MG Zimeta
To discuss this article visit First Drafts, Prospect’s blog
These are dark times to be a politician or a banker. Hedge fund managers, newly relegated to the social wilderness reserved for sex offenders and arms dealers, may or may not be pleased to now be joined by their MPs. The recent national anger at our political and financial elite has been unprecedented: but are we right in our rage? “Anybody can become angry,” warns Aristotle, “that is easy. But to be angry with the right person, and to the right degree, and at the right time, and for the right purpose – that is not in everybody’s power, that is not easy.” In the furore about the failed morals of our political and financial institutions, are we in danger of compromising our own moral standing, or missing a valuable opportunity to fix what went wrong?
The easiest response to wrongdoing is retribution. Several of our expense-fiddling MPs and senior failed bankers have been subject to humiliating public scrutiny of their finances and lifestyles. Such vengeance can feel good, but it plays to the lowest parts of our own character. And establishing guilt, unfortunately, does not always mean establishing remorse: “I pleaded guilty, a secular plea,” says JM Coetzee’s fallen academic David Lurie in his novel Disgrace. “That plea should suffice. Repentance is neither here nor there.” “I accept responsibility for that which I was responsible,” wrote Sir Fred Goodwin, former CEO of RBS defending his £16m pension after the treasury used £20bn to bail out the crippled bank. “[T]o voluntarily accept a reduction… is not warranted.”
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Amber Marks
Retired US colonel John B Alexander is unusual in his profession. He thinks that the best way to a peaceful world isn’t deadly force, but new weapons designed to minimise permanent injury. Some are already common, from electronic control devices like the controversial Tasers—used by Britain’s police to immobilise targets with electric shocks—to rubber bullets, chemical sprays and water cannons. But Alexander and other enthusiasts think the search for these weapons has just begun.
I met him in May on the edge of the Black Forest in Germany, at the 5th European Symposium on Non Lethal Weapons (NLWs). A handful of protestors held placards saying “against mind control.” Alexander recounted that one of these “wavers”—people who believe they are targets of microwave beams—claimed to recognise him from a UFO encounter. “They’re crazy paranoid,” he explained.
No doubt, but when even the British Medical Association voices concern about the “militarisation of biology,” it isn’t just conspiracy theorists who worry about the darker side of NLWs. As Jonathan Moreno’s Mind Wars (2006) details, military scientists are using advances in neuroscience—which shed light on the biochemical basis of much human behaviour—to design weapons. Ultimately, these could lead to the intentional manipulation of people’s emotions, memories and immune responses.
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Danny Kruger
Simon’s dad Pete came to Only Connect once and I caught him skinning up in the kitchen. Pete’s an inspiration. He used to have a chain of ecstasy factories in nondescript Scottish houses, but he’s done legitimate business too. When Simon was 14, in the last recession, Pete taught him how to get your enterprise out of trouble. They poured petrol all over the gym, dropped a match and watched it go.
When Simon was 21, he was living in his own £1m flat in Pimlico. Then he was in the Old Bailey, with his dad as co-defendant, but Pete skipped bail and Simon got a four-year stretch on his own.
Simon’s girl is Karen and they look after dogs and horses out in Epping Forest. They also look after Karen’s grown-up boys, Karl and Keith. Once, a psychiatrist left her dog with them, but Karl let him out… they searched for three hours till they found the dog with a broken leg on the hard shoulder of the M25. In the last year Karl’s been charged with a hit-and-run (he swiped a child with his BMW), a rape (in the BMW; charges dropped), and a whole queue of driving offences. That car’s got to go, says Simon.
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Richard Reeves
If the 2005-10 parliament is consigned to ignominy in the history books, will the next be better? Whatever the final result of the next election, the Commons is set for a big clearout. Some MPs have resigned over expenses. But a big swing to the Tories could see as many as half the current crop of 646 replaced—the biggest turnover in modern history. A great deal rides on the quality of those newcomers.
Complaints about the health of parliament are, of course, nothing new. “It has been a permanent condition of its history,” wrote Andrew Marr in Ruling Britannia, to be “regarded by intelligent observers as being in a state of grave decline.” Parliament was a mere “rump” in 1648. After the election of 1868—the first after a significant expansion of the franchise in 1867—the writer John Morley dubbed the Commons “the chamber of mediocrity.”
But even by historical standards the volume of vitriol now tipped daily onto MPs is high. They are, according to popular prejudice, largely self-serving, lazy cheats. In reality, of course, they are largely public-spirited and hard-working. But if our constitution contained a populist mechanism for the early dissolution of parliament, there would have been a general election by now.
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David Goodhart
We are not living in a police state. Not even a remotely authoritarian one. In fact we, all of us, have never enjoyed so much liberty—personal, political and legal. Yet to assert this view sets one at odds with a large part of liberal opinion in Britain.
In the run up to February’s Convention on Modern Liberty, the liberal press was filled with cries of anguish from leading writers and intellectuals—Philip Pullman evoked “sleeping Albion” as new laws sup-posedly strangled old freedoms, Anthony Barnett talked about a “system crisis,” Henry Porter claimed we had only “two years” before it is too late.
When I read the actual litany of complaint against the government, I felt unmoved. Forty-two days detention without charge and control orders (which apply to just 17 people)? True, 42 days (which was rejected by parliament) is a long time but suspects are under constant judicial review—and both measures were a response to a real threat, something that never seems to feature in the liberty lobby discourse. Then there is the surveillance state—CCTV cameras and DNA databases. Nowhere have I heard of innocent people suffering injustice as a result of either technology and, as the father of four children who often travel on their own around central London, I find the cameras reassuring (on some estimates half of all British transport police convictions are won thanks to CCTV evidence).
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Andrew Gilligan
Discuss this article at First Drafts , Prospect’s blog
If anyone doubted the need for that much-mocked practice, race awareness training, or the distance that it seems to have carried the Metropolitan police in the past 25 years, they should read the following quotes from a 1983 report, “Police and People in London,” by the Policy Studies Institute.
“I call them niggers myself,” said one Met officer. “Whilst not being very intelligent, they have this low animal cunning,” was how another put it. A third said: “Well, they’re used to running round in the jungle, plucking what they want from the trees…”
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Myron Magnet
Barack Obama says America needs to have a conversation about race. In fact, one is already in full swing—and it is happening among African-Americans. Its spark was a speech that television star Bill Cosby gave in 2004. In books and articles, on talk shows and in town meetings, at barbecues and barber shops, African-Americans have been arguing over his words ever since. Their discussion is the most hopeful development in race relations in years.
With a 50 per cent high school dropout rate and a 70 per cent illegitimacy rate, with African-Americans convicted for half the nation’s murders though making up only 13 per cent of the population, black America—despite the rise of a large middle class—is in trouble. “We can’t blame white people,” Cosby said in his contentious speech, which marked the 50th anniversary of the Brown vs Board school desegregation ruling, “it’s not what they’re doing to us. It’s what we’re not doing.” Cosby went on to quote Jesse Jackson’s words, “No one can save us from us but us.”
Sure, racism hasn’t vanished, as Cosby acknowledges in his 2007 book Come On People, a follow-up to his speech written with Harvard psychiatrist Alvin Poussaint. “But for all the talk of systemic racism… we must look at ourselves and understand our own responsibility.” Even with lingering discrimination, “there are more doors of opportunity open for black people today than ever before.” When people tell you, “‘You can’t get up, you’re a victim,’” Cosby warns, “that’s when you know it’s the devil you’re hearing.”
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Alex McBride
“Bugger won’t plead guilty,” said the beleaguered-looking defence counsel with a weary sigh. “I’ve got absolutely nothing to say. Might as well have brought my bongos.” Thank God I was prosecuting. I was giddy with relief that I wasn’t the one stuck with the “no questions” trial. This is what the trade calls a case where the evidence against your client is so overwhelming that you can’t think of any questions to ask on his behalf.
How had it come to this? Malcolm and his crew weren’t slapstick junkie burglars snagging themselves on windows and dripping blood (not to mention DNA) all over the place. They were professionals. They chose their targets carefully—like the warehouse in a secluded industrial estate, a few months before. They came in over the roof, cutting the cables that connected the alarm to the police station. They dropped down into the warehouse, lifted the internal security doors off their runners and broke into the storeroom. From there they loaded their Luton van with £90,000 worth of upmarket pens.
Everything went beautifully—so much so that the gang used the same strategy a few weeks later when they broke into a mobile phone company. This time they took the company’s delivery van too, disabling its tracking device. They loaded it up with £250,000-worth of mobile phones and were gone. What chutzpah! The plods would never catch them.
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CAR Hills
A modern British prison is often a surprisingly gentle place. This is particularly true of my current establishment, Lowdham Grange, where large numbers of mature and thoughtful men are serving long sentences.
The authorities rule us according to a mechanistic philosophy. Progress within the prison is measured by movement between the residential houseblocks. We start out on a tough wing, where we are locked up if not at work or otherwise engaged. If our conduct is acceptable, we move to C-wing, where we can visit the prison yard during the day but there is frequent drugs testing. Finally, if we wish, and usually after about six months, we reach Houseblock Three. The regime is otherwise like that of C-wing, but we have a shower in our cell.
I have now attained Houseblock Three. The shower stays on, nice and hot, for two minutes. I find it wonderful for soothing the back. On the other wings you have to keep pressing the shower-button, which makes relaxation impossible. Water from the tap is rationed on Houseblock Three, which is not the case elsewhere, and the cell is slightly smaller to accommodate the shower. But the officers treat us with conspicuous friendliness and do not intrude without permission. I like it much better.
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Alex McBride
“There’s CCTV,” said the prosecutor cheerfully. I wasn’t worried. CCTV is generally of such bad quality that it’s hard to figure out what the indistinct blobs on the fuzzy background are doing and to whom. Is it a pub fight? Is it a German expressionistic dance? Is it mating badgers? It’s anyone’s guess. The prosecutor pressed play. The picture quality was razor-sharp. She turned to me and smiled. “New camera,” she said.
Smack bang in the middle of the screen was my client, Giles, outside a pub, stripped to the waist and readying for action. His quarry made a break for it, but was too slow. Giles punched him in the face, flexing his spindly arms at the hidden camera. He might as well have been holding a sign saying “Convict me now.” Giles’s left hook ignited the whole street corner, with a dozen pub regulars settling their differences like gentlemen.
Crimewatch UK was no match for this footage. It was even better than Cops, the American “real life” television crime show that set the gold standard in the 1990s, with clips of the underclass being righteously clubbed by mustachioed patrolmen. But in these type of programmes, it’s always the police and not the defendants who are shown in their best light. And if you thought that only shining examples of police work are caught on camera, you would be, as we barristers like to say, falling into error.
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