No to military intervention in Libya

Let’s be clear from the outset. Whatever the leaders of Britain, France and the US say, taking military action against Libya is not primarily aimed at protecting civilians. Human rights have never been top of their agenda, as victims of Western foreign policy around the world will testify.

There are more strategic interests involved here. What wasn’t spelled out at the United Nations Security Council is that the objective is regime change in Tripoli that produces a pro-Western government in place of the unpredictable Colonel Gaddafi. A government that will permit the unhindered exploitation of the country’s oil resources and move towards a market economy.

Far from supporting the new Arab revolution, the no-fly zone and other military action is aimed at limiting and distorting its evolution. It opens up opportunities for the West to launch a whole new set of conspiracies in the Middle East and well as putting Libyan civilians at risk of death from air strikes.

Pressure is being exerted on Egypt to involve its air force in attacks on Libya. The Egyptian armed forces, which are deeply split, will be compromised if they agree. Collaborating with former colonial powers Britain and France, which invaded the country in 1956, will be a blow to the Egyptian people and their history.

Support from the Arab League is no basis for military action either. This decrepit organisation is stuffed full of dictators and sheikdoms like Bahrain and Saudi Arabia who are jointly gunning down unarmed civilians. US defence secretary Robert Gates was in Saudi last weekend and undoubtedly gave them the green light to suppress pro-democracy demonstrations. More like a free fire zone in this case.

So the stench of hypocrisy is overwhelming. Robert Mugabe can murder trade unionists and opposition forces in Zimbabwe, Israel can bomb defenceless Gaza on an almost daily basis and the Burmese junta can continue its brutal rule. The major powers either stand by or, in the case of the Israeli government, furnish it with money and weapons. They deny the legitimacy of the Hamas government in Gaza because they didn’t like the result of the elections there.

There are, naturally, other aspects to the posturing of David Cameron and Nicolas Sarkozy. Both lead governments that are deeply despised in their own countries for imposing cuts and austerity measures on their people in desperate attempts to revive an increasingly distressed capitalist system. There’s nothing like a little war somewhere to subdue opposition and divert attention with doses of patriotism and jingoism.

Venezuela and Turkey have offered to mediate between Gaddafi and the revolutionary forces ranged against his troops. But Britain, France and the US rejected these overtures although Tripoli did not rule out talks. Where was the UN when negotiation was still a possibility? As usual, the UN is no guarantor of rights either.

Those who proposed action against Gaddafi collaborated with his murderous regime for many years, bringing him back into the “international community” (whatever that is). They could as just easily go back to supporting him on the basis of some deal tomorrow

The Arab revolution is entering a new phase, when it is urgent that the masses form alliances across the borders. In Egypt, in particular, the task is to remove the corrupt general staff – who control 25% of the country’s economy – and create a revolutionary armed forces who will be able to support the Libyan revolt.

There are reports of Egyptians who took part in the revolution that overthrew Mubarak arriving in Benghazi in solidarity with the Libyan uprising against the Gaddafi dictatorship. That could be made into the start of direct help from Egypt so that the people of Libya can settle their accounts with Gaddafi by way of self-determination.

In Britain, we should campaign against military intervention in Libya and redouble our efforts to remove the Coalition government from power. Labour, which jointly led the invasion of Iraq, is fully backing Cameron. No surprises there. The political class in Parliament is reactionary and bankrupt. Our own revolutionary movement can’t come soon enough.

Paul Feldman

Communications editor

Fighting the state for our rights

Two conferences over the weekend 200 miles apart highlighted the difference between a liberal defence of civil liberties which aims at building a classless coalition of the mainstream political centre and a more militant enforcement of human rights in a continuous struggle against the state.

A new generation of law students committed to the defence and advancement of human rights in the broadest sense are the core of National Critical Lawyers Group (NCLG). The students themselves organised a conference at Manchester’s Metropolitan University on human rights and the state. They invited top practitioners to explain where the struggle is at and where it has to go. A World to Win was privileged to speak about the arguments in our new book Unmasking the State.

At the same time, in London, vast resources were allocated to the £35-a-head Convention on Modern Liberty. While it was highly successful in terms of attendance, with an estimated 1,500 taking part in London and other venues, its focus was on the loss of what are termed civil liberties under New Labour and the destruction of the rights of the individual in Britain.

This narrow view enables the Tory leader David Cameron to offer support and for former shadow home secretary David Davis to close the event. These, don’t forget, are from a party that in the 1980s illegalised trade union activity, sent the state out to smash up the miners’ and other strikes, privatised public services, ended local government autonomy and created mass unemployment to boot. A great record to build on when they return to office!

In Manchester, the NCLG conference concentrated on the state and the struggle against it, not just in Britain but throughout the world. They heard Everard O'Donnell, acting deputy registrar of the the United Nations International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, explain how an estimated 262 million people had been killed by their own governments in the 20th century. O’Donnell appealed to the students to broaden the indictment for war crimes from states in the developing world to the leaders of the major countries.

Liz Davies from Garden Court chambers, which is at the forefront of defending human rights, explained how the British state was denying housing rights that European Courts had asserted while Professor Sally Sheldon attacked the "shameful non-update" of the 1967 Abortion Act by New Labour and the apparent collusion between New Labour and Ulster MPs which denied women of Northern Ireland even minimum rights. Owen McIntyre from Cork University talked about human rights to water while Professor Bill Bowring, Birkbeck University, explained how human rights existed in relation to the state and said the struggle was "about radicalising democracy and collective action". Phil Shiner, from Public Interest Lawyers, spoke of the difficult task of bringing into the open the British state’s torture and murder of Iraqis.

Conor Gearty, director of the London School of Economics human rights centre, who has come under heavy fire from journalist and commentator Henry Porter for his criticism of the convention’s framework, warned against New Labour/Tory plans for a Bill of Rights in place of the Human Rights Act as “malign and meaningless” which, he added, would be a “misallocation of political energy” and a “cover for political inactivity”.

Whether you take the civil liberties standpoint or that of human rights, the central issue is the same, however. Is the present capitalist state system going to restore what has been lost and, furthermore, grant rights that are still aspirations? That is to assume that we live under a flourishing democracy where the state is neutral and simply waiting for a “progressive” government to come by.

The opposite is the case, however. Our view is that the globalisation process in particular has undermined the democratic side of the capitalist state and speeded the process towards authoritiarian rule. Developing concepts and practices that takes us beyond the capitalist state, in a bid to reclaim and extend democracy into areas like the workplace through a new political system, is a project that now has real urgency about it.

Paul Feldman
AWTW communications editor

Stripping away our rights

If the state strips away basic freedoms and civil liberties, what do you have left? And is this then a state worth preserving? These questions are worth asking on a day that two further assaults on our rights make it into the public realm (don’t even ask about the stuff we know nothing about) that are designed to intimidate ordinary citizens.

First comes the news that the Home Office wants the police to deploy remote-controlled drones used in war zones. The stated aim would be to gather evidence and track criminals without putting officers at risk. The unstated objective is to increase surveillance over society at large.

Then there is the statement by the Cabinet Office's former security and intelligence co-ordinator, that in future the security services will need access to a wide range of personal data in the “fight against terrorism”. Of course, this is already happening to a great extent behind closed doors. So why is Sir David Omand bothering to use the Institute for Public Policy think tank to publish a new document?

One conclusion is that we are being “softened up” so that the government can claim it has the popular support when a more overt system is introduced. As Omand says: "Being able to demonstrate proper legal authorisation and appropriate oversight of the use of such intrusive intelligence activity may become a major future issue for the intelligence community, if the public at large is to be convinced of the desirability of such intelligence capability."

According to Omand, that is preferable to “tinkering with the rule of law, or derogating from fundamental human rights”. So, on his logic, as long as there is statutory backing, it does not constitute an attack on rights. What rubbish! When New Labour passed laws that authorised the indefinite detention without trial of foreign terror suspects, did that constitute the “rule of law”? Well, no actually. The courts declared that the law was itself unlawful because it contravened fundamental human rights.

None of this has stopped New Labour from orchestrating the destruction of an array of rights, which has resulted in the emergence of an authoritarian state. An audit carried out for this weekend’s Convention on Modern Liberty is a stark reminder of the range of rights that have disappeared or been subverted.

To demand, however, that the present state, instead of taking our rights away, should somehow be made their guarantor, is to misunderstand completely the nature of the beast. Basic rights and liberties have never been the subject of protection orders. All of them owe their very existence not to the state but to the struggles of countless generations for various rights. The capitalist state emerged in late 18th century Britain in screaming opposition to any rights at all. Anything we’ve achieved since has been on our own account and through our own efforts.

If the position has deteriorated it is because in some respects we are back where we started in terms of the fight for rights. In its infancy, the state promoted nascent capitalism and free markets at the expense of basic rights and in doing so actually became a ruthless capitalist state. Today, globalised capitalism has drawn the state into its orbit to the extent that massive transfers of public wealth are taking place in order to try and rescue banks and corporations. Where does that leave the right to vote? We may have it still but it is hardly effective.

The logic of all this is that the capitalist state itself has passed its use-by date. It has run its course, along with the capitalist system it co-ordinates and presides over. Renewing the historic struggle for rights must of necessity take us into a new democratic era, where the present state is confined to a museum and a new one based on the rule of law, human rights and freedom from exploitation is put together by the people themselves.


Paul Feldman
AWTW communications editor

Winning economic and social rights

The call by a cross-party committee of MPs and peers yesterday for a wide-ranging Bill of Rights that would cover housing, education, standards of living and a healthy environment as well as civil liberties like the right to a jury trial, leaves open as many questions as it answers.

Parliament’s joint committee on human rights report acknowledges that both major parties are lukewarm about the idea, so the chances of the Bill becoming law are tiny. Secondly, the economic and social rights outlined by the committee would not be enforceable in law – they would be a statement of rights and no more.

Both New Labour and the Tories have revealed their hand in relation to the European Union’s social rights chapter. The Tories under Thatcher opted out of its modest provisions, and successive Blair/Brown governments have not only reaffirmed this position but gone further. New Labour has opposed any reference to collective trade union rights in recent EU treaties and secured other opt-outs in relation to the working week. They have, of course, retained Tory anti-union legislation.

Both parties agree with each other that the market, not society, should remain the main determinant when it comes to “rights”, especially in relation to housing and a standard of living. Clearly, on the issue of climate change, there is no way the state is going to acknowledge a social right that might challenge business interests, even if it is non-enforceable.

Economic and social rights were first talked about in the years following the Russian Revolution of 1917 and were conceived of as an antidote, or a rival pole of attraction by some capitalist democracies. The idea was that if workers had these rights, there would be no need for them to follow Russia’s example and overthrow capitalism.

In the decades that followed, these rights remained dead letters. The slump of the 1930s produced mass unemployment and poverty, leading to the destruction and death of World War II. In the Soviet Union, however, economic and social rights were written into the 1936 constitution and were generally applied. At the same time, basic democratic rights were suppressed in the Stalinist terror that was going on at exactly the same time.

After World War II, the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) embraced economic and social rights but were non binding. They are still awaiting implementation because the fact is that they are incompatible with capitalism and therefore, by extension, with the capitalist state itself.

When gains have been made in some areas in terms of rights, they are relative and subject to removal at a later stage. The right to housing was established in practice after World War II and most people who wanted council accommodation could get it. Local authorities were encouraged to build affordable homes to national standards. That right has disappeared.

Today there are 1.3 million households on council waiting lists and the total is more or less constant. This is because for over 20 years, councils have been forced to sell off homes or transfer their stock and barred from building new flats and houses. Successive government have encouraged people to become owner-occupiers instead, saddling them with massive debts and standing by as repossessions mount, as they are now doing, when the market slumps.

Recent surveys show that more than 75% of those questioned favoured a Bill of Rights, with massive majorities in favour of the right to privacy, to a fair trial, trade union rights, hospital treatment and housing. The market state that has replaced the parliamentary state has no interest in enshrining these principles, let alone making them enforceable.

Under these conditions, the struggle to establish permanent democratic, social and economic rights can only succeed in the context of a new, democratic state that reflects the aspirations of the presently powerless majority. How to achieve this aim is one of the key themes of our Stand Up for Your Rights festival on October 18.

Paul Feldman
AWTW communications editor

Put this Olympic torch out!

Former Blue Peter presenter Konnie Huq no doubt summed up many people’s feelings after a protester tried to grab the Olympic flame from her yesterday. She valued the Olympic ideals but also condemned the “despicable” nature of the Chinese government’s role in Tibet. The Chinese Olympic organisers may well have lost control of the script for the flame, but they are still in charge of China and will get on with murdering Buddhist monks in Tibet and killing and jailing dissidents at home.

Yesterday’s torch run through London offered a ludicrous spectacle. Constantly surrounded by Chinese minders and British police, it was difficult to even see the flame. The whole exercise cost council taxpayers up to £500,000 plus an additional £2 million for the police “ring of steel”. Free speech also paid a price as police forced demonstrators to take down wholly inoffensive but political placards and made protesters take off their pro-Tibet T-shirts. You got a taste of what the 2012 Games in London will look like.

To suppose that politics and the Olympics don’t go together would be to ignore the history of the modern Games. The idea of a torch relay itself was initiated by the Nazis. The 1936 Berlin games, for example, were a showpiece for Hitler’s regime, even while being undermined by black US runner Jesse Owen’s amazing performance. In the Cold War, the United States, the Soviet Union and former East Germany, also used the Games for political ends. Forty years ago, at the Mexico City 1968 Olympics, American athletes Tommie Smith and John Carlos gave the Black Power salute on the podium in protest against US racism. Only days earlier, the Mexican authorities had massacred hundreds of students staging a protest.

In today’s world, corporate sponsorship for companies like Coca Cola – who are sponsoring the torch - and big business interests dovetail with the propaganda of authoritarian regimes to make the Games into their plaything. The cost of the London Games has spiralled up from an original £2.4 billion in 2006 to a current budget of £9 billion plus a £2 billion contingency fund. For what? So that land values in Stratford where the Olympics are being held can rocket, or that surveillance on spectators can reach Orwellian heights? Severfield-Rowen, the construction company for the London Olympics, has reported record profits and a doubling of its order book. MoneyWeek writes that “security companies should see good business from the Olympics as well…. These are likely to be the most watched-over games in history”. No wonder that three quarters of the British population and 60% of Londoners don’t think the Olympics will benefit them!

New Labour’s hypocrisy when it comes to human rights in China is breathtaking. For them, business comes first. In any case, the Brown government is hardly a paragon of democracy. The UK’s record on human rights, rendition and its role in Iraq, Afghanistan and the war on terror is, perhaps a bit more subtle than the Chinese kleptocracy, but just as authoritarian.

The Beijing Olympics should indeed be boycotted. In fact, the modern Olympics should be abandoned altogether! Why not simply call off the London Olympics? Even half the money could provide affordable housing in a city where only the rich can pay for somewhere decent to live as well as good, free sporting facilities. The ideals of friendly, international sporting competitions could then be pursued in an entirely new context.

Corinna Lotz
AWTW secretary

'More like Mafia than democracy'

As Russia moves towards its coronation – sorry, presidential election – this Sunday, the clampdown on the autocracy’s political opponents continues to tighten. The outcome is already decided, as President Putin has anointed Dimitry Medvedev as his successor. But just to make sure, the authorities have been using every trick in the book to clamp down on freedom of expression, assembly and association.

This week Amnesty International published a report, Freedom Limited documenting the use of vague legislation to harass anyone expressing their opinion and standing up for their rights. Amnesty outlined the hydra-headed attack on opposition demonstrations, human rights activists, journalists, radio stations like Ekho Moskvy, non-governmental organisations, friendship societies like the Russian-Chechen Friendship Society – indeed any independent organisation that voices criticism of the authoritarian regime.

The investigation into the murder of investigative journalist Anna Politkovskaya has run into the sand as authorities high up in the regime are clearly protecting those who ordered the killing. The international Committee to Protect Journalists has warned about the high casualty rate for journalists in Russia.

According to International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) analyst John Crowfoot, Russia is currently the most dangerous place to be a journalist, after Iraq. He has produced a database that outlines the deaths and disappearances of 289 journalists in Russia since 1993. The youngest to have died is a 19-year-old reporter killed last September; the oldest, a retired journalist of 80, was stabbed to death in his home a few years ago. Forty-seven of those killed were women.

Another independent human rights organisation, Article 19 has warned repeatedly about the use of defamation laws to suppress criticism of public figures and powerful individuals against the media. “Criminal defamation” laws have led to imprisonment in three cases over the past two years.

In Nizhniy Novgorod, a city of 1.5 million people, police beat up demonstrators, while in Nazran, Ingushetia demonstrators were wounded and 60 people were detained. Three Moscow television journalists and Oleg Orlov, a member of Memorial organisation were abducted from a hotel, beaten and left in a field by unidentified men wearing masks. Before the December parliamentary elections, workers at state-owned plants and public sector workers were virtually ordered to vote for Putin’s party or lose their jobs.

And it gets worse. Today the IFJ called on journalists’ unions around the world to join protests over a “cynical campaign” by Russian political bosses to close down the Russian Union of Journalists, the country’s largest non-governmental organisation. For the past year state agencies in Moscow have been trying to evict the Russian Union from premises they have occupied for almost 30 years and which they were promised ownership of by previous governments claiming the building is unsafe.

Now the RUJ has learned that the government is trying to sell the building to a private owner and in the process put the RUJ on the street. “The Russian Union has been one of the most strident critics of government pressure on independent journalism,” said Aidan White, IFJ General Secretary. “It is the victim of intimidation and a cynical campaign by its political opponents who have failed to close the union using trumped charges of breaching fire regulations, now are trying to sell off offices that the union insists are legally their own.”

Even world-famous personalities like chess grandmaster Gary Kasparov, who tried to stand as a candidate against Putin was arrested last November along with 200 other people. He spent 28 days in a Moscow jail. After his release, Kasparov did not mince his words: “Putin wants to rule like Stalin but live like Abramovich [the oligarch who owns Chelsea FC]. Putin’s system is more like Mafia than democracy.” Sounds like the time is ripe for another Russian Revolution.

Corinna Lotz
AWTW secretary

Canada joins terror witch-hunt

As the police use anti-terror laws to harass climate protesters at the Heathrow climate camp, governments around the world are making copycat versions of Britain’s detention and secret trials powers. Canada is not usually viewed as an authoritarian state, but Stephen Harper’s right-wing government, elected in January 2006, is pushing through legislation based closely on the provisions enacted into British law under New Labour. A human rights organisation is warning of “secret trials and a binge of government secrecy” set for the autumn parliamentary session in Canada using Britain’s “special advocates” system as a model.

A constitutional conflict broke out in Canada at the end of February as the Supreme Court ruled, in a unanimous 9-0 decision, that the country’s notorious secret hearing procedure was unconstitutional and violated the country’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms. The clash between the Supreme Court and the government closely paralleled that in Britain, where an 8-1 decision by the House of Lords in December 2004 ruled that police could not detain foreign suspects indefinitely without bringing them to trial.

A Kafkaesque security certificate process has been condemned as “fundamentally flawed and unfair” because it is secret, with no procedural safeguards and the person named in the certificate is not informed of the case against them. The security certificates allow the authorities to detain and remove a person considered to be a security threat. Signed by the solicitor-general and the minister of citizenship and immigration, and endorsed by a judge of the Federal Court, they have been issued 28 times since 1978. The Federal Court of Canada, which is appointed by the government, is now trying to legitimise secret trials by having special advocates, or “security-cleared” lawyers who will be able to hear secret evidence in the absence of the accused and their lawyers.

Tensions are building because although the Supreme Court ruled against the certificate procedure, it suspended its judgment from taking effect for a year, thereby giving Parliament time to write a new law. The government-appointed Federal Courts Administration Service has been given an August 31 deadline to turn in a report about the so-called security certificates, which, is already shaping the process before anything is tabled in Parliament.

The Federal Court has commissioned an immigration lawyer and a university professor to produce a study on the British special advocates system in an attempt to legitimise secret trials. Matthew Behrens, writing for the Campaign Against Secret Trials, has denounced the “special advocates” system. He has shown that it is in fact a special advocate for the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP). Behrens points to British barrister Ian Macdonald QC’s statement before the Canadian Parliament last February in which he explained why he resigned as a British special advocate: “I was giving legitimacy to a system… completely contrary to all kinds of traditions of a) fairness and b) the fact that ever since Magna Carta, we don’t imprison people unless they’ve had a proper trial.”

Behrens says that Canada’s role as part of a global national security system in which the rights of certain targeted populations are sacrificed in the nebulous name of security. “The rights being violated, needless to say, are basic human rights that apply to all people, regardless of citizenship status.,” he argues, in an in-depth analysis circulated by Homes Not Bombs, the Toronto chapter of Action for Social Change. He says that claims by CSIS and RCMP that threats cannot be revealed to the public are comparable to tactics used by anti-Communist Senator Joe McCarthy during the red-baiting 1950s. The CSIS has claimed that animal rights activists, First Nation “extremists”, elements of the anti-globalisation movement and Sunni Muslims are threats to Canada’s national security. Sounds like a story we hear every day in Britain, doesn’t it?

Corinna Lotz, AWTW secretary

A global war on rights

The global “war on terror” has truly become the global war of terror against people’s human rights. In Australia, a terror suspect freed on bail is immediately held on spurious immigration charges; in Britain, a senior police officer calls for indefinite detention of suspects; in Germany, the interior minister suggests target killing of terror suspects; in the Philippines, new anti-terror laws come into force today. This morning, normally hard-bitten Australian journalists were shocked when a doctor, Mohamed Haneef, who was released on A$10,000 bail was immediately taken into detention in Brisbane on the orders of immigration minister Kevin Andrews. The minister said he was satisfied that Haneef had failed the “character test” required under immigration regulations. In an often heated exchange, Andrews was asked: "What chances does this fellow have of gaining justice in this country when he faces criminal charges in one court, and in another place, in a sort of a Catch-22, a minister of the crown declares that he's a terrorist?" Another said: “Doesn't this go against the legal rule that we've established over a thousand years? That someone is innocent until proven guilty. You're pre-empting a judgment on his innocence."

Equally shocked was Stephen Estcourt, president of the Australian Bar Association, who said he could not believe the minister's action. "He can't do that," said Estcourt. He said the minister was "usurping the role of the court" to take action now. "Usually this sort of visa cancellation takes place after charges have been laid against someone and they’ve run their course and they've resulted in a penalty being imposed... I have not heard of this power being used pre-emptively in this way. It has got to be seen as a threat to the rule of law if a ministerial discretion is used to effectively reverse, or to reverse for practical purposes a decision of the court. And it's sophistry to say that one's got nothing to do with the other."

While the Howard government rides roughshod over the presumption of innocence, in Britain we are being softened up for an extension of the anti-terror laws by the Brown regime. Doing New Labour’s bidding is Ken Jones, the president of the Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO). He told The Observer that in some cases there was a need to hold terrorist suspects without charge for “as long as it takes”. Jones, a former chair of ACPO's counter-terrorism committee, said: “We are now arguing for judicially supervised detention for as long as it takes. We are up against the buffers on the 28-day limit. We understand people will be concerned and nervous, but we need to create a system with sufficient judicial checks and balances which holds people, but no longer than a day [more than] necessary. We need to go there [unlimited detention] and I think that politicians of all parties and the public have great faith in the judiciary to make sure that's used in the most proportionate way possible.”

This global assault on rights has little to do with fighting terrorism. As we have said before, no self-respecting terrorist is concerned about tighter laws and the threat of being held without trial, or even being tortured for that matter. The authoritarian clampdown will, in fact, encourage terrorists to believe that they have their targets on the run. Creating an atmosphere of permanent tension is, however, a more than useful way of justifying the power of the state over its citizens. And so much the better if it helps to silence dissent, and widen the net so that radical, political opponents are ensnared. All that is left is for Brown to bring Jones of ACPO into his government of “all the talents”.

Paul Feldman, communications editor

Democracy, revolution and British values

The Brown government wants to "reinvigorate our democracy" through a series of changes to the constitution. But proposals in The Governance of Britain published by New Labour last week are superficial and essentially aimed at trying to restore public support for a failing process by "renewing our trust in our democratic institutions". Lurching towards populism/nationalism, they are also intended to "achieve a stronger sense of what it means to be British". The overall concept of a corporate-driven, security-obsessed, state shines through the whole document, which is how it should be for something published by a government like Brown’s, where business is directly involved as ministers and top advisers.

The executive summary openly states: "Only a confident UK will be able to adapt to the economic challenges of globalisation." [emphasis added] It adds: "Only a country sure of its identity will be able to come together to ensure our mutual security: common, inclusive values can help us overcome the threat from extremism of all kinds." [emphasis added] The Governance of Britain’s central assumption is that the real issue concerns the relationship between the executive, or government, and parliament. To that end, there are a proposals to transfer from the executive to MPs the power to declare war or ratify international treaties. All the emphasis is on giving parliament "more ability to hold the government to account" . [emphasis added] In the end, however, these are entirely cosmetic proposals not least because the governing party literally has the whip hand when it comes to driving their MPs through the division lobbies when votes take place. After all, MPs did get a vote on the invasion of Iraq – and voted in favour, despite the pressure of 2 million people on the streets.

Transferring a few powers, or bringing into the open the mysteries of the appointment of judges and bishops, will not suffice because the causes of the deep political malaise in Britain go much deeper than The Governance of Britain cares to acknowledge. Democratic rights to representation were won only as a result of mass struggle – something the document glosses over – and most people lent the political system conditional support so long as it appeared flexible, open to pressure and delivered reforms. This support has fallen away precisely because social and economic conditions have altered in a substantive way, with consequences for the political process. At the heart of these changes lies the corporate-driven globalisation process, which began in earnest almost 30 years ago. At one level, the national state has ceded powers to international and regional bodies like the World Trade Organisation, the International Monetary Fund and the European Union. At another, the transnational corporations have set the agenda for national governments to follow if they want to stay competitive in the global market economy. While the Tories floundered under the weight of these historic challenges, New Labour embraced them to the extent that Brown cannot speak too highly of the alleged virtues of the City of London and corporations like Microsoft.

The decline of the welfare state and the transition to a market state, with its emphasis on self-help and commercially-driven public policies, has witnessed a parallel decline in voter support for a state political system that is openly partisan, having abandoned its post-war role of mediating between different class interests. So when the government launches its debate about the future of the constitution, there is no point in our trying to breathe new life into something past its use-by date. In truth, parliament has never held any significant power since the emergence of capitalist rule, while the state as a whole has always sided with the status quo of private ownership of land and property.

The Governance of Britain refers in the introduction to political reform through revolution, before hastily adding "although not for centuries", in an oblique reference to the overthrow of monarchy by Cromwell in the 17th century. Reinvigorating democracy can only come through a modern revolutionary process. This would extend democracy into areas like the workplace, handing power to producers and consumers, ending corporate and financial rule, and creating new democratic institutions that directly represent ordinary people’s diverse interests. Now, that would be a much more progressive way to affirm historic British values!

Paul Feldman, communications editor

Honours, lingerie and liberties

Joseph Corre, co-founder of the lingerie company Agent Provocateur, turns down an official honour because of the war in Iraq and the government’s attacks on human rights in Britain. In doing so he shames Shami Chakrabarti, director of Liberty, who was only too pleased to accept an award from the Blair regime. Corre at first accepted his MBE – or, to give its full title, Member of the British Empire (!) – before deciding to hand it back. While the honours are ostensibly handed out to mark the Queen’s birthday, they are in fact drawn up by a committee attached to the Cabinet Office and merely sent to Buckingham Palace for signature. In other words, they have the government’s fingerprints all over them. Corre admitted that initially he was flattered "to have my work with Agent Provocateur recognised by the establishment. It even gave me a kick to imagine what some of the bureaucrats and censors I have had to fight up to now must think". Then he added: "However, after some serious reflection I have decided that I cannot accept it. I have been chosen by an organisation headed by a prime minister who I find morally corrupt, who has been involved in organised lying to the point where thousands of people including children have suffered death, detention and torture in Afghanistan and Iraq." Writing in today’s Independent, Corre explains: "People are disillusioned with democracy. They feel helpless and powerless, and the reason has been Mr Blair. There was a huge march against his war. Hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets, and he took no notice. No wonder people feel disenfranchised from the political process, when he will allow nothing to stick. Mr Blair has caused many miserable deaths, and tortures. He has presided over extraordinary rendition, and has been happy to see people imprisoned without trial, on barely a scrap of evidence. In his Britain, habeas corpus is no longer sacrosanct, and at a personal level this means that I simply cannot accept this honour."

Which brings us to Shami Chakrabarti. Just at the time she would have been sent a letter inviting her to become a Commander of the British Empire, the director of the human rights organisation was sitting on a platform in Clapham at the preview of the film Taking Liberties. The film exposes the relentless attack on human rights by the New Labour government since it came to power in 1997. If she knew at the time, Chakrabarti never felt bold enough to share the news with the audience. For her to have turned down the honour and made a statement like Corre’s would have been extremely powerful. Instead, Chakrabarti, claimed she was astonished to get a CBE, saying: "No one was more surprised than me, particularly when it must have been recommended by this government that I have fought so hard." Trying hard to justify accepting the award, Chakrabarti suggested it was an "official royal invitation to do more", knowing full well that the Queen has nothing whatsoever to do with the award. In accepting her CBE, Chakrabarti has lent credibility to the most authoritarian government of modern times. It was left to the founder of a lingerie firm to say it how it is. Perhaps he and Chakrabarti should swap jobs.

Paul Feldman, communications editor

Making liberty history

On top of the fact that the 2012 Olympics project is resembling a typical New Labour disaster, which Londoners in particular will have to pay for, comes more sinister news about how the state plans to use the cover of the Games to further erode citizens’ rights. Officials want to make wider use of the police's DNA database to identify suspects through their relatives. The plan is also to give police the powers to scan postal packages to find drugs and to monitor an individual's progress in even greater detail than they can today. This will be achieved by using CCTV technology as well as electronic travel passes such as the Oyster cards used by millions of Londoners. The memo debates how public opinion could be won over and concludes: "Increasing [public] support could be possible through the piloting of certain approaches in high-profile ways such as the London Olympics." Three million people already have their DNA stored on a national database, and the state is aiming for comprehensive coverage whether people have been convicted or not. Home Office officials want to make much greater use of a technique known as "familial DNA" where a suspect whose details are not on the database can be traced through a family member whose details are already recorded. The memo states: "Records could be trawled more routinely to identify familial connections to crime scenes, providing a starting point to investigations through a family member that is on the database to a suspect that is not, for example."

The Home Office plans for the DNA database are surely only the tip of the iceberg. Millions of visitors are expected to attend the 2012 Olympics and the "security" issues are no doubt uppermost in the minds of the police and MI5 as they contemplate another phase of their "war on terror". A ring of steel will be thrown around the Olympics, undoubtedly involving the army as well as the police. Surveillance will be increased on a massive scale, involving new techniques. Once the Games are over, they will remain in place and become part of the authoritarian state that has emerged in the last decades. The leaked DNA memo makes clear the official attitude to basic rights, referring to the "expectation of liberty" that people have rather than anything permanent. Shami Chakrabarti, director of Liberty, accused Home Secretary John Reid of manipulating the London Olympics for political ends as part of what she called his "make liberty history" campaign. Add in the spiralling cost of the Games, and it is increasingly doubtful whether anyone, apart from the state and a few corporate sponsors, will benefit from the 2012 Games the way things stand.

Paul Feldman, communications editor