions. He skilfully rode the long wave of anti-Blair feeling - which had never really died down once Blair had hitched his fortunes to Bush’s - and did much to encourage the general sense that he was a figure whose moral purpose would orient the country in a different direction to that in which had been driven by the exigencies of consumer capitalism. It is easy to forget now, but Brown was popular even with Southern English voters until his policy agenda crystallised to the point that it became apparent that it would, indeed, be ultra-Blairite. It may or may not be true that Brown’s heart is social democratic while his head his astutely pragmatic, but either way, this turn of events caused his public persona - previously always somewhat vague - to come into focus in a particular way, and it was a way that the public did not like. Either Brown was a coward - ultimately too scared of the CBI and Rupert Murdoch to follow through on his promise to change course and seek consent for such a change at the promised 2007 election - or he was a snake, having deliberately undermined Blair for years while actually having no alternative policy agenda at all.

Despite his lack of telegenic charm, despite even the growing nationalist fracture within the British political psyche identified by commentators such as Gerry Hassan and Steve Richards - Brown had the chance to tap into a generalised dissatisfaction with neoliberal outcomes and start to orient it in a more progressive direction. If ever there was a moment for a new Roosevelt, then this year - which finally saw some of the key elements of the post-New Deal financial regime come crashing to the ground - was it. But FDR knew that he had to mobilise the unions and the public against the speculators, and Brown showed nothing like the nerve for such a fight. He blew it, and now there is no reason for anyone to trust him again. It isn’t entirely surprising. Brown would have had to take an almost Churchillian heroic stand in order to persuade the public that his type of serious political intellectuality, a character trait which few of them share, was something which they could admire enough to harmonise with for the long-term: caution and transparent political calculation was never going to do it, and the result has been terminal for Brown and possibly for an entire generation of Labour politicians.

So if the question is, “Could Johnson - the direct opposite of Brown, admired for his telegenic personality rather than his politics or his intellect - be the figure to rescue Labour after all?” - then any answer has to take account of Brown’s initial popularity. Today, it is evident that Labour is doomed to electoral defeat under his leadership. But it is not the Prime Minister’s personality or appearance that is in itself so rebarbative as to be the cause of this.

Steve Richards regrets the way Kinnock, and now Brown, are hated. But Thatcher was hated far more, and just as personally. However, many who loathed Thatcher voted for her because they continued to see her as “necessary” in terms of the deeper music. At first, many, including those who are now intending to vote Tory, also saw Brown as orchestrating ‘necessary’ change. Today, no one thinks he is needed. An Alan Johnson leadership would have to get down to the necessary - and set out a new relationship between government, the public and the wider world - as well as finding a way to make it resonate with wider popular aspirations.

Johnson to the Rescue?

The historical precedents are not encouraging. It is only 30 years since the last time Labour was led by a right-wing Southern trade-unionist who had become leader while in government during a period of international economic crisis, and 18 of those subsequent years saw the Conservatives in power. It must be instructive, then, to reflect that the Callaghan government made the catastrophic historical mistake of capitulating to the demands of finance capital while alienating its core supporters, desperately trying to shore up a failed economic model (subsidising failing nationalised industries), while opening the door to a new one which could only benefit its enemies (with the first turns towards monetarism and fiscal austerity). If a Johnson leadership were to have any chance of succeeding, it would have to take a quite different approach, and risk the effort of finding new points of resonance between the desires of the 5 million lost Labour voters - including social-democratic Scots - and the swing-voters of the Southern suburbs.

This could happen: it is conceivable. Whatever his personal political convictions, Johnson has come up through the union ranks, and so is presumably less ideologically programmed than Milliband and the rest of his PPE/ Kennedy cohort to reproduce the assumptions of public choice theory (which, whatever the question or social problem under discussion, seem only to give the same answer: privatise something – unless, of course, it is a major financial institution we are permitted to feel sorry for).

Johnson’s estuary accent, easy manner and admirable dress sense could line up with his fascinating biography to produce the image of someone who is at the same time the embodiment of labour movement values and an icon of middle English aspiration. This might even open up the space for such a figure to say publicly what so many already know privately, even unconsciously: that the neoliberal project has gone as far as it can go while offering any benefit at all to consumers and citizens, that a new politics which harnesses the dynamic and democratic power of the collective (without nostalgia for the social democracy of the 1940s) must be found to tackle the challenges of the new century, that building such a new politics will demand direct confrontation between communities and state institutions on the one hand and corporations on the other.

That this all sounds so unlikely is indicative of just what a parlous state contemporary British politics is in. It is highly improbable that any of this will happen, or even that it really could without some much wider revival of coherent and explicit hostility to neoliberalism and the threat it poses to democracy and the ecosystem. But it is worth reflecting on the outside chance of such a scenario materialising, if only as an indicator of the kind of thing that democratic forces must try to imagine making possible in the years, and probably decades, to come.

A surprise to no-one

tim — Sun, 03 Aug 2008 21:40:15 +0000

What a surprise it was to all concerned for a memo drawn up by Tony Blair last September to suddenly see the light of day during David Miliband's leadership campaign that dares not speak its name, wasn't it?

Only to those who still believe in fairies living in their back garden is the answer.

It surely beggars belief that many people prominent in the Labour Party, including a number dumped from office earlier for not being up to scratch, are engaged in a media-encouraged game to mount a palace coup.

And on what basis? Nothing but image. A smiling, youthful, confident new Labourite rather than a brooding, stale, indecisive new Labourite.

The major problem with this unimaginative formulation is that it ignores the real basis for the government's inexorable electoral decline, which is the label that both men hold in common - new Labour.

The label's promise of novelty, honesty and modernisation took the day in 1997, but it is now tainted and despised.

Labour jettisoned 2 million votes in 2001 and 2 million more in 2005. It lost ground in the Scottish Parliament, Welsh Assembly, English local and London mayor elections and its by-election record is dismal.

Labour Party membership, which stood at over 400,000 in 1997, is now just over 150,000, with many local organisations utterly moribund.

Neither electoral decline nor popular discontent set in with the coronation of Gordon Brown last summer. They were in full swing already, which is why voters and party members wanted Tony Blair out.

Mr Blair's suddenly revealed memo rewrites history by claiming that his once loved but now despised new Labour twin had "dissed our own record" - how so very roots - and "junked" the Blair government policy agenda.

In reality, the new leader's failure was to have suggested criticism and hinted at change before falling back in line and carrying out the same old tired and unpopular war and privatisation policies.

The initial suggestion of an expansion of council housebuilding was dumped. The hint of withdrawal from Iraq likewise.

And, in the absence of any positive policies to put before the people, the Prime Minister lost his nerve over calling the election that he had already told the trade union movement to prepare for and has since evoked the image of a dead man walking.

And what is the political answer of the Miliband camp to this spectacle? Shoe-horn in Tony Blair Mark 2 and give long-time council tenants a lump sum to use as a deposit to buy private accommodation.

Such poverty of imagination belittles the severity of Britain's housing shortage and confirms new Labour's inability to think outside the straitjacket of private-sector solutions.

New Labour's dead-end private-is-best policies ought to have been debated last year against the labour movement priorities offered by John McDonnell, whose campaign was stifled by trade union concerns to avoid a leadership contest.

The fruits of that conservative approach are readily apparent now - a government that remains unpopular and refuses to consider another political direction.

That remains the key. Without a new direction, Labour is sunk and deserves to be. The question is, are the unions prepared to take remedial action?

Miliband strikes

JamieSW — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 19:15:03 +0000

What a day for the androids! Miliband half comes out as a leadership challenger, then backs down under pressure from Downing Street, but then it is noticed that he wouldn't explicitly rule out a leadership challenge. On the basis of this hopeless placard, Labour's demoralised members have nothing - neither policies nor charisma nor added common sense - to hope for in a Miliband leadership. As a pronunciamento from a plotting putschist it lacks everything, including novelty. "Labour needs to change and change now" is how The Guardian summarises Miliband's intervention. In fact, the argument is that Labour must not change under any circumstances, but must defend everything it has done, and insist that the only flaw is that it didn't do it faster and better. Even the language must remain the same, the better to reinforce a stifling orthodoxy - "the many, not the few", "change" this, "radical" that, "modernisation" the other... Whoever wrote this drivel for Miliband has the mind of a small child, and he better give it back.

It was mentioned in the papers the other day that if the swing at Glasgow East were repeated in Labour's remaining heartlands (how hollow that term is beginning to seem), there would only be a dozen Labour MPs left after the next general election. The Tories have a clear plurality in every sector of the electorate, whether you stratify them by gender, region, age, or 'social class' (see poll [pdf]). From leading by 10% this time last year, Labour is now behind 19% (poll [pdf]). Recent polling evidence [pdf] suggests that the government's core policies of pay restraint in the public sector and tax breaks for corporations and the rich are deeply unpopular. Unsurprisingly, a party that assures us there is no such thing as class and then goes on to take the side of the ruling class in every key policy area or battle is making itself look a bit ridiculous and contemptible. Because of the government's commitment to privatization (what Miliband somnolently calls 'NHS reform'), New Labour is now even less trusted on the NHS than the Tories. That is a colossal reversal, and it shows that while people did support massive public investment, you can't disaggregate that investment from what is done with it. If you plough billions into colossally wasteful PFI projects, which everyone knows are wasteful and reduce the quality of care provided, you don't get brownie points. If you ram through a raft of market-driven measures and internal competition, which is the reverse of what Labour promised to do, you don't improve people's experience of the health service. Naturally, people are turning against the governing party on what was once its biggest strength. I don't think I need to keep underlining the point: New Labour is in meltdown on all fronts, and the cause of it is policy. The Miliband clarion call for 'change' actually maintains that all will be well if you only explain to the voters that New Labour was right all along, and that everything is going fabulously well.

This is not just a foolish political logic, but part of a dangerous epoch we are in. When people are suffering, stressed, in pain, they will look for solutions, not soothing bromides. And if real solutions aren't in evidence, the pseudo-solutions of the far right may gain a bigger foothold. Look at what's happened just today: British Gas put up prices by 35%. What can Gordon Brown say about this? He wouldn't dream of nationalising the energy giants. He is unlikely to even consider a tax on energy profits and a mandatory cut in fuel bills. He surely isn't going to ask us to 'stop wasting energy', is he? So, the recession is going to kick in, alongside soaring food and energy prices, and the government can only insist on belt-tightening from its constituents and obedience from its supporters. The trade unions got precious little for their supposedly militant demands in Warwick Two, and there is a reason for this: because they fundamentally accept the system that is crashing and burning, they have to accept that it needs to be rescued with wage restraint and public sector spending curbs. And they are subject to intense pressure to reinforce the government's line on 'belt-tightening' with their membership. Only a powerful, countervailing pressure from the rank and file could possibly stiffen their spines. Without working class militancy of the kind we have seen in Germany and, recently, Poland, we are going to see the politics of despair and reaction thrive.

As for Miliband, one last question: where did this idea that he is some kind of a rising star come from? I gather that the papers like him, but who else does? Is he even remotely electable? Transplanted into one of the safest Labour seats in the country, where his predecessor had a 56.8% majority (Miliband has helped chisel that down to 40.8%, and probably much lower still come 2010), has he ever really been tested? Both Blair and Brown had years of political streetfighting in them before they got to power, but Miliband has always been essentially a Blairite mini-me for as long as he has been in politics. The man is a suit-stuffer, probably set to go down as the Portillo of the 2010 election. So, again, enlighten me: who said he was a star?

Scandal of Diego Garcia Rendition Flights

Ellie Keen — Sat, 12 Jul 2008 22:48:23 +0000

This has been a bad week for the British government, in relation to two of the running sores of its foreign policy, both centred on the Overseas Territory of Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean.

Diego Garcia and the surrounding islands — known collectively as the Chagos Islands — were shamefully cleared of their existing population in the late 1960s, to make way for a US airbase on Diego Garcia itself. This was a manifestation of the “special relationship” between the UK and the US, which involved the old empire facilitating its successor’s global reach, in exchange for a significant discount on the UK’s Trident nuclear missile programme.

Ever since, the exiled Chagossians have been attempting to regain access to their ancestral lands, but with limited success. Although successive British governments have toned down the racist rhetoric used at the time of the islanders’ forced removal — when official documents referred to them as “Tarzans or Men Fridays” — Diego Garcia and the Chagos Islands have remained at the forefront of a colonial mindset that has never quite been extirpated from the Foreign Office’s mentality.

Although the islanders won a stunning victory in the High Court in 2000, which ruled that their expulsion had been illegal, the government fought back in 2003, when Prime Minster Tony Blair invoked an ancient and archaic “royal prerogative” to strike down their claims once more. Although the court of appeal reversed this decision in May 2006, ruling that the islanders’ right to return was “one of the most fundamental liberties known to human beings,” it was clear that, in the struggle between a group of cruelly disposed islanders on the one hand, and the US military-industrial complex on the other, the Chagossians’ fight was far from over.

Last week, just after a party of Chagossians visited London to hear lawyers for the Foreign Office appealing in the House of Lords against the 2006 verdict and claiming, as the Guardian put it, that “[a]llowing the Chagossian islanders to go back to their Indian Ocean homes would be a ‘precarious and costly’ operation,” and that “the United States had said that it would also present an ‘unacceptable risk’ to its base on Diego Garcia,” David Miliband, the foreign secretary, delivered a short statement relating to the other scandal of Diego Garcia: its use for “extraordinary rendition” flights in the “War on Terror.”

After years of denials by the British government that rendition flights had passed through Diego Garcia, David Miliband admitted in February that he had just been informed by his US counterparts that, upon searching their records, they had discovered that two flights had stopped on Diego Garcia in 2002. “In both cases a US plane with a single detainee on board refuelled at the US facility in Diego Garcia,” Miliband said. “The detainees did not leave the plane, and the US Government has assured us that no US detainees have ever been held on Diego Garcia. US investigations show no record of any other rendition through Diego Garcia or any other Overseas Territory or through the UK itself since then.”

At the time, I noted that this appeared to be a sly form of damage limitation, as there was compelling evidence that, far from being used on just two occasions as a transit point, the island had actually housed a secret prison. Three examples will suffice for now, although it’s a safe bet that more revelations are forthcoming.

In October 2003, Time magazine ran an exclusive feature by Simon Elegant focusing on the imprisonment of Hambali, a “high-value detainee,” who spent years in various secret CIA prisons — including Diego Garcia — until he was transferred to Guantánamo in September 2006. Other evidence came from Council of Europe investigator (and Swiss senator) Dick Marty, who reported in June 2006 that, having spoken to senior CIA officers during his research, he had “received concurring confirmations that United States agencies have used Diego Garcia, which is the international legal responsibility of the UK, in the ‘processing’ of high-value detainees.’”

The final piece of evidence came from inside the US administration itself, when Barry McCaffrey, a retired four-star US general, and currently a professor of international security studies at the West Point military academy, let slip on two occasions that Diego Garcia had housed a secret prison. In May 2004, he blithely declared, “We’re probably holding around 3,000 people, you know, Bagram air field, Diego Garcia, Guantánamo, 16 camps throughout Iraq,” and in December 2006 he slipped the leash again, saying, “They’re behind bars … we’ve got them on Diego Garcia, in Bagram air field, in Guantánamo.”

David Miliband’s statement last Thursday did nothing to suggest that the British government had any intention of pushing the matter further with its US allies, even though, as the sovereign power in charge of the islands, the ministers are unable to evade responsibility for what has taken place on Diego Garcia.

Rather feebly, the foreign secretary stated that, after sending a list of possible rendition flights that may have passed through British territory to the US authorities, “The United States Government confirmed that, with the exception of two cases related to Diego Garcia in 2002, there have been no other instances in which US intelligence flights landed in the United Kingdom, our Overseas Territories, or the Crown Dependencies, with a detainee on board since 11 September 2001.”

Reprieve, the legal action charity that has spent several years investigating “extraordinary rendition” and secret prisons, responded by pointing out that the British government “intentionally failed to ask the right questions of the US, and accepted implausible US assurances at face value,” noting that the Foreign Office had declined to ask the US government for the names of the prisoners transported via Diego Garcia in 2002, that it had failed to ask if any other rendition flights had passed through Diego Garcia, even if, as the US asserted, no other planes landed there, and had also failed to ask whether any other flights passed through UK territory en route to engaging in “extraordinary rendition,” which would make the UK complicit in the crime.

The British government faced a fresh barrage of criticism just three days later, when the Foreign Affairs Select Committee published its latest report (PDF) on the Overseas Territories. With reference to Diego Garcia, the Committee declared that “it is deplorable that previous US assurances about rendition flights have turned out to be false. The failure of the United States Administration to tell the truth resulted in the UK Government inadvertently misleading our Select Committee and the House of Commons. We intend to examine further the extent of UK supervision of US activities on Diego Garcia, including all flights and ships serviced from Diego Garcia.”

For good measure, the Committee also had harsh words about the government’s treatment of the Chagossians, noting, “We conclude that there is a strong moral case for the UK permitting and supporting a return … for the Chagossians. The FCO (Foreign Office) has argued that such a return would be unsustainable, but we find these arguments less than convincing.”

Under pressure on two fronts over Diego Garcia, it remains to be seen whether the government can once more worm its way out of trouble. Tory MP Andrew Tyrie, who chairs the all-party parliamentary group on extraordinary rendition, is keen not to let this happen. Speaking after the report was published, he chastised the foreign secretary for dismissing his concerns about “extraordinary rendition” when he first raised the issue last October. “The Foreign Secretary persistently gave me the brush-off. He said we could rely on US assurances,” Tyrie said, adding, “My allegations were correct. The Foreign Secretary’s brush-off was not just misplaced, it was a disgrace.”

Reprieve was even more blunt, stating, “This remains a transatlantic cover-up of epic proportions. While the British government seems content to accept whatever nonsense it is fed by its US allies, the sordid truth about Diego Garcia’s central role in the unjust rendition and detention of prisoners in the so-called ‘War on Terror’ cannot be hidden forever.”

Andy is the author of The Guantanamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison (published by Pluto Press/the University of Michigan Press).

Miliband is Very Sorry

Ellie Keen — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 02:14:29 +0000

The European Court of Human Rights condemned the so-called “five techniques” used by UK military and security forces during that period. It ruled that the techniques - hooding, wall-standing, noise, deprivation of food and drink, and sleep deprivation - were cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment, banned under the European Convention on Human Rights. The British government gave “a solemn undertaking” to the court that the techniques would never again be used on British soil."

Human Rights Watch - Dangerous Ambivalence: UK Policy on Torture since 9/11

Never again on British soil, but we can solemnly undertake that you can ship it overseas and we shall turn a blind eye - especially if there are others who will do the actual dirty business. We shall not engage in torture (so if by chance you find a case or two, be sure that these are only rotten apples).

This is the British way. Our public face is principled, well-spoken and well-educated. We play fair, and you can trust our simple swords of truth and trusty shields. In fact, if those dirty Americans (our special friends) should ever happen - perchance - to fly an aeroplane through our airspace, carting their prisoners of war off to secret detention camps to be tortured, you can be quite sure that we knew nothing about it, that it didn't happen anyway, and if someone finds out that it did, we shall apologise for having told you otherwise.

And so we did, or rather so our well-spoken, principled, well-educated Foreign Secretary did. The very same Foreign Secretary, incidentally, who features on the front page¹ of Amnesty's UK Section website with the Director of Amnesty UK (Kate Allen) and a candle in the background.

You see: he believes in human rights, and our human rights organisations believe in him.

But just for the record:

Miliband was Head of the Prime Minister's Policy Unit in Downing Street from 1997 to 2001. The Policy Unit 'provides expert advice to the Prime Minister' - and presumably did so in those crucial years when the Prime Minister was a) bombing Iraq illegally, b) ensuring the continuation of a 'genocidal' (in the words of Denis Halliday) sanctions policy in Iraq, c) bombing Serbia illegally.
In May 2001, Miliband entered Parliament as a Labour MP, from which time he has voted loyally with the Government on all major issues - including supporting the wars against Afghanistan and Iraq, draconian anti-terrorism bills, pre-charge detention up to a maximum of 28 days, restrictions on free speech and the right to protest, and the imposition of control orders.To name but a few.
From May 2005, Miliband has been a member of the Cabinet and from July 2007, Foreign Secretary. Since then, and despite much muttering that things would change, nothing has. He still says of the Iraq invasion 'I believe this was done for the right reasons.'

He must be the only person left in the UK who does. It also makes it rather strange that he should have tried so hard to prevent the first draft of the dodgy dossier from being released under a FOI request, as he did. I wonder what he was afraid that we might see.

Rendition, British-style

And now there is this latest episode: Ben Griffin is a former SAS soldier who served in the US/UK Task Force in Afghanistan, and who has decided to go public on British complicity with torture. Last Monday, he made a statement to the press - his last, before the Government put a gagging order on him - in which he said:

Throughout my time in Iraq I was in no doubt that individuals detained by UKSF and handed over to our American colleagues would be tortured. During my time as member of the US/UK Task Force, three soldiers recounted to me an incident in which they had witnessed the brutal interrogation of two detainees. Partial drowning and an electric cattle prod were used during this interrogation and this amounted to torture. It was the widely held assumption that this would be the fate of any individuals handed over to our America colleagues.

Griffin says he has been told by his legal team that whenever British soldiers hand over detainees to the Americans (or the Afghan or Iraqi powers) - this is rendition.² It is rendition, and it is illegal, both because it is done secretly, or at least without formal procedures; but also because by now there is enough evidence to know that the recipient parties all engage in torture on a systematic basis.

So quite apart from whether we, the British, torture with our own clean hands - and we do³ - we are still contravening human rights law, regularly, by handing those we detain over to hands that we know are dirty⁴.

...it is the essential responsibility of States to prevent acts of torture and other forms of ill-treatment being committed, not only against persons within any territory under their own jurisdiction... but also to prevent such acts by not bringing persons under the control of other States if there are substantial grounds for believing that they would be in danger of being subjected to torture.

Report of the Special Rapporteur on torture and other cruel inhuman or degrading treatment and punishment

Can we then expect an apology from our Foreign Secretary, for our engaging in rendition, systematically, and deliberately? It might mean just a little more than an apology for his predecessor having misled the House 5 years ago about 2 aeroplanes touching down on British territory.

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1. It was up for a good 2 weeks, but I see they've taken it away from there now. You can see it here. I do wonder what it would take for Amnesty International to realise that war IS a human rights issue, and that those who wage it unprovoked, or vote for it and try to hide its crimes, should be brought to trial, and certainly not portrayed as candlelit icons on human rights websites.

2. You can see Griffin speaking here

3. For example, see http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/feb/23/iraq.military

4. See the Human Rights Watch report No Blood, No Foul for US soldiers' testimony on torture; or Amnesty's own report on the complicity of Nato forces in torture: Afghanistan: Detainees transferred to torture: ISAF complicity?