Saturday, 22 August 2009
Thursday, 16 April 2009
Whilst inspired to write I ought to mention another subject which continues to concern me, the disgraceful way in which the Government (admittedly then headed by Blair) handled the cover-up of the bribes allegedly paid to Saudi officials when the investigation being carried out by the Serious Frauds Office was discontinued, ostensibly in the national interest, an action which equally disgracefully was rubber-stamped by the House of Lords. I revisited the subject after the Observer, on 5 April in its Business section, ran an article headed "Brown backs new global assault on tax avoidance" which reported on the present Prime Minister's letter to the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (the OECD) "about the need to build on recent international breakthroughs on bank secrecy 'to make further advances in the fight against harmful tax practices'". The article quoted from Gordon Brown's letter (described by No 10 as an 'opening salvo') to the OECD and said he wanted the OECD which co-ordinates international tax protocols,to relaunch its drive to outlaw harmful tax competition and to end tax abuses that deprive the public purse of hundreds of millions of pounds. This struck me as rich, real chutzpah, coming from a Government of which Brown was a key member, which in 2007 had put the damper on the Saudi arms bribe investigation which was roundly condemned by none other than the OECD for breaching the international convention on bribery. So I wrote to the paper and although my letter was not published I now reproduce it as it seems to me very relevant and exposes the Governmental hypocrisy in using the OECD for one purpose, a very proper one, when it rejects it for another:
Pre-trial publicity
I have been rightly castigated by a blogfan for my blogatrophy; nothing since early March when I went off to Crete. Simply pure indolence.
However today the Guardian has published one of my letters (in truncated form), so I am putting the full letter on the blog. It was a response to an article on 11 April headed "Let the circus begin" by Blake Morrison, the writer and journalist, our Blackheath neighbour, on a subject on which he is a real authority since in 1993 he wrote up the Bulger case, the demonisation of youngsters by the media and public. This time it concerned the two young brothers charged with the attempted murder of two other young boys. Blake deserved plaudits for drawing attention to the current case. So I reproduce in my blog my letter as sent:
Pre-trial publicity
Yes, I have been rightly castigated for my blogatrophy; nothing since early March when I went off to Crete. Simply indolence. But today the Guardian publishes a letter from me responding to an article on 11 April headed "Let the circus begin" by Blake Morrison, our Blackheath neighbour, the writer and journalist, in which he follows on his authoratative write-up of the Bulger case in 1993 by drawing attention to the similar way in which parts of the media have vilified the two young brothers charged with the attempted murder of two other young boys. Blake deserved plaudits for this. My letter (which was edited by the paper) reads as follows:
Wednesday, 4 March 2009
Iraq & John Milton
"We will leave Iraq a better place" Thus saith Lieutenant-General Cooper in his valedictory address on retiring from Iraq and the army. Oh what a favour we have done the people of Iraq. We have rid them of the tyrant Saddam Hussein who (tell it not in Gath) we used to sustain; we have bestowed the blessings of democracy; we have let them into the mystique of "internal security services" (no doubt fresh from our triumphant display in prising out information from Binyan Mohamed); we have given them a "well-defined" legal system and a "well-defined and understood" legislative system and not least "security structures that have grown". Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition. John Milton had exactly les mots justes for our role in Iraq. So I sent this to the Guardian today, not that it will see the light of day:
Thanks to the invasion of Iraq, al-Qaida established a base there, sectarian savagery erupted, and in the maelstrom thousands of Iraqis were killed and maimed, thousands fled the country, its infrastructure was decimated and thousands of US and British troops were killed or wounded. Yet Lieutenant-General's valediction talks of al-Qaida's defeat and the rooting of democracy. John Milton's words in Paradise Lost come to mind:
"But all was false and hollow; though his tongue
Dropped manna and could make the worse appear
The better reason."
Friday, 27 February 2009
More Straw castles
This is really a chutzpah. So I sent the following letter in, a revamp of a previous longer epistle placed on my blog yesterday I think:
Jack Straw deserves a medal for gall. A day after he vetoed the release of Cabinet minutes about the invasion of Iraq, a self-serving action in the light of his heavy personal involvement in the decision-making, overruling the order of the Information Commissioner and Tribunal that disclosure was in the "very powerful public interest," he claims credit for the Freedom of Information legislation. Yes, Labour started out well in 1997 in passing the Human Rights Act, in devolution and some aspects of race and gender legislation, but this record needs to be set against a creeping and significant extension of executive powers and the obverse of open administration of which the Straw veto is a striking instance.
The RBS imbroglio
Incredibly there was Stephen Timms, the Treasury Minister, telling Jon Snow on Channel 4 News last night, that the Government regarded the decision of the old board of RBS to pay a grotesque pension, some £600,000 for life, to its 50-year old ex-CEO Sir Fred Goodwin, as a "fait accompli". How on earth did this happen.? We (the British public) were assured that due diligence had been undertaken, so that the Government knew the score when it bailed out the Bank. I dashed off a letter to the Guardian to express my dismay. This government is stumbling from one debacle to another.
My poet friend Michael Ware has emailed me to compliment me on yesterday's blog. Thank you Michael. I reproduce his email and one of today's freshly minted poems:
Ben,
Well done. Today's addition to the blog is up to the minute and important.
It will get nowhere just yet -- but you are used to that.
All good things.
Michael
Cusp of Spring
The gnarled old tree appears to be quite dead
As cold has closed down all its vital force,
But soon on rising sap it will be fed.
Young leaves will show the winter-spring divorce.
Already blue or yellow crocus cup
Has pushed bright head above the dormant lawn.
Its vibrant living joy has pointed up
The fact that spring is now about to dawn.
Park playing dogs cock legs against a tree
While bitches are contented just to squat.
Both genders feel the need to have a pee,
Rejoicing that the cold has eased a lot.
From my park bench I like to watch this life,
But not for long. The wind cuts like a knife.
26.2.09
Thursday, 26 February 2009
The Iraq war cover-up
It is most encouraging when one of my blog followers rings me to ask why I've been silent for some days. So today I will make good. What prompts me is yesterday's news that Jack Straw in his guise as Justice Secretary has vetoed release of the minutes of the two key Cabinet meetings in 2003, March 13 and 17, claiming that democratic decision-making demands that Cabinet discussions are kept confidential. It just so happens (what a coincidence!) that Jack Straw in his then guise as Foreign Secretary was deeply implicated in the Iraq war decision. It was also, as it happens, the same Jack Straw who was heavily involved, in his guise as Home Secretary, in the introduction of the Freedom of Information Act, one of the few brighter sparks of the New Labour regime. But, having entrusted its application to an Information Commissioner, he has now conveniently invoked the get-out veto to overrule the Commissioner who had authorised publication of the minutes. For heaven's sake, what the Cabinet decided 6 years ago, with the UK at last extricating itself from Iraq, ought to be regarded now as history and important history at that which the public have a right to know. Certainly as the Tories and LibDems, with the tacit support of many Labour MPs, now press for is the pressing need for a full independent Inquiry into this shameful episode of our recent history. Ultimately that will happen and the Straws of this world are simply putting off their evil day by such moves as the veto.
Over the years I have been waging a little personal campaign over the Iraq War issue. I have had letters published in The Times and other papers. I have resuscitated two such letters reproduced in a letter sent yesterday to the Guardian - which the paper won't publish but which I now quote to indicate my feelings.
Jack Straw's veto on the release of minutes of the two Cabinet meetings on 13 and 17 March 2003 is wholly predictable. Ostensibly to protect democratic decision-making, its real purpose, and a personally self-serving one at that, is to seek to stifle public debate on the legality of the decision on the Iraq War in whose genesis Mr Straw, then Foreign Secretary, played a crucial role. It will be recalled that the senior FCO legal officer Elizabeth Wilmshurst resigned a day after the 17 March Cabinet meeting in protest at the legality of a decision taken in the absence of a second UN Security Council resolution, a view commonly shared by FCO staff and, indeed, apparantly initially by the Attorney General Lord Goldsmith before his volte-face giving the decision his legal blessing.When Ms Wilmshurst's resignation entered the public domain in 2005, the Times published a letter from me on 29 March which bears reproduction as it is pertinent to Mr Straw's current stance:
Elizabeth Wilmshurst's resignation letter raises, in an acute form, questions both as to the quality of the legal advice the Government relied upon to approve the Iraq war, and the calibre of our ministers who made the decision. The Government relied on the final opinion of a vacillatory Attorney-General whose professional expertise was commercial, not public international, law in preference to the consistent consensus stance of the legal staff of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office who included distinguished international lawyers, not least Ms Wilmshurst, and whose view on the legality of the war without a second UN Security Council resolution was shared by almost every international lawyer of repute, as well as by Lord Goldsmith himself before his volte-face.Equally, Simon Jenkins (Comment March 25) rightly highlights the devastating effect on sound administration of the manner in which the decision was made. The Foreign Secretary must have known of the opinion of the FCO's lawyers, when the legality issue was before the Cabinet on March 17 2003, even though Ms Wilmshurst's resignation was not until the following day. Did he, himself a lawyer, tell the Cabinet of the legal consensus which conflicted with the Attorney's " unequivocal" opinion? There has been speculation that the Attorney would not take questions after his cursory statement to the Cabinet. I would be alarmed if a Cabinet stiff with libertarian warriors like Patricia Hewitt and Peter Hain and radical lawyers like my erstwhile legal practice partner Paul Boateng, let alone the maverick Clare Short, had supinely accepted a prohibition on debate of an issue of such moment.
Needless to say, my letter elicited no response from any of the named ministers. Nor had a letter from me in the Independent on Sunday on 31 October 2004 in which I said:
The Attorney-General based his legal opinion justifying the Iraq war on authorisation provided by Security Council resolution 1441. In the light of the categoric assurance given to the Security Council at the time by our representative, Sir Jeremy Greenstock - (quoted by Clare Short in your extract from her book "Powers of persuasion" -24 October): "Let me be clear...as a co-sponsor with the United States of the text we have adopted. There is no 'automaticity' in this Resolution. If there is a further Iraqi breach of its disarmament obligations, the matter will return to the Council for discussion....." - I would like Lord Goldsmith to explain how he arrived at his conclusions.
No wonder Jack Straw has vetoed publication of the Cabinet minutes. But what is there to inhibit some of the ministers at those meetings from giving us their own versions of what was said - and damn the Official Secrets Act?
Another letter I sent to The Times on 3 February 2004 was not published but expressed my views at the time and still does. It said:
How right you are to urge that the investigation into the evidence that led Britain into war with Iraq should not be seen as open season on the secret services. indeed there are many of us who believe that it would be a travesty of justice to make the intelligence services a scapegoat for wrongdoing by the Government, that an inquiry into intelligence failures is as much a red herring as was the Hutton Inquiry and that the imperative need is to investigate and lay bare the political origins of the war, as Charles Kennedy has demanded and the Prime Minister is reported to have resisted. Did Mr Blair early on commit Britain, come what may and whatever the justification, to join with the United States in an invasion of Iraq, a decision which, according to Paul O'Neill the former US Treasury Secretary, was pre-determined soon after President Bush assumed office? Until we know the answer to this key question public unease will not abate.
I say now "Amen" to that. The likelihood is that, with the Obama Administration now in command, the answer to that still unanswered and acutely live question will come from the US which has always respected freedom of information more jealously than we have. The sooner the archives are opened on both sides of the pond the better.
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Tuesday, 17 February 2009
The national DNA database again
Today's Guardian has an article by Tom Bingham, the fairly recently retired senior Law Lord,
entitled "Judges possess the weapon to challenge surveillance" on the threats posed by our surveillance culture; he asks whether the British people "are content to be the most spied upon people in the democratic world." It is particularly valuable coming from our most distinguished and enlightened judge in recent times, although Lord Bingham has not been immune from criticism in some of his judgments backing the Executive. But in his cri de coeur he includes a national DNA database in his forensic sights and prays in aid the European Court of Human Rights decision in S and Marper v UK. As I have been publicly calling for just such a thing although independent of the state, I have today written to the paper as follows:
Lord Bingham was, until his retirement, our most distinguished and enlightened judge. His characteristic cri de coeur against the excesses of our surveillance culture ("the most spied upon people in the democratic world") demands that all who value our traditional liberties stand up and be counted. Regrettably, however, he lumps in a national DNA database for condemnation, citing with approval the decision of the European Court of Human Rights which held that the retention by the police of DNA samples given by people who had been acquitted or never charged breached the right of privacy enshrined in Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights.
As our senior judge, Lord Bingham has been acutely concerned at our notorious record of miscarriages of justice and he, more than most, will be aware of the value of DNA evidence in identifying and eliminating suspects of crime, not least in preventing and rectifying miscarriages. Its retention may also conceivably act as a deterrent to crime.
The European Court decision in question (S and Marper v UK) should not be regarded as blanket disapproval of a national DNA database. What it expressed as of "particular concern" was "the risk of stigmatisation stemming from the fact that persons in the position of the applicants who had not been convicted of any offence and were entitled to the presumption of innocence, were treated in the same way as convicted persons." It held that domestic law must afford appropriate safeguards to prevent any use of personal data inconsistent with Article 8, not least when such data was used for police purposes, and declared that the intrinsically private character of DNA information required the Court to exercise scrutiny of any state measure authorising its retention and use by the authorities without the consent of the person concerned.
The rationale behind the decision was the indiscriminate, disproportionate and stigmatising use by the state and its "authorities", in particular the police, of DNA samples and profiling. There is nothing in the decision that should deter us from establishing a comprehensive DNA database and entrusting it to the strict ring-fenced custody of a public body which is entirely independent of the state and its agencies, particularly the police, and which would only release information for good and substantiated cause. .
Monday, 9 February 2009
A new corporate culture
Jackie Ashley's weekly article in the Guardian today ("To chop City bonuses, start by cutting the testosterone") focuses on the banking crisis. Her sub-titles give its flavour "All sides agree banking's diastrously aggressive, risk-taking culture has to change. More women in finance might be a start" and "Nobody actually needs £20m bonuses. These are symbols of hierarchy and dominance, like big ruffs and peacock feathers." In the course of the article, after referring to politicians' condemnation of City bank practices (she quotes George Osborne's "The party is over for the banks"), she says "Yet everyone knows that politicians themselves can't manage the banks. They can't go in and start setting salaries, picking clients, deciding which business is a safe risk and which is not. The change in the culture they want has to happen inside the financial system itself. So how might that happen?"
I wrote in as follows:
Jackie Ashley asks how change in the culture politicians, and I would add the public at large, want can happen inside the financial system itself. She rightly says that politicians can't manage the banks or set salaries or pick clients or decide what is a safe risk and what not. The answer, of course, in a corporate regime (and this goes not only for our banks but for companies generally) is by shareholder activism. I demonstrated its power in 2007 in my campaign to persuade Tesco to pay a living wage to its outsourced workers in the developing world, when 20% of its shareholders declined to back the company. Such a tactic is open to shareholders to clip the wings of greedy directors, to stop a company engaging in tax avoidance schemes which are unpatriotic or anti-social and damage the company's reputation or in activities which damage the environment. Section 172 of the Companies Act 2006, in imposing a duty on a director to promote the company's success, directs a director specifically to have regard "to the likely consequences of any decision in the long term" (my emphasis) and "the impact of the company's operations on the community and the environment" and "the desirability of the company maintaining a reputation for high standards of business conduct." The shareholders exercise significant sanctions over the directors. Directors of all public companies are subject to annual appointment by the shareholders, directors' long-term service contracts require shareholders' approval (section 188) and a director can even be removed by ordinary resolution before his term of office expires notwithstanding anything in his agreement with the company (section 168). There is, therefore, considerable legal scope for shareholders collectively to intervene in the running of their company if they consider that the directors have been feathering their nests unjustifiably (by e.g.moving a resolution to place a cap on disproportionate salaries or bonuses) or have brought the company into disrepute or acted unethically. In the present economic climate the sooner shareholders start exercising their muscle the better.
Yours etc.
Sunday, 8 February 2009
National service
Will Hutton's weekly column in the Observer today ("We can replicate the beauty that came from the Depression") has a sensible suggestion - that we should replicate Roosevelt's New Deal's Works Progress Administration, the biggest employer in Depression-hit USA which gave work to up to 3.2 million people a month in socially creative programmes. Even before the present economic crisis hit us I advocated something similar. So I have used Hutton's piece as an opening to fly a kite in this letter to the paper:
Dear Sir
National emergencies, the two 20th century world wars and austerity post-1945, spawned the creation of national service. With the prospect of the present crisis extending over years and with mass unemployment disproportionately affecting the young, as Will Hutton says, his suggestion that we immediately emulate the New Deal Works Progress Administration project is a good one. We should go further. We face the likelihood of massive social unrest and its consequences. Now surely we should reintroduce a form of state-funded and directed national service, say for two years, in community-orientated activity, for all school-leavers and voluntarily for any other adults in need of work.
Friday, 6 February 2009
Rachel Reid
Yesterday The Times carried an article concerning, and with a glamourised picture of, Rachel Reid. Under the heading "Colonel arrested in Afghanistan under the Official Secrets Act is flown home" and the sub-heading "Army man 'leaked classified information to human rights campaigner'" the article (by Tom Coghlan in Kabul and Sean O Neill) commenced "A senior British army officer arrested in Afghanistan over the leaking of details of civilian deaths in military operations returned to Britain yesterday on a military flight. Lieutenant-Colonel Owen McNally was detained under the Official Secrets Act after allegedly passing classified statistics to a human rights campaigner." It continued "The information is alleged to have informed a report written by Rachel Reid, 34, a former BBC radio reporter who is a researcher on Afghanistan for Human Rights Watch, the US based NGO. According to reports, the Colonel began passing secrets after the two became 'close'" A little later on the report quotes "A Nato source" as stating "Nobody who works closely with him (McNally) believes there was a relationship between them" (that is repeated in bold later in the article). It continues "Last September Ms Reid was the author of a report into civilian deaths that detailed killings by Western forces and the Taliban. It claimed that civilian deaths as a result of Nato action tripled between 2006 and 2007. The 43-page report sourced 'the most conservative figures available'" A little further on the article says "American military officials were reported to be 'seething' over the leaks." It then states that the Ministry of Defence has referred the allegations to Scotland Yard which has assigned Counter Terrorism Command to investigate but the Colonel had not been arrested and no formal investigation had been launched. Towards the end the article states that the case follows the prosecution of Corporal Daniel James found guilty for spying for Iran last year and jailed for 10 years. Apparantly similar reports appeared in the Sun and Daily Mail.
Today the Guardian features on its front page an article by Rachel Reid herself and the same picture that had appeared in The Times with the caption "Living in Afghanistan, I had expected better of my own government". In her article Rachel describes the report as a "vicious slur". She explains that, "Whatever the MoD has whispered into the ear of the Sun", she met Colonel McNally only twice in a professional capacity at the Nato military HQ in Kabul to talk about civilian casualties from US and Nato air strikes.Rachel continues "If the ministry had been seriously concerned that one of their officers was leaking information, why leak it to the media? Why was my name released to the media by the MoD with a (nudge, nudge, wink, wink) libel that our relationship was 'close'. They would know exactly what impression they were creating and presumably decided that my reputation was expendable in order to ensure coverage of their 'story'." She then continues "Why did journalists from the Sun, the Times and the Mail write this as a story focussing on the MoD's entirely bogus suggestion that I had some kind of 'relationship' with McNally? Why is it that my photograph was published? Why have journalists not been asking questions about why the MoD has been encouraging them to publish a vicious false slur about me in order to stop me from doing my job for Human Rights Watch in asking for information from the Nato official in charge of monitoring civilian casualties?..... I expect better from my own government and from the British media that I used to be part of. I am proud of the work I do in Afghanistean. I care deeply about civilian casualties, as should the MoD. That is why they should be focusing their energies on, not impugning the reputation of a human rights worker or charging one of their officers for trying to explain to me the precautions that international military forces were taking to avoid killing Afghans"
Rachel goes on to describe her dealings with Afghans. "What they want me to hear first are their stories about the women and children bombed at a wedding party, the Qu'ran that was ripped up by foreign soldiers in a night raid, or the family shot dead in their car because they didn't understand orders in English to stop at a checkpoint. They are outraged and bewildered by the killings, in particular the air strikes. By UN estimates, more than 500 civilians were killed in air strikes in Afghanistan last year. The insurgents may have killed more than 1,000 but Afghans expect little from the Taliban" Rachel then describes the worst civilian casualty incident in Azizabad in Shindand, the August 2008 'kill/capture' operation in which at least 76 civilians (59 children) were killed according to the Afghan Human Rights Commission, the UN putting the toll at above 90, and in particular the 5-year old girl Kubra who was killed. "The US military, whose forces carried out the air strike, was cold and dismissive about the reports of civilian dead. Initially they denied any casualties, later admitting 5 to 7 civilian deaths. It was only weeks later, after video evidence emerged that they were forced to investigate again and revised the civilian death toll up to 33. Whatever the final figure, the death toll from this incident was shocking. The subsequent military denials compounded the fury that Afghans already felt about these deaths. "
Rachel ends her article "If the military would hold its people to account for these terrible mistakes then human rights organisations would leave them alone. In the meantime they should remember that this has nothing to do with individuals like me, and everything to do with little girls like Kubra".
Coincidently today the Guardian carries the twice-weekly column by Simon Jenkins which today is headed "The poison of Guantanamo still courses through ministerial veins" with a side flagging: "The disregard for law and liberty threatens to taint our state indefinitely. A full, open inquiry could lift it out of this mess." Trenchantly, Jenkins speaks of the "hysterical overreaction" to 9/11 by the US and Britain which still infects us, with David Miliband being "induced by forces of darkness to give the feeblest excuse for stopping the high court from disclosing details of the alleged torture of a British resident entombed for 4 years in Guantanamo Bay" (a reference to the Binyan Mohamed case decision earlier this week) A further example of the Government invoking so-called "national security" as a justification for its policies, just as it did over the abandonment of the BAe Systems Saudi corruption prosecution.
The juxtaposition of Rachel's article and Simon Jenkins' in today's Guardian was too good an opportunity to miss, so I penned another letter to the paper (and copied it to Rachel). It will probably get short shrift from the paper, but never mind, it expresses my feelings. Here it is:
Dear Sir
The Guardian has performed a public service in publishing Rachel Reid's account of the way she has been treated by the MoD. The manner in which that Government department has colluded with the more unscrupulous parts of the media in defaming her and its victimisation of Colonel McNally because of their parts in exposing atrocities in the conduct of the war in Afghanistan, is yet further testimony of what Simon Jenkins so appositely describes as the still ongoing "hysterical overreaction" to 9/11 practised by the American and British Governments and which so abundantly justify his demand for a full open inquiry.
Sunday, 1 February 2009
Tesco, the banks and Vince Cable
Yesterday 31 January the Guardian published my letter (reproduced in my blog the day before)revisiting my Tesco campaign, unexpurgated and in extenso for the very first time. And gave it a clever heading "Keep ethical trading in fashion". All we have to do is await Tesco's response - from Lucy Neville-Rolfe no doubt.
It has been quite a weekend since today the Sunday Times publishes my letter on the banks (see my blog on 26 January) taking up Rachel Johnson's column last week, but watered down, no reference to Lord Myners etc. Never mind, got the essence and entitled "Detoxing our money".
Then this morning Michael Ware sent his daily poetic mite "In Denial", a broadside on Gordon Brown whose "Prudence was in fact a total scam." I responded that they were all in denial with the stirring exception of the invincible Vince Cable and asked when a paeon to Vince would come down the cable. Well later today it arrived:
Convinced
Thank God in crisis we still have our Vince.
The only one who seems to spout some sense,
Who knows his onions, is able to convince
That he should lead now matters are so tense.
It is a joy to hear his calm display
Of all that has gone sadly, sadly wrong,
And saying clearly where the fault must lay
But not induced to sing the Brownite song.
It helps that he is versed in money matters
And can elucidate the mysteries for us,
Whereas the one in charge his spin still natters
Old Vince will do his best to draw the pus.
Oh what a pity when they were so able
The Lib-Dems failed to choose wise Vincent Cable.
1.2.09
I've been entering items on my blog for 12 days now and hope for some reactions. A blog ought to be interactive. Otherwise I feel I am whistling in the dark. I would prefer it if a respondent tore me to pieces, rather than the eery silence. Is it too much to ask for an "I agree" or better still "I think you're way off beam" or "Get off your hobbyhorse". Or something equivalent in the rough rude vernacular.
Friday, 30 January 2009
A day or two ago I put on my blog an account of my 2007 campaign to get Tesco to improve the working conditions of its outsourced garment workers who make the fashion clothes it retails in its stores; it followed War on Want's "Fashion Victims" report in December 2996. Today the Guardian carries a report on Tesco's plans for its own-label online clothing store by Julia Finch (who was so helpful to me in 2007). This provides me with my cue to go back on the campaign trail, particularly since War on Want published an update on its Bangladeshi investigation in December 2008. I reproduce my letter to the Guardian:
30 January Page 6 Tesco plans own-label online clothing store
Dear Sir The news that Tesco plans its own label online clothing store to boost fashion sales is good news for its customers and, no doubt, its shareholders. My concern, however, is with its outsourced garment workers in the developing world. Following the "Fashion Victims" report of War on Want in December 2006, based on research in Bangladesh, and with the publicity generated by your publication of a letter from me, as a Tesco shareholder I was able to move a resolution at its 2007 AGM mandating the company to pay its workers a living wage. 20% of its shareholders either voted for the resolution or abstained. But despite this unprecedented demonstration of shareholder activism and the ensuing outcry, the conditions of work of the garment workers have, if anything, deteriorated. An updated War on Want investigation in Bangladesh of the same factories visited two years earlier found that the basic monthly wage for a 48-hour week before overtime ranged from £13.97 to £24.37 and averaged £19.16 even though the cost of living has increased substantially, whilst a living wage is £44.82. What is more, the culture of fast fashion changes and aggressive buying practices of UK retailers put extreme pressure on suppliers and hence workers to produce more garments in less time; not surprisingly War on Want found that Bangladeshi workers work up to 80 hours a week and most worked 10 to 14 hours a day 6 days a week, well in excess of the official standard working week. In the global downturn, UK retailers who maintain employment in the developing world are to be congratulated. But not if the price paid means such gross exploitation of their workers. I challenge Tesco to abide by its Ethical Trading Initiative obligations to pay its outsourced employees a living wage.
Wednesday, 28 January 2009
I have been urged to put on my blog glimpses from my professional career. I will have a go from time to time and what better way to start, as I write this on 28 January, than the story which involves the great John Mortimer who died 12 days ago and concerns my first dealings with Richard Branson; incidentally he has seen my write-up and approved it. This was in fact written some years ago but has not been published in any form before.
A bit part on a tycoon's trajectory
There is talk now of the "swinging sixties", the age when all inhibitions were swept aside and the last vestiges of Victorian prudery and repression disappeared. And true it is that Roy Jenkins as Home Secretary in the first Wilson Administration was responsible for legislation that decriminalised homosexual acts in private by consenting adults (Sexual Offences Act 1967) and marginally liberalised the obscenity laws (Obscene Publications Act 1964) and the Lord Chamberlain lost his power of censorship over our theatres (Theatres Act 1968) and our juries had played their part in throwing out the prosecution for obscenity of Lady Chatterley's Lover. But there remained on the statute book archaic and repressive pieces of legislation, out of tune with the ethos of the times, as well as common law offences, ready at hand for our police to invoke and there were those responsible for law and order only too keen to do so. An example of this was the infamous prosecution for obscenity in 1970 of Schoolkids' Oz in which, incidentally John Mortimer acted for some of the defendants.
Another, less notorious, example of our police's vigour in enforcing such laws, was the prosecution, just before the Oz case, of a young man for whom I acted, charged with offending under the Indecent Advertisements Act 1889 and the Venereal Disease Act 1917. The young man in question had been referred to me in January 1970, I believe through N.C.C.L (now known as Liberty). He had applied for and been granted a Legal Aid Order to defend the case naming my firm as his solicitors. He was due to appear at Marylebone Magistrates Court on the 8th May and so I arranged to see him towards the end of February to take his instructions and start to prepare his case for court. A tousle-haired youth of 19 with a lively expression presented himself and, as his story unfolded, it was clear to me that he was an energetic, adventurous young man in a hurry who, as it transpired, more by judgment than by luck, found himself hauled before a 'beak'. Ironic, considering that his father had recently been appointed a Metropolitan Stipendiary Magistrate. Based on my experience of him then and in the following years when I acted for him on various matters, it does not surprise me in the least that my client over 30 years later is one of the world's wealthiest and best known entrepreneurs. His name? Richard Charles Nicholas Branson.
I had not met Richard before he came to see me, but I felt I knew quite alot about him and his doings, since the prosecution had generated a flurry of publicity in the national press. Anthony Howard had had a piece in his Diary in the New Statesman in November 1969. Tony Geraghty had written a column in the Sunday Times five weeks later. At about the same time the Sun had a brief story subbed "Girls defy law just to be helpful" and the Guardian ran a report headed "VD leaflet team risks arrest". So intense was the media interest that on the 22nd January 1970 Womens' Guardian had a feature article by Rosalind Morris "Brisk, brash and Branson" (which, on reflection, might be a suitable epitaph). So, with that media introduction, I felt prepared for Richard, albeit that obviously, by some quirk, news of this clearly rising star streaking across the horizon at the dawn of the seventies had escaped me.
So how was it that Richard had provoked, what turned out to be, his virginal brush with the law? two years before, I believe when still at school, Richard had established a magazine entitled "Student" which he told me had a circulation of 100,000 and was sold in colleges and schools and which W.H.Smith and other newsagents and booksellers handled. It appeared quarterly and by the Autumn issue 1969 it had notched up cotributions from James Baldwin, John Lennon, R.D.Laing, Stephen Spender, Henry Moore, John Peel, David Hockney, Mick Jagger, Bertrand Russell, David Mercer, Gerald Scarfe and Jean-Paul Sartre, among the better known intellectual and entertainment 'glitterati'. Richard was its editor and publisher and the 12 full-time staff included managing, features, consultant, advertisement, careers supplement, production and export and poetry editors as well as numerous foreign correspondents. It was priced at 2/6p or FF4.
So successful was the magazine that it sprouted an offshoot, the Student Advisory Centre, also run by Richard and, I think, financed by the magazine, based at 142 Piccadilly and staffed by magazine staff with many volunteers including some 50 doctors and psychiatrists. The basic function of the Centre was to deal with queries and problems of readers of the Magazine. Those of a practical nature, such as matters of accommodation or problems of loneliness, would be dealt with by Centre staff but the majority, requiring specialist medical or legal advice, would be referred to professional advisors. By late 1969 the Centre was seeing about 500 young people a week and Centres had been set up in France and Germany where the Magazine was published under the title "Help International". A psychiatric institution in the United States had offered £500,000 to establish something similar there. Ancillary to the London Centre was a "Union for Nurses" which I was told had over 1,000 nurses on its books.
Early in 1969 the Centre produced a small leaflet. Around a circle was printed boldly "Give us your headaches" and, in smaller print, "The Advisory Centre has given free help to hundreds of young people. If you (or any of your friends) need help ring Student magazine and ask for the Advisory centre AMB 2872" In the middle of the circle appeared the words "abortion adoption contraception drugs educational problems homosexuality lesbianism marriage pregnancy testing psychiatrec help venereal disease". Originally 100,000 copies were printed and they were distributed by volunteers on the streets and in colleges. A copy of the leaflet also appeared in the Autumn issue of "Student" along with articles including "The Biafra Affair - British
complicity" (with a graphic photo by the photographer Don McCullin on the front cover). "Undress - The Sensual Experience of the Wearer", a short story by Alan Coren "When the kissing had to stop" and Alastair Hetherington, Editor of the Guardian "A Radical Voice". Towards the end of this issue of the Magazine (coming just before"Marketing/Sales: a Student career supplement" which opened with the sentence "Marketing is the Most Fashionable Career in Contemporary Business" sic -trust Richard!) were two pages devoted to the Advisory Centre reproducing a "cross-section" of the many letters received every week, followed by an article headed "My doctor struck me off his list for asking for contraceptive advice" describing the different kinds of contraception and illustrated with pictures of 13 contraceptive devices. The latter article was sub-headed "Lack of practical help and education on the subject of contraception has resulted in the Advisory Centre being inundated with people who need contraceptive advice and frequently many who are already pregnant 'I just didn't think somehow I would become pregnant'. in this article we examine the advantages and disadvantages of the main methods" and referring readers to the Centre for further information and advice.
Some of those responding to the leaflet had venereal disease problems and the Centre simply acted as a post office, putting the inquirers in touch with the clinics and hospitals in the area that specialised, such as James Pringle House run by Dr R.D. Catterall of the Department of Venereology at the Middlesex Hospital and University College Hospital. Some cases were referred to Dr Nicholas Malleson at the Student Medical Centre he ran. Throughout 1969, Richard told me, until the events now unfolding, they had encountered no problems with the leaflet nor had the police expressed any interest.
One of the cases referred to the Centre concerned a young man of 19 who said he had been accused of something he had not done by police at Marylebone Lane Police Station; the suggestion was that the police had planted drugs on him. Richard decided to bring a complaint against the police and he and Amanda Young, one of the staff of “Student”, went to the Station and asked to see the Chief Inspector. About a week later, two plaiin-clothed officers turned up at Richard’s home in Albion Street, Paddington. They asked to see him alone and they produced one of the leaflets and said that unless he dropped the reference to VD from the leaflet they would have to arrest him. Richard thought he recognised one of the officers and the officer said he had met him at Marylebone Lane the week before. The police station for the district in which Richard lived was Harrow Road and Richard expressed surprise that they had come all the way to Paddington and asked why Harrow Road were not doing so. There was no answer. The officers went on to say that they could always get him for references on the leaflet to homosexuality, abortion, lesbianism, etc. since these were all the result of sexual intercourse. Richard told the officers he would talk to his solicitors and the men left. After this Richard spoke to his then solicitors (not me) and decided to replace “venereal disease” by “social diseases” on the leaflet, which was re-printed. He then received a typewritten form dated 11th November, appropriately Armistice Day, from the Chief Superintendent at Marylebone Lane, which stated that he had been reported for committing two offences, “advertising to give advice in connection with the treatment of VD” contrary to the Venereal Diseases Act 1917 and “delivering written matter of an indecent nature to persons passing along the street” contrary to the Indecent Advertisements Act 1889, in each case in Oxford Street on the 1st October, but concluding “I am now directed by the Commissioner of Police on the Metropolis to inform you that, after careful consideration, it has been decided not to institute proceedings against you in this instance. If you are reported again, however, it may be considered necessary to take action in respect of the latter occasion. I am, Sir, Your obedient servant, Chief Superintendent”.
Richard told me that, after VD was excised from the leaflet, the number of people coming to the Centre for help fell from about 60 a week to about 5 and they decided to reinstate VD. Richard took a copy of the leaflet with the reinstated reference to VD to Marylebone Lane on the 23rd December and handed it to a uniformed officer, saying “We have decided to put VD back on the leaflet. Please inform your Chief Superintendent”. Richard had by then taken the precaution of informing the press, BBC and ITV of his actions and they had their cameras at the ready; an early taste of the master public relations tactician! Just to rub it in, a number of colleagues were distributing the unbowdlerised leaflet outside the police station.
The inevitable happened. Some three weeks later, in mid January 1970, a police inspector, Edward Jones, from Marylebone Lane laid informations at Marylebone Magistrates Court that Richard “on the 23rd December 1969 at Marylebone Lane did deliver to a person passing along the said street a printed matter of an indecent nature” contrary to the Section 3 of the Indecent Advertisements Act 1889 and “did by an advertisement offer to give advise (sic) in connection with the treatment of venereal disease” contrary to Section 2 of the Venereal Disease Act 1917, and the Court duly issued summonses against Richard. Since Richard admitted all the police evidence against him, the prosecution case continued with the officers’ unchallenged statements.
Police Inspector Jones attested that on 23rd December he had seen about 20 “persons” “male and female” (why doesn’t the police vocabulary include the more colloquial words “people”, “men and women”?) outside Marylebone police station distributing leaflets to passers by. He went out to the street and “there saw a man whom I now know to be Richard Charles Nicholas Branson” (pausing there, I ponder how many people almost anywhere in the world would say that of Richard now). Continuing in somewhat ponderous policespeak, Inspector Jones said that Branson “presented himself” to him outside the station as the leader of the group and showed the officer a leaflet, the same as those which had been distributed. “I saw that amongst other words on the leaflet were the words ‘venereal disease’ and ‘If you (or any of your friends) need help ring student magazine and ask for the Advisory Centre. AMB 2872’” Mr Branson had told the officer that they had previously been warned that the giving out of the leaflets might be an offence and that at one time the words “venereal disease” had been removed but that now they had been replaced. Inspector Jones “took possession of one of the leaflets and told him the facts would be reported and Mr Branson had replied: “Yes, that’s all right”. “The group of persons, including Mr Branson, then left the vicinity”.
A Chief Inspector John Perrett then took up the story. He it was who had gone to Richard’s home in October and produced a copy of the offending leaflet and asked him: “Have you anything to do with the distribution of these advertisements?” to which Richard replied: “I am the editor of ‘Student’ Magazine and Director of the Advisory Centre and I am responsible for their publication and distribution”. When the Chief Inspector pointed out the offences, Richard had said: “I’ll have to get legal advice”. The officer then told Richard to withdraw the advertisements and if he failed to do so he would be liable to prosecution.
That was the sum total of the police case against Richard. He was responsible for publishing and distributing a leaflet which contained the words “venereal disease” and offered to help young people through his Advisory Centre. That, it was said, contravened the two Acts under which he was prosecuted, the words “venereal disease” turning the leaflet into “printed matter of an indecent nature” and the leaflet constituting “an offer to give advice in connection with the treatment of VD”.
How were we going to run the defence of the charges? As I have said, we didn’t challenge the facts alleged. What we sought to do was satisfy the Court that the facts alleged by the prosecution, coupled with evidence we called, did not constitute any offence. And who did we brief to represent Richard in Court? None other than Rumpole of the Bailey himself personified by his creator John Mortimer QC. In fact, Richard’s case might well have made a fascinating little episode in the Rumpole series.
The witnesses we called for the defence were few in number. Richard gave evidence himself admitting his part in the production and distribution of the leaflet and explaining the function of the Advisory Centre, which did not itself give any advice to inquirers asking about VD, but referred such inquiries to specialist medical bodies such as the James Pringle Clinic and University College Hospital and the Student Medical Centre. We called Dr Nicholas Malleson of the Medical Centre to confirm that they had dealt with, and given advice to, the inquirers; and one of the inquirers, a young man who had treatment for VD, having got in touch with the Advisory Centre and been referred on. We called the well/known MP, Tom Driberg, to vouch for the good social work done by Richard’s Advisory Centre; Tom Driberg had previously written to the Home Secretary, Jim Callaghan, to express his concern at the police action, referring to Richard as a “vigorous, reputable and responsible young man, and it seems to me that nothing but good can come of his activities”. Chad Varrah, the founder and chairman of the Samaritans gave evidence to the same effect. Dr Catterall of the James Pringle Clinic made a written statement as did John Trevelyan, Secretary of the British Board of Film Censors, who said that he admired Richard’s work in publishing “an interesting and intelligent” journal for students and also for establishing the advisory service “for which I believe there is a real need........I have no reason to doubt that this service is given with total integrity and that it has been of value to many students”.
The evidence we called was half the battle. The other half was to make our legal submissions. As to the Venereal Disease Act charge, we submitted quite simply that the leaflet did not, in the words of the section, “offer to give advice” in connection with VD. We argued that the Act must be read in the light of its preamble. “An Act to prevent the treatment of venereal disease otherwise than by duly qualified medical practitioners and to control the supply of remedies therefor…”We had pointed to a case in 1919 (Rex v William Shadforth) where the court had said there had to be some “recommendation amounting to advice”, something quite absent in our case. Telling someone where to go to get proper treatment was not giving advice in connection with such treatment. We made the customary point that we were dealing with a criminal statute which, if there is any ambiguity, must be strictly construed and any doubt resolved in the defendant’s favour.
As to the late Victorian piece of legislation, the 1889 Indecent Advertisements Act, invoked against Richard, just how all pervading it was intended to be is to be seen by the terms of a section (4) which states “Any advertisement relating to syphilis, gonorrhoea, nervous debility or other complaint or infirmity relating to sexual intercourse shall be deemed to be printed or written matter of an indecent nature… if such advertisements is affixed to or inscribed on any house, building, wall, hoarding, gate, fence, pillar, post, board, tree or other thing whatsoever ……… or is delivered or attempted to be delivered to any person being in or passing along any street, public highway or footpath”. The section of the Act under which Richard was charged, section 3, made it an offence punishable by one month’s imprisonment or a fine of £20 “to deliver or attempt to deliver or exhibit to any inhabitant or to any person being in or passing along any street, public highway or footpath ……… any picture or printed or written matter which is of an indecent or obscene nature”.
There was no definition in the Act of “indecency” and in researching material for the defence, I looked at Hansard’s report on the debate in 1889 in the House of Lords on the Bill. The Earl of Wemyss, clearly an early Human Rights agitator, drew their Lordships’ attention to “the very stringent character of the measure”. Pointing out that the Bill provided that any person exhibiting a picture of an indecent nature in a shop was liable to be convicted and, further, that one of the clauses empowered any policeman to arrest any person whom he may find to be committing an offence against the Act, he presciently observed “Therefore it would seem that any prudish policeman who sees in a shop a statue of the Venus de Medici may arrest the shopkeeper. In the Act there is no definition whatever of the word ‘indecent’ and I think it right to protest against such stringent legislation”. And a fellow libertarian, the Earl of Kimberley, warned “………it would be illegal to introduce a copy of Aristophanes or Boccaccio into a house. Extreme care, therefore will have to be exercised to prevent abuse of the Act”.
Their Noble Earls’ cris de coeur, alas, fell on deaf ears, so concerned were their Lordships with “the suppression of indecent advertisements”. The Earl of Meath, in introducing the Bill, had raised the alarm (seemingly unconscious of his liberal use of sexual imagery) “………It is almost impossible to pass down certain streets of this large city without having thrust into one’s hands indecent and filthy publications which ought not to come before the eyes of any decent man or woman………steps (should be) taken to prevent such inducements to promiscuous sexual intercourse, for at present there are no means of preventing the dissemination of such filthy literature………those papers are thrust not only into the hands of men, but into the hands of women. They are often sent by post, and the persons who receive them, especially young women, are, of course, too much ashamed of having received them to complain………All I can say is, I hope……… that you will do your best to free the country from this stream of pollution which is contaminating the minds of the young”. The Earl of Aberdeen had taken up the hue and cry “The broadcast distribution of this pernicious literature has a very bad effect in counteracting the education of the school children. Some 80,000 children go through our Board Schools every year. They go to work in factories and workshops, and in the evenings their only resort is the streets. No efforts of city missionaries, however industrious, can counteract the evil done by literature of this sort ………I am entirely in favour of (the Bill’s) object ……… the suppression of mischief of a most insidious kind.” And, not to be outdone, the Established Church added its pennyworth of alarmist indignation, with His Grace, the Archbishop of Canterbury speaking of “the poor of London…defiled by literature of this character …The country is strewn with these abominable papers” and adding his own personal colourful anecdote “I may give your Lordships an instance which happened the other day: While some girls were taking their recreation in a meadow attached to their school two men drove rapidly by in a gig and flung over the wall two packages of literature of the most horrible description. Fortunately one of them happened to fall at the feet of one of the mistresses, and the mischief intended was not done. But it is impossible to imagine the mischief that is done by the distribution of this stuff…”
Unlike the Venereal Disease Act, which contained a let-out for public or local authority notices, or those sanctioned by the Ministry of Health, referring to VD, (and so did not criminalise, for instance, advertisements of the Health Education Council such as their posters in lavatories “How to catch gonorrhoea”) the Indecent Advertisements Act had no exemptions. So how did we wriggle out of the blanket provision of section 5 which “deemed” any advertisement relating to venereal diseases “to be printed or written matter of an indecent nature” if delivered to someone in the street; i.e. just the type of situation that their libertarian Lordships in the debate on the Bill had forecast might arise in the absence of a definition of indecency?
Well, when lawyers are in the deepest rough, they call for their maschie-niblick, creative word-play. In our case we tackled the riddle by looking at the way our courts had interpreted the word “deem”. In one nineteenth century case a judge had said “When a statute enacts that something should be ‘deemed’ to have been done which, in fact and truth, was not done, the court is entitled and bound to ascertain for what purposes and between what persons the statutory fiction is to be resorted to”. And in a more recent case, in 1945, Mr Justice Romer declared “To deem ……that a thing happened when not only is it known that it did not happen, but it is positively known that precisely the opposite of it happened, is a conception which, to my mind ……amounts to a complete absurdity”. The courts often referred to “deeming” as a “statutory fiction” which “had an element of finality” about it but was not inflexible and could be rebutted; if the fiction extended the meaning of a subject matter to something which it did not properly designate then “it becomes very important to consider the purpose for which the statutory fiction is introduced”, as Chief Justice Griffith said in a 1909 decision.
Applying these dicta of our courts, we submitted that it would indeed be a “complete absurdity” to treat the Student Advisory Centre leaflets as if they were printed matter of an indecent nature simply because they contained the words “venereal disease” on them, particularly when the Act failed to contain any definition of indecency. The purpose of the Act was to stamp out the popular dissemination of what would now be called “pornographic” material, not to penalise someone for informing others where they could get advice for a medical condition. We satisfied the “rebuttable presumption” test that has to be applied to “deeming” clauses in statutes. And once again, for good measure, we threw in the caution that, if there were any doubt, this penal statute must be interpreted strictly and in favour of our client.
Richard’s case came before Mr Rawdon-Smith, the stipendiary magistrate then sitting at Marylebone Court. Mr Rawdon-Smith was certainly not the easiest ‘stipe’ to persuade that a prosecution was fatally flawed but having heard John Mortimer put our case on both summonses as persuasively as Rumpole would have done, he dismissed the VD Act summons on the first appearance but adjourned the Indecent Advertisements Act summons for his reserved judgment. I wrote to Richard to say I’d be at court to hear the reserved decision and, although Richard wrote back to express his appreciation (“Thanks to you the case was carried off extremely well and I am grateful to you for my acquittal on the Venereal Disease part”) and not to waste my time if otherwise busy. I did in fact attend the fortnight later to hear the magistrate find the Indecent Advertisements case proved and to fine Richard £7. Richard deserved to be cleared on both charges and would have been had the case been heard by one of the then few more tolerant and less police-minded ‘beaks’ such as the then Chief Metropolitan Magistrate, Sir Frank Milton. As it was we had a classic piece of ‘fudge’ and the case starkly demonstrated the accuracy of the prognostications of those peers who, when the Bill was debated, had warned of “the extreme care” needed to be exercised if the Act was not to be abused.
So concluded my baptism as Richard’s solicitor. For the next two or three years Richard would consult me on occasions and I would represent him when he got into situations requiring representation either for himself personally or for individuals in his burgeoning financial empire. “Burgeoning” is, perhaps, not exactly the word Richard would have used to describe his Virgin Mail Order business early in 1971. In fact, as he explains in his autobiography “Losing my Virginity”, it was saddled with debt and, to pay off his debts, Richard conceived what in contemporary terminology would be called a “scam” (the word Richard ascribes to the enterprise) and which, in the instructions we gave to Counsel to represent Richard when he was, inevitably, charged, we described as a “ruse”. Since Richard has given a quite detailed account of the matter in his own book, it would be superfluous for me to tell the story again even though it would not be telling tales out of school by referring to my firm’s role.
Apart from times when Richard sent me various business acquaintances who needed legal advice – I remember once advising the Sex Pistols – there was one other, rather bizarre, occasion towards the end of 1972 when he personally received a bunch of summonses for a string of motoring offences. It was alleged that he was the driver of a van which was stopped in Crawley in Sussex and that he had been driving it without a licence or insurance or M.O.T., and with a defective tyre and that he had failed to produce his licence, insurance and M.O.T. certificates. By this time Richard was Managing Director and owner of a magazine and book publishing company and, of course, his record company with a chain of shops up and down the country, an export and import company and a large studio complex; in all he said he employed over 100 people. He had, I believe, by then acquired the “Virgin” brand name.
The first Richard heard of the matter was when a police officer called on him at his Manor House near Oxford, and asked for driving documents relating to the van details of which the officer gave him. He told the officer he had not driven the van in question and that he did not know whether the van belonged to one of his firms or not. He presumed that someone must have given the police his name as the owner and said he would let them have his particulars. He then made enquiries and discovered that the van was not one of his companies’ and so he did not pursue the matter further. The officer, however, persevered, so Richard decided to look into ownership and discovered that the van belonged to John Varnom, a colleague who he describes in his autobiography as a “genius” who did all his record promotions. Richard asked Varnom who had been driving his van in Crawley on the date in question and was given the name of someone who had once been an employee of one of Richard’s companies, an Australian who was non persona grata with our Immigration Authorities and also with a personal grudge against Richard. This man had an abundant motive for shrugging off responsibility on to Richard and, moreover, resembled Richard, having long fair hair and a fair beard. I defended Richard at Crawley Magistrates Court. The police officer told the Court that he had stopped the vehicle and examined the tyres which were threadbare and that he had then said to the driver who, he alleged, was Richard that it was an offence to drive a motor vehicle on the road with defective tyres. Richard was said to have replied “The van is not worth spending money on”. I then cross-examined the officer. I put it to him that Mr Branson was not the driver and that this was a case of mistaken identity. He replied that the driver was similar in appearance, colouring and height with a similar voice, well spoken and quite quiet but he could not recall a beard and he could not be positive. I then called Richard who gave evidence that he had not driven the van and gave details of his alibi; he had been in London most of the day and then driven down to the Manor in the evening. John Varnom confirmed that it was his van and that he had lent it to the Australian who he knew as one of Richard’s employees and who now was abroad. The officer’s failure to be positive in his identification of Richard as the man he had stopped really clinched the matter and I was not surprised when the bench of (lay) magistrates dismissed all summonses.
BBC's DEC Gaza appeal ban
"My decision.....was taken to uphold the BBC's impartiality". Mark Thompson achieved the exact opposite. Partiality to those who caused the mayhem in Gaza; partiality against the victims.
Like Oliver Twist they’d like to ask for more,
But they are lucky just to be employed.
So say the fatcats grinding down the poor
To make shareholders really overjoyed.
The boss gets umpteen million for his pay.
How much to do with letting slowly starve
The foreign workers in his pending tray
Whose numbers he would much prefer to halve?
Is capitalist system then at fault?
No. Not the system only its bad drivers.
Rank greed will bring compassion down to naught
And press to death impoverished, hopeless strivers.
The dividend increases in a flood
But is it stained with someone else’s blood?
27.1.09
High Street Retail
I open my mail this morning to find this from my poet friend Michael Ware:
"Your blog inspired a doggerel. It is a long way from my normal way of thinking. after all I made a living from managing private client investment portfolios. However your campaign rings a bell. tesco even forces UK farmers into contracts which will bankrupt them but make Tesco richer. Not very good poetry but you may think that its heart is in the right place!"
Indeed I do - and Michael's 'doggerel' (I wouldn't have labelled it such) takes pride of place on today's blog:
Tuesday, 27 January 2009
Flashback to my Tesco campaign
I sent the resolution to Tesco's Company Secretary Jonathan Lloyd in April 2007 and back came his reply "I am writing to inform you that your request to move a resolution at the Tesco AGM...is not valid under the relevant rules and therefore it will not be included in the Notice to shareholders." He said however that the Company would like to talk to me about my concerns.The resolution was in fact perfectly valid but what Mr Lloyd meant was that, under the Companies Act, I required the support of a minimum of 100 shareholders with a paid up average sum per member of £100 in order to requisition (i.e.compel the Company to table) the resolution.
So I set about collecting the requisite number of Tesco shareholders. I wrote to the Guardian who (under their heading 'Join me on putting Tesco on the spot') published my letter on 26 April calling on Tesco shareholders to support me. The following day Lucy Neville-Rolfe, executive director, corporate and legal affairs at Tesco, had a letter in response (headed 'Tesco:every little helps Bangladesh develop') ("Every little helps" is Tesco's foremost advertising slogan) in which, disarmingly, she said she was pleased that I was seeking to engage with Tesco, that I raised important issues but that Tesco did not accept War on Want's allegations about Tesco's practices. She continued that the right response was to trade with developing countries - as if we had suggested the contrary - and ended her letter with the rather sinister words "The alternative - and believe me, it would be easier - would be for us to stop sourcing in countries that have economic and social problems which are beyond the capabilities of any organisation alone to fix." I wrote back to the Guardian "The issue is not trade or no trade with developing countries; of course War on Want believes fervently in the principle of trading. The issue is the working conditions of the outsourced workers and Tesco and other corporate giants have the clout to impose employment terms on their suppliers. If Tesco is genuine about its ethical pretentions, rather than raising skittles why do Lucy Neville-Rolfe and her fellow directors seek to block my resolution instead of supporting it as I urged them to do when I wrote 'If a corporate body with the muscle of Tesco is willing to put its considerable weight behind such a resolution, it will send a very strong signal to corporate competitors and strike a powerful blow for corporate ethics'"
My campaign was picked up by the media. The BBC filmed me outside a Tesco store in Coventry and I was interviewed on the Sunday morning "God's slot" programme and the Guardian in particular provided good coverage; all praise to their City editor Julia Finch who on the day of the AGM did a piece on an Activist shareholder in which she attacked Tesco for "fighting hard to prevent" the resolution being put to shareholders and remarked "What is surprising is that few institutional shareholders, even those who constantly shout about their corporate social responsibility, are likely to flag even tacit support for the sentiment behind the resolution".. Other papers joined in.the Daily Telegraph (on 15 May) headed a piece "Investor puts ethics on Tesco's agenda" and quoted me"I'd like to see all our corporate retailers taking their ethical responsibilities seriously. It's not anti-Tesco" I sought support from wealthy individuals I had acted for as a solicitor and who I reckoned would be sympathetic e.g. Richard Branson whose PA replied "I am afraid that due to Richard's hectic schedule he is unable to respond to your request."Friendly responses to my appeal, however, started to come in in dribs and drabs, emails and hard copy, and it was greatly boosted by backing from the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust which held nearly one million shares. I did the round of investors' organisations, getting pathetically muted noises from bodies like the churches' PIRC (recommendation to its members to abstain) who should have supported me, more from some socially-conscious investment concerns like Threadneedle Asset Management and the UK Social Investment Forum but lots from little people. Ultimately I secured well over my statutory minimum and Tesco conceded my requisition at a meeting I had with its Chairman David Reid and Mr Lloyd at the Institute of Directors at which they said the Company had never before had an individual shareholder's resolution. They would include the resolution in the AGM Notice to their shareholders and they would, as required by statute, publish my statement in support of the resolution as well as the Company's statement supporting its recommendation to members to vote against. Although Tesco were entitled to charge me for publishing (as they apparently did with Hugh F-W who had to cough up nearly £90,000) they decided not to do so.
My statement read as follows:
"The background to the resolution is the report 'Fashion Victims: The true cost of cheap clothes at Primark, Asda and Tesco' published in December 2006 by the Charity War on Want (of which I am company secretary), based on recent research in Bangladesh, which Lucy Neville-Rolfe, the Company's Corporate and Legal Affairs director, praised in a letter she wrote to the Guardian newspaper. as the title of the report made clear, it exposed the appalling working conditions of workers in the supplier factories in the developing world who make the clothes which UK retailers including Tesco, sell so cheaply. The workers are paid substantially less than a living wage. The Company agrees that, in Bangladesh for instance, a living wage should be at least £22 (Tk 3000) per month yet the national minimum wage board in that country has just proposed a minimum of £12, still only half of the most basic living wage. War on Want found that the starting wages in the six factories where the clothes are made discussed in the report, ranged from £7.54 to £8.33 monthly and that the garment workers had to work exceptionally long hours, regularly 80 hours per week, to eke out survival. Ms Neville-Rolfe in her guardian letter acknowledged frankly and fairly that conditions were 'hard and that standards differ from those in the UK.'
the Company prides itself on its ethical stance. The resolution quotes the 2005 Annual review which refers to 'core values.' 'treating our partners as we like to be treated' and seeking 'to uphold labour standards in the supply chain' as well as the claim to offer a 'market-leading package of pay and benefits'. The Company is a member of the Ethical Trading Initiative (the ETI) and thus subscribes to its Base Code, agreed by founding trade unions,NGO and corporate members, which reflects the most relevant international standards with respect to labour practices(the ILO Conventions). the ETI considers that the labour standards incorporated in the Base Code constitute a minimum requirement for any corporate code of labour practice and, when corporate members join the ETI, they commit to implementing the Code in their supply chains and reporting annually on progress in doing so.
The Company has made a start in implementing the Code. The Company secretary has stated that in 2006 Tesco conducted 1,000 audits to ensure that its labour standards are being maintained and that such audits play a very important role in providing reassurance for workers that the Company takes their welfare very seriously and in identifying and resolving issues with suppliers.
The ETI, however, emphasises that diagnosing problems is only a first step to change and that the agreement of suppliers to institute corrective actions and make sure they are followed through is equally important. It is with this in mind that the resolution has been put forward. Its aim is to ensure that the Company exerts the undoubted clout it wields with its suppliers in the developing world to effect changes in working conditions to bring them up to a minimum of what the best employers take for granted for their workers in this country - a living wage, reasonable hours of work, job security, freedom of association and the right to organise in a trade union of their choice. And to empower the Company to monitor the changes that have to be implemented by audits that are completely independent and seen to be so.
Let us have no illusions. treating workers decently has a price-tag. It will affect profit margins. But it is unethical for wealthy corporate retailers in the UK and their shareholders to continue to treat outsourcing, beneficial as it may be in the sense that it provides jobs for people who otherwise would have none, as an absurdly cheap option. voting against the resolution will be, and be seen, as a sign of shareholder narrow self-interest and greed. Voting for it will be, and be seen to be a dramatic initiative by shareholders to reinforce the Company's good intentions to improve the lot of its poorest workers. To paraphrase John Milton's famous words 'I see in my mind a noble and puissant company rousing herself like a strong man after sleep and shaking her invincible locks.' Passing the resolution will truly provide reassurance for its workers that the Company takes their welfare so seriously indeed that it transforms their lives in reality, not merely on paper."
And so to the AGM at the Queen Elizabeth II Conference Centre on 29 June. My resolution was no.23 but before it was one to approve a proposed bonus scheme for the Chief Executive Sir Terry Leahy who was to receive an £11.5 million windfall on top of his phenominal salary; nearly 20% of shareholders refused to back this. In due course I spoke to our resolution. I pointed out that it was here despite opposition from Tesco's Board, yet there was nothing revolutionary about it. I said all we sought was that the Company do effectively what the Board , in its opposing statement, claims the Company is doing,applying ethical standards in its supply chain with a rigorous programme in place. I stated that the resolution called on the Company (in compliance with the ETI's Base Code to which it is a signatory) was "not only the right thing to do but will redound to the Company's reputation and commercial benefit and to the advantage of its shareholders" I disputed the Board's claim that I called for "inflexible" measures. I said I saw no reason why contracts (incidentally the Company Secretary had refused my request to see the terms of the contracts made with its suppliers on the grounds of commercial sensitivity) made with suppliers could not stipulate due compliance with the ETI Base Code standards and I pointed out that I spoke with a lifetime's experience as a lawyer. In a clarion passage I said "The irony of the Board recommending shareholders to vote against our resolution to increase the meagre pay of its outsourced workers - which the Company puts at somewhat more than the minimum of £12.22 per month in Bangladesh - whilst at the same time provocatively recommending that shareholders vote for Incentive plans which will augment the already absurdly generous remuneration packages of its top executives - boosting the Chief executive's take-home pay by up to £11.5 million on top of last year's £4.62 million - may be lost on the Board but is certainly not lost on this shareholder or, more to the point, on the public at large. there is nothing that lowers a company more in the estimation of right-thinking people generally, as other corporate giants have found, than a public display of executive greed in an affluent world going hand in hand with a public display of corporate miserliness and indifference towards those at the bottom in an impoverished world who contribute so munificently to our corporate wealth" And my peroration went :"If, on our deeply polarised planet,'Make Poverty History' is not to remain an empty slogan we all, retailers, shareholders, customers, suppliers and of course government, have a part to play. Let Tesco, as the market leader, steal a march on its competitors and blaze an ethical trail by passing this resolution."
The net result exceeded our reasonable expectations. The real object of my campaign was to highlight the injustices manifested in the way workers in the Third World are treated and the unhealthy social polarity between an affluent, often obscenely affluent, north and a grossly impoverished south. Incredibly, despite the Company's admonitions, 8.6% of shareholders backed the resolution and another 20%, by abstaining. refused to reject it. What is more my campaign received accolades for its exhibition of shareholder activism, for stimulating corporate democracy.The Investors Chronicle (a Financial Times publication) in its 28 March/3 April 2008 issue, gave it as a case study. "Although Mr Birnberg's resolution was defeated, the unprecedented event caused a wave of publicity, including TV interviews and newspaper articles. tesco strenuously defended its reputation in the press. 'I never expected it to be passed - the object of the exercise was to raise awareness' he says. 'If you feel a company is behaving in an amoral fashion, why not propose a resolution to raise it publicly? At the very least, you will embarrass the directors, and hopefully get changes too.'"
And raise awareness it surely has. In the 18 months that has elapsed since, the British public (and I believe further afield) has become conscious of the abuses inherent in our bi-polar world. Other corporate retailers Primark, Asda and Marks & Spencers have felt the cold blasts of social criticism for their exploitation of Third World labour and even for Third World practices here at home. And my corporate activism has become something of a model for others, like Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, to emulate, publicly raising other important issues. What is more, in the cold recessionary climate of 2009, the manifest injustices and grotesque greed of executives like Tesco's CEO and his ilk in a world riven with poverty, has been illuminated as a cause of the instability and indeed collapse of the whole financial system. What I said at the Tesco AGM has been shown to be so clearly true.
BBC/DEC And a sign of the times
The decision of the BBC not to broadcast the DEC (the Disasters Emergency Committee) Appeal for Gaza disgusts me. And, believe it or not, it is done in the name of "impartiality". In truth the decision is glaringly partial. It is partial to those who have created the mayhem and partial against the victims. And how can 'good boy' Greg Dyke come out to support the decision? We indeed live in a topsy-turvy world where good deeds are boycotted by the powers that be, the influence makers.
And if evidence is needed of how corrupt the Labour Party has become (a sign, as George Monbiot says in today's Guardian,that it has sunk as low as the Tories had in 1997, that it is just about to fall), look no further than the peers willing to take money to manipulate the law in favour of their bribers. And there we have Jack Straw's mate and funder, someone called Lord Taylor of Blackburn (I'd never heard of him before), who says that he 'umbly apologises. Financial chicanery ought to be a criminal offence and such lobbying outlawed. And it is wholly anachronistic and laughable that we have an utterly undemocratic second chamber, a breeding ground for corrupt practices.
Monday, 26 January 2009
letters@sunday-times.co.uk
.
Rachel Johnson's husband's suggestion indeed makes sense and could work. Let the Government give the money it is dissipating on the discredited banks to a state-owned bank "unadulterated by toxic assets or rotten debts." The instability of our banking system has been highlighted recently by the new Treasury Minister, Lord Myners, whose worry is that our banks "have gone from a period of 'excessive exuberance' to one of 'reckless caution' " and who describes them as "at the shallow end of the pool clinging on to the rail." (The Times interview 24 January) If not full-blown nationalisation, which Lord Myners disavows at present, could Rachel's brother, the ever-resourceful and imaginative Boris, be persuaded to set up a pilot Greater London Authority bank and shame the Government into providing the legislative and fiscal support?
The banking crisis
Previously I referred to a comment article in the Guardian by an Israeli propagandist Uri Dromi who had dubbed a Hamas spokesman Orwellian and I sent in a letter which I put on my blog. The paper has not published it but there is in today's Guardian an excellent rebuttal letter from Avi Schlaim which they give the heading "The newspeak of Israeli propagandists"; it nails the lies of such Israeli propagandists.
On a completely different vein, the economic situation and specifically the banking collapse,the debate continues about salvation measures. The Government has already poured vast sums into the banks, to what avail? Simply, it seems, to repair their balance sheets and to allow them to go on as before blind to the public outcry over their cavalier practices. To me it is apparent that we need a completely different approach, injecting funds into an untainted publicly controlled vehicle. In Saturday's Times the new Treasury Minister Lord Myners candidly exposed the instabilities of the banking system but fell short of recommending nationalisation. Then in yesterday's Sunday Times I happed on an article by the novelist Rachel Johnson at the end of which she mentions her husband's solution, a state-owned bank which she acknowledged was not going to happen. Rachel's brother is of course Mayor Boris, so I sent in a letter which I will post below
Sunday, 25 January 2009
Michael Ware (poetmware@tiscali.co.uk)
Change
With hope and expectation factored in
The post-inaugural world seems that much brighter.
No longer do we concentrate on sin.
Now guiding hand is black the touch is lighter.
The rhetoric has promised major change
And we accept him at his silver word.
We know that good comes closer into range
And he will wash away shoe-fouling turd.
The worry is the problems are so deep
That action must be swift and bring on pain.
We must our faith in black messiah keep
And with him brace ourselves to take the strain.
Although we start upon another road
One man can scarcely shoulder such a load.
24.1.09
(I have shown Michael's email address and hope viewers will savour him from time to time)
This and that
I had a fallow day yesterday with Ariadne, Tony her husband and Jonas here for the weekend. Just how electrifying and globalising blogging can be is the news that Carne Ross has emailed me from New York to say he'd read my bit on COMPLICIT and forwarded it to the playwright Joe Sutton who is a friend, 2 days after I'd seen the play (which incidentally is powerfully acted by Richard Dreyfuss and David Suchet).Well I never.
On 20 January my poet friend Michael Ware (who I originally met first when we were in the army together many many years ago and who indulges us with a freshly minted poem a day) wrote to express his enthusiasm for Obama's inauguration. So I wrote back to ask if it would inspire a poem. And pat today, with his full licence, comes back this:
Friday, 23 January 2009
Joe Sutton's Complicit
23 January 2009 11:09:44
To:
Guardian letters (letters@guardian.co.uk)
Dear Sir
Uri Dromi epitomises the elephant in the room blindness of Israeli politics. He lambasts the Hamas spokesman Mousa Abu Marzook for his Orwellian newspeak. But, in similar vein himself, a propos Marzook's reference to Sderot, he writes"He only (my emphasis) cares to remind us that once there was an Arab village there, and that its residents were kicked out by the Israelis in 1948." And Dromi hails from the doveish wing of Israeli politics. Need one say more?
Gaza aftermath
Continuing where I left off yesterday when I referred to a Guardian column by the Hamas spokesman Mousa Abu Marzook, today's Guardian has a column in reply by an Israeli, Uri Dromi, who apparently was a spokesman for the Rabin and Peres governments. He goes for Marzook and his "Orwellian newspeak" for claiming victory in Gaza and categorises Hamas's "Orwellian mindset" as as much a barrier to peace as the rockets it fires. In yesterday's entry I emphasised Marzook's reference to Sderot having been built on the ruins of a Palestinian village destroyed in 1948. Dromi also refers to this but the words he uses speaks volumes. He writes "He only (my emphasis) cares to remind us that once there was an Arab village there , and that its residents were kicked out by the Israelis in 1948." Only indeed. This is what I call the elephant in the room mindset of Israelis. So one again I pen a letter to the Guardian:
Thursday, 22 January 2009
Correction to Guardian letter
From:
Ben Birnberg (benbirnberg@hotmail.com)
Sent:
22 January 2009 11:02:15
.Dear Sir
How right Shami Chakrabarti is to highlight the battle to defend the Human Rights Act from its political assailants, tactfully restraining herself from naming names some of whom should be ashamed of themselves. But, at odds with most civil libertarians, I question the knee-jerk inclusion of DNA retention in her litany of "the rights damaged for expedience's sake." On the contrary, DNA evidence has been clearly shown to prevent or remedy miscarriages of justice and to buttress the fair administration of our criminal justice system and the rule of law, matters of preeminent concern to those who value our liberties. There are obvious dangers in the retention of personal data but I believe that if we had a comprehensive DNA database, but one in the custody of and strictly controlled by an authority independent of the state and its agencies, not least the police, the objections articulated most recently by the European Court of Justice would be answered and the balance that always persists between the protection of individual rights and the enhancement of the public weal would be safeguarded.
DNA and civil liberties
The Guardian today carries an article by Shami Chakrabarti headed "In 2009, the fight for liberty is about to go up a gear". With most of what she says I agree, not least her highlighting of the defence of the Human Rights Act from those politicians who would castrate it. She doesn't use so emotive a verb nor does she name names, so the Jack Straws of this world may think they are let off the hook. Anyway, the real point of this entry is to say that I take issue with Shami and civil libertarians generally in contesting the inclusion of DNA retention in the evils to be fought against. Indeed I have publicly supported those who call for a comprehensive DNA database, although one in the custody of an authority independent of the state and its agencies. So I have sent the Guardian another letter on the subject and reproduce it in my blog: I know not whether it will be published
Post-Gaza thoughts
Good morning. Today the papers are flowing with Obamania as is to be expected and expectations grow. As many have pointed out it does not augur well that Barack has so said ought about the aberration of Gaza The Hamas spokesman Mousa Abu Marzook has a column in the Guardian in which he says that"the wave of hope that met your election was heavily dampened by your silence on the Gaza massacre" and in which he observes that Sderot, a target of Hamas rockets, was built on the ruins of Najd, a Palestinian village ransacked in May 1948 "by Zionist terrorist gangs" He ends the piece by telling Obama "Only if you decide to fairly address the issue of the 6 million refugees and the ending of occupation of Palestinian lands, including Jerusalem, will you be able to start a new relationship with the Muslim world". One does not have to subscribe to everything Marzook says to appreciate that it underlines the obvious necessities for a healing of the running sore that is Israel/Palestine, the issues I identified in my letter in the Guardian on 20 January (and which I reproduced in yesterday's blog)
Wednesday, 21 January 2009
One of my viewers has thanked me for a letter of mine which was published in EducationGuardian yesterday. Since it expresses my views on the Israel/Palestine situation (which ought to be uppermost in the Obama administration's in-basket) I reproduce it here. It was a response to an article headed "Why the silence over attacks on Israeli campuses?" the previous week by Professor Colin Shindler of SOAS and was headed by the paper "Lessons from Gaza". Here goes:
Colin Shindler rightly deplores one-sided outrage at attacks on university campuses. But, as a leading historian of Israel, the "serious examination" of the problem he calls for, demands that he, and other teachers of Israeli and Jewish studies, continually put in perspective the root cause of Palestinian hostility and violence, the injustice done to Palestinians when Israel was established and since, the expulsions in 1949-49 and the creation of generations of refugees, the theft and continuous colonisation of their lands, their impoverishment, the discrimination they experience within Israel and the disproportionate force used by Israel to maintain its supremacy. Then they will indeed be seen to be exercising their "educational raison d'etre"
