:: Conservative Revival ::

:: Wednesday, October 31, 2001 ::

Name Change

With current events transcending party politics, I thought it was time for a name change. The thoughts herein expressed have often strayed from the narrow focus of restoring the British Conservative Party, and so I thought it best to widen the scope officially.

The new title comes from Macaulay's seminal poem, The Battle of Naseby, by Obadiah Bind-their-kings-in-chains-and-their-nobles-with-links-of-iron, Sarjeant in Ireton's Regiment. The edge of England's sword seems to be an appropriate metaphor for the cutting edge of Anglosphere civilization, and Naseby was probably the start of its swathe cut through the world.

I expect to make a few changes to the design of the site, too, with some links to other excellent "blogs" and a few other places too. Feedback is always welcome.
:: Swordsman 10/31/2001 08:23:00 PM [+] ::
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Sack him!

Mr Speaker Martin is an oaf. For the umpteenth time he has shown himself not to understand the high office he has been entrusted with. He is the nation's foremost commoner, but acts like the lowest guttersnipe. The Telegraph has this exactly right:

Not for the first time, Mr Martin has shown himself to be temperamentally and intellectually unfit for the office that he holds. He seems not to understand how important his job is. He asks for the indulgence of the House. He does not deserve it.
:: Swordsman 10/31/2001 11:58:00 AM [+] ::
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Dulce et Decorum Est...

Good, but half-finished, article by Daniel Johnson in The Daily Telegraph's Opinion pages on the death of patriotism in the UK. He certainly gets the recent precipitants right:

Those famous victories of multiculturalism over our common history, culture and allegiance, symbolised by the Macpherson and Runnymede reports; those years of dissolving the patriotic virtues of duty and self-sacrifice in the dregs of a lukewarm ideology of human rights - where have they left us? One cannot do one's damnedest to expunge national pride and then abruptly invoke it. Mr Blair should interrupt his study of the Koran and turn to St Paul: "If the trumpet give an uncertain sound, who shall prepare himself to the battle?"

(And how ironic it is that Runnymede should be the name given to a report so contemptuous of what Runnymede stood for until so very recently).

But he fails to give enough weight to the long history of anti-patriotism. It began in the Great War, of course, when Wilfrid Owen was able to call Horace's maxim "the old lie." No less a figure than Professor C.E.M. Joad of "The Brains Trust" spoke for the Oxford Union motion, "This House Would Not Fight For King and Country" (passed of course) in 1937. This is nothing new. The patriotism of WWII diffused quickly as Philby and his ilk showed -- they had "another country" to follow. What's common in all of this is the contempt of an elite for their nation and what it stands for.

I think what is new is the transferance of this contempt throught the social order. An ordinary bloke in the pub is as likely to spout the same equivocating rubbish as the PR man at a Hampstead dinner party. It's a meme that has caught on, and it's one that we desperately need memetic therapy for.
:: Swordsman 10/31/2001 11:54:00 AM [+] ::
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European Convention on No Rights

I'm going to read The Times' law supplement more carefully in future. This article is terrifying. Seemingly because the bozos who drew up the European Convention on Human Rights didn't include the common-law right of nemo tenetur seipsum accusare, the right against self-incrimination is being eroded. The ECHR is just not good enough. It, and the Human Rights Act, have to go. This is a good opportunity for Tories to reinvent themselves as champions of rights, arguing for something better.
:: Swordsman 10/31/2001 09:20:00 AM [+] ::
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Exercising Judgement

Great article by Lord Alexander QC in The Times calling for an end to political aspects in the position of Lord Chancellor. I've argued this here myself, so it's good to see so eminent a wig agree with me (hem, hem).

One argument used for the Lord Chancellor's current position is particularly weak:

Some, including the Lord Chancellor himself, argue vigorously that the value of his present mix of roles is that it gives the senior judiciary a voice at the heart of government. This is generally code for the belief that the Lord Chancellor can often head off the more draconian proposals to restrict liberty which may come out of the Home Office. No doubt this is a plus. But it seems to me outweighed by the sheer difficulty of preserving total impartiality in discharging a role which is still that of head of the judiciary.

Hear, hear. This is a very similar argument to the American one that Britain being in Europe will make it more Anglo-American. Ha! When?

Anyway, Lord Alexander's blueprint is the correct one. Transfer the political functions of the Lord Chancellor's Department to the Home Office (the Attorney-General or Solicitor-General would seem appropriate recipients) and make the LCD an independent body, independent of the Executive but still linked to the Crown. It would be a good first step in the real separation of powers in the UK.
:: Swordsman 10/31/2001 08:41:00 AM [+] ::
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Deconstruction Project

Dan Hannan masterfully dissects NuLab and its media's linguistic campaign against us in this article in The Spectator. His description of how they've attacked us via what is basically neuro-linguistic programming is impeccable.

Of course, two can play at that game. Dan raises the issue of how we should respond:

A possible solution is to learn from George W. Bush. He, too, found the rules of the game rigged against him. So he simply kicked the board over and insisted on playing a different game. If he had to call himself compassionate, fine. But he was going to use the word to mean private virtue, not higher taxes, and he was going to harp on about it until people started to take him at his word. And if the Washington media wouldn’t co-operate, he would find other ways to get the message across: independent radio stations, small local newspapers, the Internet.

Those alternative voices are the key. They've got the BBC HQ sewn up. But how about the regional stations? Can we win those over? Local radio and local evening newspapers would also seem to be fertile ground. One thing Britain desperately lacks is the tradition of local op/ed pages. Perhaps some enterprising local paper editors could be persuaded to introduce them. But overall, this is a job for local candidates and activists. Central Office can monitor progress and help with suggestions, but it's up to the troops on the ground to win this battle.
:: Swordsman 10/31/2001 08:22:00 AM [+] ::
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Do bears do it in the woods?

Advancing evidence as to exactly why they should be privatised forthwith, the BBC asks, and I kid you not, Is it treason to fight against your country?

Which leads me to ask, if it is not treason to fight against your country, just what is? Derrida must be falling over laughing at this one.
:: Swordsman 10/30/2001 01:26:00 PM [+] ::
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Mosley Redux

I never expected to find the venerable Wall Street Journal advocating colonialism. Yet just take a look at this editorial. There's actually a lot of sense in it as regards whether or not the Saudis are our friends, but it goes to far with

...It would also force a decision on whether to take over the Saudi oilfields, which would put an end to OPEC.

This is not a question of exercising eminent domain. The US has no right to "take over" these oilfields. What might make sense is the overthrow of the sclerotic House of Sa'ud. As I think I've argued here before, the Hashemites are the hereditary Sharifs of Mecca and Medina, which would make them good candidates for taking over Arabia. They were also the Kings of Iraq, so an ultimate aim of absorbing the three countries of Arabia, Jordan and Iraq into one, ruled by King Abdullah of Jordan, might make a lot of sense.

But if the WSJ plan were to be advanced, it woud leave America with a colonial possession in the Gulf. Oswald Mosley's plan for the future of the Commonwealth would, if I recall correctly, have left Britain/Europe with such enclaves wherever there were valuable natural resources. Is the WSJ advancing a fascist plan? Not knowingly, I'm sure, but that's the effect.
:: Swordsman 10/30/2001 12:29:00 PM [+] ::
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You spin me right round...

For sheer breath-taking cheek, this Guardian story, "Majority want bombing pause", takes the biscuit. Majorities in every category, even women, still support military action, despite the media's carping, and the young remain heavily committed to it. You wouldn't know it from the tone of the report, though.

Moreover, the question of a "pause" to allow food convoys through is quite obviously a push question. It hasn't been suggested over here, which means it won't happen, whatever Guardian readers want. So to ask about it in a poll is obviously merely a tactic to produce something the Guardian can write approvingly about. Awful.

The Tories should be pressing Blair, telling him this is no time to go wobbly. They should also be testing the waters privately to see how the war, and the British Muslim fanatics' reaction to it, are affecting British attitudes towards multiculturalism. There could be an opportunity here. The mistake would be to assume that the opportunity is already there and to bang on about the issue when the public might not be ready to accept it yet. Softly, softly...
:: Swordsman 10/30/2001 07:59:00 AM [+] ::
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Ramadan-a-ding-dong

(Doubtless that'll suffice for a fatwa against me). There is no better illustration of how badly the US and UK are conducting the information side of the war than the current blithering about Ramadan. As the Telegraph reports (
Straw says bombing may stop for Ramadan as support for war falters), Jack Straw is humming-and-hahing over this subject:

The Muslim holy month of fasting, which starts on November 17, is a time of heightened Islamic passion. Interviewed on BBC1's Breakfast with Frost, Mr Straw said that although the history of warfare in Islamic countries showed there had not been pauses during Ramadan: "We are thinking about this very carefully."

So there has never been a cease fire during Ramadan before. But now there's a call for one? The reason is obvious: the west has been hideously weakened by its adoption of the victim culture. Our opponents see it as an opportunity and we can't see how cynically they're exploiting us. Merely because someone says they're upset, hurt or in danger doesn't mean they are! That is a cardinal rule, but victim culture refuses to accept its undoubted truth. If someone is the member of a group which has experienced unfairness in the past, victim culture accords them an extra status which is often harmful to other groups. Macarthy, the CRE pledge and now this Ramadan canard -- it stains every aspect of our civilisation. Conservatives need to take a stand against it. Doing so in a fashion that cannot be decried as racist is the key.
:: Swordsman 10/29/2001 01:04:00 PM [+] ::
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Only Kidding

Helene Guldberg, a child psychologist, has an excellent article, Are the kids all right? at Spiked-online. It exposes the idiocies of the instructions being given out to teachers on both sides of the Atlantic on how to deal with the Sept. 11th attacks. Kids, of course, cope with it on their own:

A colleague's 11-year-old brother described how his classmates discussed among themselves (in gory detail, as many adults did) what they had watched on TV on 11 September: 'We were saying to each other: "Did you see those people jumping out of the windows?!"' But the horror of the event didn't stop them inventing a new playground game called 'Blow up bin Laden': 'We started screaming and running every time a plane passed. We were only joking, but the teachers asked us to pray for peace and stop messing about.'

Nanny, it seems, has no sense of humour any more.
:: Swordsman 10/25/2001 12:34:00 PM [+] ::
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Errr, what's your point exactly?

Odd column by Vernon Bogdanor in The Times. It reads like the first half of a pretty good article. This is a great point, well said:

... successive Conservative and Labour governments continued to dance to the tune of inevitability, leaving the central citadel of the Attlee regime untouched, and contenting themselves with undermining just its outworks. The decaying monuments of that regime can now be seen around us in a collapsing NHS, a rotting Underground system and, in the words of one government spokesman, “bog-standard comprehensives”. The state of our public services is a consequence not of failing to build on the Attlee legacy, but of a refusal to repudiate it.

Indeed. Bogdanor says that Blair needs to get rid of the Atlee philosophy... and then what? He suggests no way to deal with health, transport or education.

Bogdanor is a Liberal Democrat, I understand. It would be interesting if he was proposing a return to complete liberalism in these areas, with no government interference. But I can't believe that.

C'mon, Vern. Tell us what we should be doing!
:: Swordsman 10/25/2001 11:22:00 AM [+] ::
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Courting Disaster?

Good and bad in the Home Secretary's announcements today (see this story in The Times.

Mr Blunkett will also express alarm at the growth in judicial review hearings challenging government decisions and urge lawyers to focus on getting practical results in the courts rather than technical victories. He will tell the judges that they must remember it is for Parliament and elected politicians to make the law while they interpret the law and deliver justice.

He's right on the second point, but I don't think he has any business telling lawyers what to do. It is the ancient right of Englishmen to be able to petition for a redress of grievances, and judicial review is an important element in that process.

I am, however, very glad he has rejected the idiotic idea of racial quotas on juries. If ever an idea was utter hogwash, that was it.
:: Swordsman 10/25/2001 11:11:00 AM [+] ::
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PFI Piffle

Useful comments by Danny Finklestein in The Times on private finance:

Equally, most economists agree that merely using private finance, without much management freedom, may help to massage government spending figures but will not do much to improve the delivery of public services.

Sadly, most government plans for involving the private sector in public services centre on the provision of private finance, explained to the Labour Party as “extra resources” for the public sector when they are, of course, nothing of the sort. In many cases private management will be so limited that it is neither private nor management.

Only too true. Olympia & York and its successors contributed substantial sums of money to the building of the Jubilee Line Extension, but that didn't stop the project going a billion over budget. Private sector control is what brings the benefits.
:: Swordsman 10/23/2001 08:41:00 AM [+] ::
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Oh what a tangled web we weave...

Libby Purves has a pretty good column in The Times today. She does a great job in pointing out the problems that Nu Labour has got itself into over human rights. Having finally got Executive power, it has found that all the constraints on that power it approved of when someone else was wielding it are getting in the way.

Which brings me to a thought I had some time ago. The constraints on Executive and Legislative power contained in the American Bill of Rights were based firmly on English ideas current in the late 18th century. Where do we stand with them in England now?

First Amendment. No establishment of religion or constraining its free exercise. Well, of course England has an established church, but I'd say we are just as tolerant of other religions as America, and in some cases more so, because we don't have the ACLU advancing militant atheism, which seems to contradict the free exercise clause. Freedom of speech. Not good, but not bad either. The worst problems relate to political correctness, like the CRE pledge not to make race an issue. Using racism as an excuse to punish someone for their words is a direct abridgement of freedom of speech. Freedom of the press. Public ownership of the BBC is a problem here, as are the libel laws. Otherwise, we're okay. Freedom of peaceful assembly. Public order acts have for many years abridged this freedom. The police have far too much power to constrain it on suspicion of possible violence. Freedom to petition government. Exists, yes, but there are so many gatekeepers to get through that very few grievances get redressed.

Second Amendment. Right to keep and bear arms. Completely abolished. The principle of self defence has been treated so badly that never has the individual Englishman been so vulnerable to attack. The idea that an armed citizenry is a valuable defence against tyranny is laughably unfashionable, although it has never, to my mind, been disproved.

Third Amendment. No billetting of troops in peacetime. Obsolete, although you never know what NuLab might do in the name of public safety.

Fourth Amendment. Protection from unreasonable searches and seizures. RIPA did away with any pretence of this protection in the electronic world. Not sure where we stand in physical searches.

Fifth Amendment. Grand Juries. Abolished. Protection from double jeopardy. Will be abolished if HMG has its way. Protection from self-incrimination. Speed cameras, with fixed fines if you refuse to tell the police who was driving the car, chip away at this principle. Guarantee of due process. Fast-tracking of youth offenders is surely a problem here, as are anti-terrorism measures, I'm afraid. "Nor shall private property be taken for public use without just compensation. One word: Railtrack.

Sixth Amendment. Public trial by jury, with witnesses and assistance. In camera and sub judice rules have always worked against the public nature of trials, for understandable reasons. Trial by jury is, of course, under serious threat from current proposals.

Seventh Amendment. Also about trial by jury. Protection from re-examination of facts. Never been too sure why this is in there. See above.

Eighth Amendment. No excessive bail or fines, or cruel and unusual punishments. The libel laws levied execessive fines on Nikolai Tolstoy. Generally, however, we're okay on this one, although punishment of people for self-defence is pretty unusual.

Ninth Amendment. Reserved rights. The HRA and Charter of Fundamental Rights contain no such clause. They should.

Tenth Amendment. Constraint on federal powers. The Charter on Fundamental Rights contains the opposite of this clause, allowing the EU and member states to suspend "fundamental" rights in the interests of advancing the Union. Ye gods.

Not a good picture, is it...?
:: Swordsman 10/23/2001 08:32:00 AM [+] ::
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Iconoclasm

Sensible leader in The Times on how to rebuild the Tory party via its policy review:

It is important that the review prove as comprehensive as it is prompt. The key to the modernisation of the Labour Party was that Tony Blair separated the objectives of policy from the policies themselves. He restated many of Labour’s traditional values while arguing that traditional policy instruments, from nationalisation to the closed shop, should be discarded. The Conservative Party must be willing to be similarly iconoclastic. It should restate its aims but should not plump automatically for all its traditional policies, however well some of those have served it in the past.

Developing a framework for the process along these lines should be easy. In fact, if I go ahead and start a whole new website I might do this myself.
:: Swordsman 10/22/2001 01:11:00 PM [+] ::
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Advantage Amiel

Excellent demolition of Simon Jenkins' views on the current war by Barbara Amiel in The Daily Telegraph's Opinion pages. This a particularly damning paragraph:

There is something quite awful about the conclusions drawn by Jenkins. He claims that America and her allies are "reputedly planning action that would kill tens of thousands of the poorest and most helpless people on Earth, to avenge the killing of five thousand of the richest". But you can't be more helpless than a receptionist in the World Trade Centre when a plane flies through the window. At such a moment, your monthly income is immaterial. Why, indeed, does Jenkins raise the matter of income, if not to suggest that it is all right to incinerate wealthier people, but it is not right for wealthy people to defend themselves? What sort of quasi-Marxist fog is he in?

This is also a very good point:

Jenkins believes that the "partisan" American support of Israel is a root cause of Islamic terror. Why? More than 100,000 Algerians have had their throats slit by fundamentalists in Algeria. What has Israel to do with this? The murders and jailings in Iran of those who do not support fundamentalism are not caused by Israel.

Jenkins was right about Kosovo. He's wrong on terrorism. The difference is the battle ground we need to capture.
:: Swordsman 10/22/2001 12:27:00 PM [+] ::
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Off with their heads! (next Blairite law?)

Anthrax hoax law may breach human rights, reports the Telegraph. The estimable Joshua Rozenberg paints a chilling picture of how the Blairites intend to introduce an ex post facto law for the first time in modern history.

This is utterly appalling. The US Constitution forbids this practice in Article I, Section 9, pairing it with Bills of Attainder (execution warrants, basically). In other words, it is one of the grossest abuses of power you can get.

The Telgraph's leader on the subject is also worth reading for its dissection of how rights legislation is failing in the UK. The main problem is, of course, the position of the judiciary.

The US Constitution sees the judiciary as a third branch of government. The British constitution sees the Crown as the "fount of justice." If the Crown is asked to judge itself, how can it do so, is the question. This is where I think that the Monarchy plays such an important role. The Executive (ie Prime Minister) exercises many of the Crown's powers. The Judiciary, however, should not be subject to Executive control. If I had my way, I'd see the Lord Chancellorship become an independent office, separate from the Cabinet, appointed for a fixed period longer than one Parliament. The powers of the judiciary would remain linked to the Crown, but independent of both PM and Parliament (the Lord Chancellor could still sit in the Lords if that is not going to be reformed, in the same way that the US Vice-President sits "in" the Senate, but his powers would be less as he is not a presiding officer).

The Judiciary should also have a simple over-riding instruction: when interpreting laws, the judiciary should do its best to ascertain what was the intention of Parliament in passing the law, and then rule in accordance with that. If two laws conflict, then it should be Parliament's job to correct the conflict, not the judge's. Strict constructionism is the only way to prevent the judiciary becoming a political football.
:: Swordsman 10/22/2001 11:59:00 AM [+] ::
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Eurotrash

The excellent EUobserver website reports on plans to up the ante on Euro-integration by replacing or enhancing COREPER with an "EU Cabinet" of ministers. Presumably the British Minister would have to be a Lord, as any Commons figure would surely have to resign his or her seat in order to work full-time in Brussels. There's a step forward for democracy.

More to the point, these plans show how inherently anti-conservative the EU Project is. Belgian head honcho Guy Verhofstadt speaks warmly of "an ambitious and innovative approach." So what? Why is that necessarily a good thing? Hitler's move for lebensraum was undoubtedly ambitious and innovative, but it was a disaster for Europe. What's always missing from these pronouncements are words like "sensible" or "balanced." We should seek to portray ourselves in this debate as the angels, fearing to tread where the Eurofools are rushing in.
:: Swordsman 10/22/2001 07:05:00 AM [+] ::
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The Daily Telegraph - Opinion Another place-holder for comment on Monday
:: Swordsman 10/20/2001 08:50:00 AM [+] ::
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Self-evident?

Minette Marin, writing in The Daily Telegraph, as usual gropes towards an illuminating observation. She finds the idea of universal human rights silly:

I don't mean human rights as part of a social contract in a particular society; in such a case, human, or rather civil, rights are based on tradition, consent and law, and breaches can be punished. But universal human rights, applying to everyone in every society, have always seemed to me perfectly absurd. It is all very fine for the UN to declare that every child has a universal human right to a home and a square meal, but it is meaningless verbiage in the real world.

Who conferred those rights? Who is to fulfil them? And who can be prosecuted for the failure to fulfil them? Besides, societies and cultures do truly disagree on human rights. And by what universal human right may the universalists inflict human rights on countries and cultures that think differently? Besides, even when people do agree on human rights, one tends to conflict with another. Such conflict cannot be resolved universally, but only locally and pragmatically.

In the course of the essay, she seems to find fault with the Declaration of Independence. She obviously hasn't ready it recently. It states:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

In other words, the purpose of government is to secure certain rights. Now, I think it is self-evident that people, wherever they may be and by whomever they are governed, have a right both to life and freedom in its most literal sense. Nor can it be regarded as just, fair, right, however you want to put it, for anyone anywhere to be deprived deliberately of the chance to seek happiness. It is also probably correct that no government should create conditions whereby some of its citizens starve. To that extent, some rights are universalisable. The problem is that the current drafters of rights documents have got everything the wrong way round. You do not have a right to a square meal, but you do have a right not to have a meal artificially kept from you by government. So Marin's question "Who conferred those rights? Who is to fulfil them?" is also the wrong way round. No-one confers or fulfils rights, but government can take them away. And as the purpose of government is to protect by maintaining rights, any government that fails to do so can legitimately be overthrown.

There is also no universalisable right to Trial by Jury. Marin is right to say that such things are based on tradition, consent and law. Calling them "human rights" is a misnomer. The Levellers understood this as far back as 1647. Their draft constitution for England was based "upon grounds of Common-Right." We need to get back to this distinction between human rights and common rights. It might make a useful foundation for a Conservative document on constitutional thought.
:: Swordsman 10/20/2001 08:45:00 AM [+] ::
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Mel P. Demonstrates Grrrlpower

I've had a lot of respect for Melanie Philips for some time now. She was one of the first of the bleeding hearts to realise that we are in a real culture war (Mary Kenny is another) and she has since become a stalwart foe of the deculturisation process Britain is undergoing. Her latest Sunday Times Comment piece is an excellent contribution. Particularly this part:

[The West] must vigorously defend and reassert liberal values on its home ground. That means, first and foremost, a reassertion of Christianity and an end to the craven apologetics and moral and cultural relativism of the Church of England. It means schools should abandon multiculturalism and start teaching English culture and British history. It means immigrants should be required to learn English. It means asserting cultural norms over group rights and over the doctrine that every lifestyle choice is as valid as any other. It means arresting those who preach violence.

Spot on. The only problem I have is her assertion that we must stop trying to "export" liberal values. One of the problems this whole affair has brought to light is that we've been supporting some very unsavory regimes. We have a duty, as Hitchens Major has pointed out, to unseat them. We might be able to instill some liberty while we do so.

And it seems to me that it reveals our duty to restore liberty where we had established it, and then abandoned it. That's not just places like Pakistan, but also Zimbabwe and, for America, Liberia. Yes, in a way it's neo-colonialist. But is it, of itself, a bad thing? Isolationists might claim that there is no vital national interest at stake for us to get involved in Zimbabwean politics. There's a vital cultural interest, though, and that should count for something.
:: Swordsman 10/18/2001 12:21:00 PM [+] ::
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Half Way There

Liberal Democrat peer Lord Lester, writing in The Times, exhibits a typical Lib Dem problem. He's half right, and then gets it all wrong. Yes, freedom of speech is a birthright and must be defended. No, laws that specifically protect minority religions (but not Christianity, as he seems to imply) add nothing to our freedom.

As Earl Ferrers told him in the Lords, HMG was “not aware of evidence to suggest that there is a significant problem on the mainland of Great Britain either of discrimination or of incitement to hatred on the grounds of a person’s religious beliefs as opposed to his racial or ethnic background”.

I think this remains true. An Arab is probably more likely to be attacked for his race than his religion. Even if the two are conflated, race is more likely the driving motivation. Take the Sikh killed in Arizona. The hatred that actually motivated the shooting wasn't towards the Sikh's religion. It was towards the race that the idiot thought he was a member of (and therefore must have been a member of a completely different religion). I'd be amazed if there was any anti-religious "crime" (with the exception mentioned below) that could not also be regarded as a racial crime.

Virtually the only religion that it is vilified in public is Christianity and, as it is the official religion, it seems to me only right that it should have protected status against extreme attacks. Any loosening of that protection is another step towards disestablishment. We should retain our birthright of being able to say anything we like (within reason) whenever and wherever we want).
:: Swordsman 10/18/2001 12:09:00 PM [+] ::
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De-centralisation Saves the Nation

The world's best Science writer (narrowly beating out Ron Bailey) regularly makes broader points as well. In this article in The Daily Telegraph, Matt Ridley asks what caused the unprecedented delays in culling animals infected with FMD:

The answer is centralisation. In the past, decisions were devolved. Farmers and local vets were told to diagnose, kill and bury locally. Magistrates or councils enforced the law. In 2001, nobody was allowed to do anything; the dead hand of Defra (formerly Maff) saw to that.

Everything was done by officials and their contractors. Not only was this ruinously expensive, but officials were soon so overwhelmed they could not even answer their telephones to be told of a new case.

The Government's own inquiries will miss this lesson for the simple reason that bureaucrats always think the failure of previous centralised policies is a reason for more and better centralisation next time. It is the one-more-heave theory of government. One of the legacies of 2001 will be a further lurch towards centralised, bureaucratic control of the countryside.

He then points out that there is a great opportunity for local councils to encourage e-working, which is certainly a very attractive option (one that I would like to take up myself, either here or in the UK, but I'm not yet at a level to make it pay). But he also points out why this won't happen:

That is the future of the countryside in the north. Let it live again. But it is a future dependent on local initiative. Oh, silly me. I forgot. These decisions are not taken at local level in Britain. They must always be taken in a one-size-fits-all way in Whitehall and Brussels. End of dream.

Regrettably true. But decentralisation is an achievable dream. IDS should consider it as a truly conservative alternative to NuLab's dreadful rule by commisariat.


:: Swordsman 10/18/2001 08:22:00 AM [+] ::
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Magna Charters

Glad to see Chris Woodhead argue for charter schools in The Daily Telegraph's opinion pages. As I argued here some time ago, they offer a perfect way forward for replacing failing schools.

I am slightly worried, though, by Mr Woodhead's enthusiasm for the German method of vocational schools up to 19. The whole premise behind Auf Wiedersehen Pet was that German employers couldn't afford German craftsmen, so highly did they think of themselves, so they imported foreigners who were less highly educated, but did the job just as well. We could end up in a similar situation ourselves if we're not careful, especially if we adopt German style labour laws. More education is a good thing, but not if it's narrowly vocational. Spend the hours the Germans devote to crafts on history and real civics, I say.
:: Swordsman 10/17/2001 01:24:00 PM [+] ::
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Also Bad and Dangerous to Know?

The Daily Telegraph's Useful Idiots column goes from strength to strength. I particularly like this pithy summing-up of George Monbiot, lefty hero:

Mr Monbiot seemed to be suggesting here that the recent anthrax attacks on Americans could be the work of warmongers in the American government. We warn him that if he goes on in this vein, he will be denied further mentions in this column on the grounds that he is not so much an idiot as a madman.

:: Swordsman 10/17/2001 01:05:00 PM [+] ::
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What's the opposite of Little Englander?

Great European? This Daily Telegraph leader spells out the problem with "co-ordinated" international approaches to problems. The treaties and conventions needed can abrogate individual nations' internal traditions while at the same time fobidding them from taking action that would be perfectly legal, accepatble and, gosh, democratic in their own countries. So we are to lose our protection from overweaning foreign magistrates while at the same time being unable to sort out our immigration policies the way that would most make sense. No wonder the US opposes the International Criminal Court so much. Would things be any better if the UK had a written constitution? I'm not sure; the closest things we have, like Magna Carta, are regularly ignored when such things are being discussed. What we really need is a public educated enough to know when its rights are in danger, and that all leads back to education policy...
:: Swordsman 10/16/2001 12:28:00 PM [+] ::
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Prime Minister Leo Sayer

Sound leader in The Times today. In arguing that MPs have a duty to sort out the domestic policy issues that might be "buried" (pace Jo Moore) under the terrorism debate, it essentially argues for separation of powers:

The argument that it would be somehow unpatriotic to “distract” the Prime Minister while he is engaged in serious matters internationally misses the point. This is not, or should not be, a one-man Government. If power has been centralised around the Prime Minister to such an extent that the Government cannot operate without his full attention, then that is a serious fault of the system built up by Mr Blair. It is in itself overdue a correction.

Parliament's powers must be restored, as should those of cabinet members. The best way to do this is by a clear separation of responsibilities. This should be the centrepiece of a Conservative constitutional reform policy.
:: Swordsman 10/15/2001 08:09:00 AM [+] ::
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More on immigration

And here's exactly why we need to differentiate between classes of immigrants. The WSJ's OpinionJournal - Best of the Web Today column quotes a Telegraph story I missed. The utterly incompetent INS enforcement division planned to deport the widow of a British citizen killed in the WTC, while the IRS announced it would take 60% of his life insurance money. That's cruel and unusual punishment under anyone's book. The INS has now said it won't deport her, but I don't know what the INS say.

But, in a tribute to this country's local spirit and love of community, her local "police chief George Kurzenknabe has even promised that he "will barricade the house" if immigration officials dare to approach with a deportation warrant, while the chief of the suburb's volunteer fire brigade has offered to "sit on the porch with a rifle"." Jolly good.

Anyway, the obvious way to get round this is to say that any woman who bears a child who is an American citizen while here legally is automatically a permanent resident until her child turns 18.

Meanwhile, down the page in the OpinionJournal site is this marvellous quote:

Jonathan Alter on the "antiwar" intelligentsia: "Talk about ironic: the same people always urging us to not blame the victim in rape cases are now saying Uncle Sam wore a short skirt and asked for it."

:: Swordsman 10/11/2001 01:33:00 PM [+] ::
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EU = Despotism

American conservative columnist Paul Craig Roberts makes a forceful case that the EU is acting despotically in its approach to civil liberties after the attacks. As he says,

The English spent 1,000 years making law a shield of the people rather than a weapon in the hands of government. Now, this historic achievement is to be vitiated for the sake of "anti-terrorism" measures. No one has explained how these measures could have prevented the Sept. 11 attacks.

He is right to say that immigration problems contribute. I agree. I also think the UK's immigration policies need liberalising. This circle is easily squared. The problem with British immigration laws is that they are so restrictive that genuine migrancy suffers. An American doctor who'd like to come here is treated like an illiterate Afghan, so he goes to Australia or Canada instead. Equally, a Bengali with a decent education who wants to escape squalor by coming to a better life is also treated badly. He could go to America, but often he might enter this country illegally or claim asylum. We need to alter our laws so that genuine economic or cultural migrants are allowed in more easily and those who offer little or nothing to our society are kept out. That doesn't mean that those with few skills should necessarily be kept out. Britain should be seen as a land of opportunity for all. Assimilation should be the key here -- someone who says he will swear an oath of allegiance to HM the Q, learn English to a satisfactory level and declare he will not attempt to bring in more family members or claim benefits should be given more weight than someone who does not. These pledges should be binding, so that anyone who doesn't pass an English test after 1 year in the country has his leave to stay revoked. And so on. It should be fairly easy to construct a set of immigration policies designed to let the good in and keep the bad out, as long as the PC Police are kept out of the process. The US immigration laws are a good model, as long as we keep better track of people once they are in the country. I also think we need to think about gradations for different countries once again.
:: Swordsman 10/11/2001 11:48:00 AM [+] ::
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Spot On, Boris!

Boris Johnson gets it exactly right in today's Telegraph. Railtrack didn't fail just because of privatisation. It failed mainly because it was forced to do so by the Government. Just look at the evidence:

Yes, it is true that Railtrack shares rose to £17, and yes, at one stage the company was making £1 million a week. Yes, some of it did go to fat cats, but a lot of it also went towards investment. Only last year Railtrack was able to raise £2.5 billion on the markets, which is about double what the old British Rail could have expected to receive from central government. Despite everything you will be told by the Dave Sparts of Aslef, it is not true that rail travel became more dangerous in the period after privatisation. It became safer. There were fewer spads - signals passed at danger. In 1998, for the first time since 1902, there were no passenger deaths on the rails.

As Boris says, the structure didn't help, but EC Directive 91/440 mandated the split between service and track, whatever happened. in any event, I have a feeling that this "little" incident will come back to haunt Tony Blair. He's robbed pension funds just as surely as Robert Maxwell did.
:: Swordsman 10/11/2001 09:02:00 AM [+] ::
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The argument of tyrants; the creed of slaves

Good points aplenty made by Stephen Robinson in this Daily Telegraph opinion piece. One point that must not be overlooked:

"We reported from the London borough of Newham, where the high street has been turned into a gigantic film set, on which CCTV cameras cover every single angle of the bustling life there. We spent a morning in Newham's CCTV control room, where we watched events of the morning rush hour unfold on video screens. We saw motorists encroaching on bus lanes, and men who looked as though they might be drug dealers, but we saw not a single policeman. When this year's Home Office crime figures came out, it was no surprise to find that Newham has almost the worst crime clear-up rate in Britain."

Interesting. CCTV has often been derided as Big Brother. But Big Brother had his agents out on the street. You couldn't get away. This isn't so much Big Brother as Big Grandmother, sitting in the corner, observing you act up but smiling away. Is there a deterrent effect? Probably initially, but not any more. If Granny doesn't do anything, why worry about her being there? All we have is the illusion of safety, and a chipping-away at liberty.
:: Swordsman 10/11/2001 08:54:00 AM [+] ::
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Finally!!!

Thoughtful review of IDS's speech in
this Daily Telegraph leader . Here's the most important point to emerge:

"No previous Tory leader has ever dared to take the fight to Labour on the public services. This one has just given notice that he intends to do so: "Today Britain is the last place in Europe any man would want to fall sick." Conservatives have not always felt comfortable talking about hospitals, schools and transport. Where William Hague's solution was to remain silent, Mr Duncan Smith is groping towards a language with which his party will feel at ease. He rightly evoked the lofty ideal of public service to which he, as a politician no less than as a former soldier, is dedicated."

At last. Too often the Tory approach to public service has been "If you can, privatise it. If you can't, tinker around the edges." If a decision is taken that privatisation is politically impossible or unwise with the service in its current state, then an appopriate approach to reform is needed. The Institute for the Study of Civil Society has shown, in its two excellent publications "Why Ration Health Care?" and "Stakeholder Health Insurance," that good quality public-sector provision of health care is possible without just throwing money at the problem. We may even be able to "sneak" in privatisation without people complaining if we turned hospitals into not-for-profit trusts. Similar approaches are needed to education and transport. I'd argue that the next step should then be local control of these services, but let's just take one step at a time...
:: Swordsman 10/11/2001 08:43:00 AM [+] ::
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Hic Jacet Railtrack

Excellent analysis of the dreadful behaviour by HMG over Railtrack by Patience Wheatcroft in The Times. Here's a great chance for the Tories: they should claim that the government is being mean-spirited in its refusal to compensate the company's shareholders. Adding that these people are not fat cats or Lloyds Names, but a mix of ordinary people and ordinary people's pension funds, they should promise, if elected, either to refloat a new Railtrack under a new regulatory regime, issuing shares free of charge to current shareholders, or to compensate them at Friday's market value, adjusted for inflation. Anything less would be a hideously arrogant way to behave, indicative of a government that doesn't care about ordinary people. Worth a shot?
:: Swordsman 10/09/2001 09:26:00 AM [+] ::
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Educated Idiots

Great article by British DC-based scholar James Bowman in OpinionJournal on the idiocies that are coming out of American universities. As Bowman says, these people have forgotten who they are. It's a problem the British know only too well.
:: Swordsman 10/05/2001 01:50:00 PM [+] ::
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Some idle speculation

Peter Oborne's Telegraph article, Tories always unite when lives are at risk is good reading. The public unanimity has to be a good thing. It might decrease the perception that we are a divided party, and therefore increase public confidence that the Tories might be worth listening to.

What's more interesting is the strain this entire episode is putting on the Labour coalition. The Social Democrats are plainly driving the war effort, but the Socialists are much more wary. The Guardian and New Statesman are their voices, and those are plainly anti-war. Blair has nailed his trousers to the mast of victory, and so any deviation from the plan could fatally weaken him. If there are British or Afghan civilian casulaties, the Left could start to rebel. And if they rebel on war issues, they may well rebel on domestic issues too. To secure his war aims, Blair may well be best served by forming a National Government, with IDS as Deputy Prime Minister (that Attlee comparison looks more and more apt). Just imagine, we could even see a formal split in the Labour Party, with the Left possibly joining the Lib Dems to form the Official Opposition while Blair and his people become coalition partners with the Tories. The electoral landscape in 2006 might look very different from what it is today. All we need is a buch of useful idiots on the Left of the Labour Party...
:: Swordsman 10/05/2001 08:47:00 AM [+] ::
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The Steyn Way

Mark Steyn often makes me laugh. But this article in The Spectator made me cry (see if you can guess where). It's also the best demolition job on the "peace movement" I've seen.
:: Swordsman 10/04/2001 01:47:00 PM [+] ::
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Midnight Express

This is becoming an horrific journey. According to this excellent Times editorial, the judges in the night flights human rights case did what eurosceptics have been warning about all along:

In parting with this sensible tradition, it cited environmental provisions of the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights, even though this charter has no legal standing

That pernicious document has begun to fulfill its purpose, which I am sure is to bring down what remains of the framework of the British constitution. It won't be long before Magna Carta and the Bill of Rights are declared breaches of human rights, mark my words.
:: Swordsman 10/03/2001 01:34:00 PM [+] ::
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Right on the constitution, wrong on just about everything else

Good old Wedgie Benn, still at it. In a far too sympathetic story, Tony Benn: retired but not resting, the Beeb displays the problem with the man. He's completely right on ID cards:

He pulled out his ID cards from 60 years ago and pointed out that the ANC in Apartheid-era South Africa had burned their cards which they saw as a "tool of repression".

But he misses the point on the US-UK relationship. If the US hadn't respected the UK as a close and valued ally, Attlee wouldn't have been able to stop Eisenhower (or Truman?) dropping the bomb on Korea. Equally, Mrs T wouldn't have been able to stop George H W Bush going "wobbly" and Blair wouldn't have been able to bully the Perjurer-in-Chief into flattening Serbia. It just so happens that our interests coincide, and are likely to do so for some time, because having the same traditions and ways of thinking, it's not surprising we think the same. It's Benn and his Marxist allies who are out of step, thinking in a way that is alien to the Anglo-American tradition.

And the argument against missile defence is facile. If a navy won't save a country from a land attack, that doesn't mean it shouldn't have a navy! Ye gods!


:: Swordsman 10/03/2001 12:36:00 PM [+] ::
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The Seven Deadly Laws?

According to the Beeb's story, Asylum and hate law to be overhauled, David Blunkett has decided to legislate against sin.

He said that because "one of the most basic freedoms of all" was "freedom from hate", UK law was currently not providing sufficient protection to victims of religious hatred.

What about "freedom from envy" or "freedom from greed"? After all, those are motivating factors behind a lot of Labour philosophy. We already have "freedom from lust" in the sexual harrassment laws, though. This judicialisation of emotional feelings must be seen as idiotic, mustn't it? Or, in outlawing negative emotion, are we heading down the path to Vulcanhood?
:: Swordsman 10/03/2001 11:53:00 AM [+] ::
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Good grief!

The BBC reports that "Night flights 'breach human rights',"according to the European Court. Yup. It's a breach of Article 8 of the European Convention, which somehow guarantees a right to a good night's sleep. The article reads:

1 Everyone has the right to respect for his private and family life, his home and his correspondence.

2 There shall be no interference by a public authority with the exercise of this right except such as is in accordance with the law and is necessary in a democratic society in the interests of national security, public safety or theeconomic well-being of the country, for the prevention of disorder or crime, for the protection of health or morals,or for the protection of the rights and freedoms of others.

One would have thought that the "economic well-being" get-out clause would have applied in this case, but obviously it doesn't. I'd imagine police sirens would be granted the get-out clause of prevention of crime, but what about street lighting, which certainly kept me up late many nights when I had inadequate curtains? If they argue that curtains are the householder's responsibility, then doesn't that argument also apply to double-glazing?

In any event, this shows the idiocies that can arise when one describes rights in ludicrously vague, positive terms. Rights are best descibed negatively, as what the government must not do, leaving private disputes to be handled by courts as matters of common law and equity. Both the ECHR and the HRA badly need overhauling.

:: Swordsman 10/02/2001 08:32:00 AM [+] ::
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P.S.

See also John J. Miller & Ramesh Ponnuru on war & higher education on National Review Online. The biters bit.
:: Swordsman 10/01/2001 09:02:00 AM [+] ::
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History, history, history

Perhaps that should be the battle cry that Damian Green should take up. As Robert Conquest points out on National Review Online, our modern failure to understand the rest of the world stems from our lack of understanding of history:

Let me specify. Our educational system, which, Thomas Jefferson said, should be "chiefly historical" for an adult citizenry, was — to put it mildly — not so. If we look at schools and universities we must surely admit that. As a result, a large section of our supposedly educated class are only so describable if we omit what Jefferson thought to be the most vital point.

America's founding fathers score yet another goal in a one-sided match against our current masters...


:: Swordsman 10/01/2001 09:00:00 AM [+] ::
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Blasphemy laws? Too narrow...

Oh Lord! Hmm, I could be arrested for saying that if Blunkett has his way. This sensible Daily Telegraph leader points out the idiocy of expanding hate crime legislation to include religion. Extrapolating the Macpherson report's definition of a racially-motivated incident, presumably this means that a religiously-motivated incident is one that the person attacked says it is. This will be a field day for fundamentalists. Salman Rushdie, you're guilty of a hate crime. Peter Tatchell, demonstrating against the church's policy on gays? Hate crime. A Christian preacher, denouncing the evils of Satanism? Hate crime...?

The leader goes on to mention the possibility of abrogating the European Convention on Human Rights. That would be a great start to dismantling the current Human Rights industry that has gone off at such a tangent from where George Mason and his fellows left it.
:: Swordsman 10/01/2001 08:47:00 AM [+] ::
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Freedom

An interesting concurrence on the theme of liberty seems to have overtaken me at the moment. I came across this marvellous quotation from Pitt the Younger this morning:

Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves
-- House of Commons, 18 November 1783

It seems to be the perfect British counterpart to my favourite quotation from James Madison:

There are more instances of the abridgment of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpation.

Added to Ben Franklin's wonderful

Those who would trade essential liberty for a little temporary security deserve neither liberty nor security

we have an excellent trinity of arguments against ID cards.

Then I was sent an excellent UPI commentary by Greg Casey, a former Sargeant-at-Arms of the US Senate, and therefore presumably the US equivalent of Black Rod. He makes the following perceptive statement:

Some might say they targeted the World Trade Center simply because it offered them the greatest number of fatalities possible for a minimum of effort. I might normally have agreed, were it not for their persistence in hitting that specific target. While they underestimated the resilience of a free society and badly miscalculated the reaction of the American people, I find it a strange and twisted irony that these "political terrorists," in an effort to fundamentally undermine and disrupt our way of life, seemed to understand what many even in this country do not, that our economic and political freedoms are inseparable.

Now it happened that yesterday I visited the home of someone who understood this principle perfectly. George Mason is a forgotten genius. Perhaps best known for refusing to sign the Constitution in 1787, he was nevertheless one of the most influential men of his day, for he drafted the Virginia Declaration of Rights, proclaimed in May 1776, from which Thomas Jefferson drew liberally in drafting the Declaration of Independence. His refusal to sign the Constitution was because of its lack of a Bill of Rights to restrain the new Federal Government. Madison grew convinced of Mason's correctness in arguing for such a document and so helped draw up the first ten amendments to the Constitution that were ratified in December 1791. Again, they drew heavily on Mason's phraseology. Here is a brief summary of the rights Mason encoded:

1. All men are equal, and have rights to enjoyment of life and liberty, acquiring and possessing property, and pursuing happiness and safety.

2. Power derives from the people. Magistrates are their servants.

3. Government is instituted for the common good. The people has the right to abolish, alter or reform any government that fails to provide for that good.

4. Public funds should only be paid to individuals in return for service. No office should be hereditary.

5. The legislative and executive powers should be separate from the judicial. Legislative and executive offices should be temporary, their office holders returning to private life every so often, and should be filled by election.

6. Elections must be free. Suffrage should go to anyone with a provable stake in the community. No-one may be taxed without their assent or that of their representatives.

7. Laws may not be suspended without the consent of the legislature.

8. Those accused are entitled to due process and trial by local jury. No-one can be compelled to give evidence against himself. No-one shall be deprived of liberty except according to law or judgment of a jury.

9. No excessive bail, fines or cruel and unusual punishment.

10. Warrants for search and seizure must be specific and not general.

11. Trial by jury should be "held sacred" in disputes over property.

12. Freedom of the press is essential, and only despots restrict it.

13. Standing armies bad, trained militia good.

14. [Interesting] "The people have a right to a uniform government; and therefore, that no government separate from, or independent of, the government of Virginia, ought to be erected or established within the limits thereof."

15. The people have to remember the principles of justice, moderation, temperance, frugality and virtue in order to maintain their liberty.

16. Free exercise of religion (in a Christian context).

These are excellent principles all. If Britain had had such a guarantee of property, would nationalisation have been possible? Does the 14th principle, in a British context, argue against European regional government? The more I think of it, the more I feel that Britain needs a declaration of such fundamental rights, something different from the appalling HRA. But even more so, Britons need to be reminded of their history, of their struggles to gain such rights and why they must not be given up to an over-mighty executive that has reduced the legislature and judiciary to mere poodles. Come to think of it, that's a pretty good definition of a tyranny.
:: Swordsman 10/01/2001 08:30:00 AM [+] ::
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