Iraq & John Milton

2 March

"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."

More Straw castles

A day after the news that Jack Straw had vetoed disclosure of Cabinet minutes on the invasion of Iraq, the great man has an article in the Guardian today singing the praises of the Labour Government. "Our record isn't perfect. But talk of a police state is daft" is the paper's title. His coda reads "When people come to assess the choices available at the next election, I will stand proudly on Labour's record, from the Lawrence inquiry, which reported 10 years ago this week, progressive legislation on race and gender, to devolution, the Human Rights Act, Freedom of Information and much more, and be ready to be judged on it. I hope that in the final reckoning even some of our harshest critics will concede that the Labour government has done more than any before it to extend liberties and to constrain government."

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.

27 February
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

27 February
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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17 February

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. .

9 February

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.

8 February

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.