Thoughts on Charles Clarke's speech.

[chickenfeet]

Charles Clarke's contribution to today's Guardian is very interesting. On the one hand it's an uncommonly open presentation of the the "New Authoritarianism", on the other it's a series of very obvious and clumsy rhetorical devices.

Let's dissect some of the claims of the "New Authoritarianism". The most interesting and far reaching one is "the modern reality that human rights are wider than those that the individual possesses in relation to the state". Well duh! Delete "modern" there. Law as we understand it in the countries with a Common Law tradition (and others besides) grew up mainly to provide a non-violent means of regulating individual citizens rights with respect to other citizens. It's called civil law. Criminal law regulates the relationship between the state and the citizen (for the most part). What the New Authoritarians are trying to do is move a whole category of disputes into the realm of new kind of criminal law while simultaneously bypassing the normal checks and balances of criminal procedure. That's by any standards an important (and to many worrying) expansion in the role of the administrative arm of the state.

The second claim, in essence, is that "existing democracies, particularly the US and the UK" are by their nature not authoritarian and intrinsically incapable of spawning authoritarian abuses. Those critics who protest at such abuses are accused of equating the US and UK to certain unspecified dictatorships that no longer exist (presumably to differentiate them form the unspecified dictatorships that the UK and US still support). This, of course, is a non-syllogism of the kind that you learned to avoid in your very first formal logic lesson. Nazi Germany gave the police sweeping powers, x points out that New Labour has given the police sweeping powers, x is equating New Labour with Nazi Germany. The implication is either that because there is a ballot periodically authoritarianism is impossible or that there is some sort of dualism elections=freedom, no elections=no freedom, which completely ignores the historical reality of the existence of elected authoritarian regimes; Huey Long's Louisiana, Maurice DuPlessis' Quebec to name but two. To point out that New labour is becoming increasingly authoritarian is not to equate it with Hitler or Stalin, though one might ask what happens if the powers Mr. Clarke claims were to fall into the hands of someone less fastidious thanhis honest self.

The third claim that I find very odd is a causal/temporal claim that Clarke makes;

However, as democracy has advanced so powerfully across the world(1), other rights become important too. The right to go to work safely on the tube. The right not to be killed by someone who has served his sentence for violent crime but remains dangerous. The right to live at home without being disturbed by antisocial behaviour outside the front door

In what sense were these "rights" less important before democracy advanced so powerfully? Did the existence of the USSR make us happier to be blown up on the tube? I don't think so!

So what then is the essence of the critique of the New Authoritarianism and why do I think that Blair and Clarke miss the point. There are a number of grounds.

The first problem is the transfer of a large element of criminal procedure from the relatively public courts to the murkier world of the police and bureaucracy. It's pretty difficult to nobble a judge and jury. It merely needs to be convenient to get a dodgy decision out of a bureaucrat. The possibility for harassment of anyone the government or police choose to harass in the proposed legislation is vast and I'm old enough to remember when "sus", conspiracy charges and the like were routinely used to harass. The proposed powers are much broader and therefore more dangerous. We can already see that the vision is a highly selective use of the powers. Tony Blair, in his weekend email exchange, was happy to propose "harassing" (suspected) drug dealers until their lives became unbearable. I can't see him using the proposed powers to harass insider traders or sellers of peerages. A future government could be just as selective but in quite different ways. It would be the easiest thing in the world to use restrictions on travel and meeting designated persons to cripple political opposition.

The second problem is the idea that simply because a government has a temporary majority in the House of Commons it can do whatever it likes. This apparently is "democracy" and "democracy" is always right and the polar opposite of "tyranny". We are asked to "to applaud the differences between democratic states and dictatorships" but nowhere does Mr. Clarke suggest what those differences might be. It's hard to see how they extend beyond periodic votes in a flawed electoral system because for Mr. Clarke "human rights" (which I think might just define the difference between tyranny and democracy) are whatever the government of the day says they are. There is no room in his world view for a less transient definition or even for the idea that minorities might need protecting from a majority (would that be a "democratic" or a "tyrannical" majority").

All in all, it's a curiously optimistic view that asks us to suspend all critical judgement where "democratic" governments are concerned. Our masters are benevolent. They can be relied on to know what's best for us. We don't need outmoded and clumsy legal protections. It's impossible that anyone less public spirited than messrs Clarke and Blair might be able to cobble together the 25% or so of the electorate needed to gain power. However, don't suppose they are going to let you vote on that in a way that makes any sense any time soon.

fn1: Has "democracy ... advanced so powerfully across the world"? There have been gains but they have either been in relatively small countries or are very shaky. I would hesitate to claim, for example, Indonesia or the Philippines, as stable democracies. There are far more countries where some sort of elections are held than, say, twenty years ago but in most of them the idea that the demos has much influence over the outcome, still less the behaviour of the government is laughable. Clarke's arguments might be a great deal more compelling if he ever defined "democracy".

Comments

[gillo]

It seems to me that in Britain at least any government with a huge majority has tended to assume de facto Divine Right. Blair's government might be accused of "going emeritus", to steal Pratchett's wonderfully evocative phrase, except that these aithoritarian trends were discernable from the start, in Blunkett's time at Education, for example. A top-down model of organisation of education, law and order, health, justice etc suits those at the top, and the Sir Humphreys of the world are no more going to argue against it than they did against very similar instincts during Maggie's reign. We will all love Big Brother once we recognise he has our best interests at heart.

[chickenfeet2003.livejournal.com]

I agree the seeds have been there a long time. Britain is a very authoritarian country by instinct. What was new in Clarke's spiel, I think, was his attempt to define (or at least claim) a "new" class of human rights and somehow, in a Fukayamaesque way to link that to the "Triumph of Democracy". The rhetoric is really quite odd.

[gillo]

Charles Clarke is really quite odd. A Blunkett wannabe without quite the same brutality.

The tragic thing is that none of this bunch actually comprehend why ordinary, decent people are worried by their plans. Or even that they do. They are fixed into the mindset than anyone who opposes them must have evil motives.

Conviction politics. Yech.

[chickenfeet2003.livejournal.com]

I think they have constructed an idea of what an "ordinary person" and then persuaded themselves that "ordinary people" agree with them. The irony is that this is a Cabinet most of the members of which are as far removed from ordinary people and their experiences as Lord Salisbury. The difference is he knew that. I shake my head when I hear someone with a household income of 500,000/year claiming to empathise with the plight of people on sink estates.

[gillo]

Yes. Blair represents Sedgefield and assumes that makes him "ordinary".

A lot of the concerns of New Labour are those of the London lower-middle classes, really. All the stuff about schools, for instance, is pretty irrelevant if you live up Weardale and have a ten-mile journey to your one possible comp. They alsotry to please too many people at once - only look at the very garbled mixed messages they send out about drinking - all-night licences but keep yobs off streets....

[rhythmaning.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the post. There's a lot there...

My first reaction is how did he not think that the question of "The right to go to work safely on the tube" would not be questioned in the light of the killing of Jean de Menezes?

I also have real issues with the idea that the UK justice system (notwithstanding differences between England & Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland) cannot cope with "someone who has served his time". That Clarke is proposing the dangers remaining in society after serving sentences suggest that there is something really wrong with those sentences. If prison cannot rehabilitate, we should search for something that can - not become ever more draconian.

And then trying to pin all the blame on the media. Indeed, Clarke's article makes me sincerely scared of our leaders.

[chickenfeet2003.livejournal.com]

My first reaction is how did he not think that the question of "The right to go to work safely on the tube" would not be questioned in the light of the killing of Jean de Menezes?

Yes, that was fairly inept.

And then trying to pin all the blame on the media

Every authoritarian regime needs a whipping boy. The unions are a bit passé, Charles Clarke would have a tricky time blaming the Communists given his past associations and most other identifiable groups would cost Labour votes.

[a-d-medievalist.livejournal.com]

Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr

[chickenfeet2003.livejournal.com]

I'm trying hard to suppress my basic "grrr" response. I have a visceral dislike of authoritarian politics coupled to a deep sense of betrayal that "my" party is perpetrating this stuff but I also realise when I try to finger just what it is about Blunkettblairclarkethought that I really object to, the exercise becomes quite difficult. There is a "theory" that is being articulated here and it's different from any I've come across before, and, in many ways, harder to refute. This isn't a blatant class-based power grab of the Thatcherite smash-the-unions, bring back the birch, Tory conference type. In a sense it's rooted in ideas of "community" that many on the left have been drawn to because the individual-state nexus mediated by 15 second sound bites and a flawed electoral system is so obviously unsatisfactory as Habermas has pointed out. What we seem to be getting though in "New Authoritarianism" is a technocratic rather than democratic version of Habermas' public sphere. "Community standards" are to be enforced not through and by the community after due reflection and debate but by "benevolent" state agents who understand the needs of "ordinary people" better than they do themselves. I don't think "we liberals" are going to win this debate on classic civil libertarian grounds. We need to find a way to link this opposition with the whole "democratic renewal" agenda.

[a-d-medievalist.livejournal.com]

You do realize that it's exactly everything that modern liberals are accused of by conservatives (and libertarians in the US), while separating from every classical liberal principle. Or so it seems to me. Maybe the name for the feeling is "Betrayal"?

[violetsaunders.livejournal.com]

This article by Charles Clarke is a half-baked and lazy piece of writing at best. Your careful response overestimates the intellectual coherence or depth it contains, I think. The first part - about the media's use of simpilistic and exagerrated language - I have some sympathy with. A lot of popular media rhetoric IS simiplistic, exaggerated and lacking in subtlety. This has very little to do with the second part where Clarke claims that we need a new 'modern' understanding of human rights which embraces comparatively trivial nuisances (such as noisy neighbours). I think this tendency in modern government to legislate for and police everyday aspects of living has long roots. (1)The perceptible tendency over long historical periods for central governments to use new technology to control everyday domestic life in ever greater detail (in place of the family - book sized thesis there!). (2) The development and influence of symbolic interactionism in social theory which argues essentially that society is infinitely dynamic and composed and controlled through mutable behaviours and not just through the distribution of static commodities such as wealth. In the latter case Giddens' adaptation of s-i to a neo-socialist framework has been a critical influence on New Labour, although Thatcher's declamation that there is 'no such thing as society' was ultimately influenced by similar (pre-Giddens) ideas.

Sorry if this doesn't make sense - constantly distracted by good documentary on Vivaldi and Venice on BBC4 (which actually is relevant - orphans 'rehabilitated' through active engagement in music).

[chickenfeet2003.livejournal.com]

It makes sense. See also my reply to a_d_medievalist which suggests that there is a sort of technocratic hijacking of Habermas going on here.

[rhythmaning.livejournal.com]

Given Clarke's current troubles (according BBC.co.uk (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/4946566.stm), he offered to resign yesterday), I just wonder what we would get as a replacement. Since each new Home Secretary seems to move to the right (and I thought Jack Straw was bad enough - but then Blunkett, and now Clarke) - well, it doesn't bear consideration where they would try to take us!

[chickenfeet2003.livejournal.com]

Well I doubt it would be John Prescott! Ruth Kelly perhaps? Compulsory morning flagellation and burning for heretics?