I am now up in Doune for the Doune The Rabbit Hole Festival, so for the next few days posts are likely to be distinctly more esoteric than usual. Long trek up here yesterday (Ramsgate to Doune is not much different from Ramsgate to Vienna in distance) which is why no post.

But when I turned on Breakfast TV as I pulled myself together for the journey, the hideous features of Tony Blair appeared on screen. What is more, he was propounding the notion that Europe needs a single leader to maintain its status in the world – and I don’t think he had Gordon Brown in mind. The man plainly is bonkers – the idea that the massive historic and economic forces propelling China, Brazil and India to prominence can be arrested if we put Tony the Messiah in charge of Europe, is one that could not occur to a sane brain.

The idea that Europe may be a much nicer place to live if we can get away from centralist control structures and a desire for world dominance, not only would never occur to Blair, it would never occur to anyone who would be allowed to speak on the BBC.

I have noted before that when Rowan Williams speaks in public, I almost always agree with him. I have mostly been thinking about his opposition to our wars abroad. But he is now under attack for writing probably the only useful article the New Statesman will publish this decade, pointing out that the coalition policies in Health and Education were voted for by nobody.

The rush to introduce more private profit into the provision of state services is obscene. But the fact that the Tories concealed their right radicalism in the party manifesto, while these policies are the opposite of the Lib Dem manifesto, nust be added to. The policies being pursued by the coalition bear no relationship to the coalition agreement, on which basis the Lib Dems as a party (including me) agreed to the coalition. And what is happening in education is directlly opposed to the policy the Lib Dems voted through at their Assembly in Liverpool last Autumn. I was at that debate, and Sarah Teather and the entire party leadership argued strongly against the condemnation of the Academies programme. The party defeated them. They ignored the party. The truth is that Clegg cares far more for his ministerial limousine than for his party or any notion of liberalism.

It is good to be in rural Scotland. We went into a local hostelry for dinner last night, and were told that we couldn’t order food as the kitchen closed at 8.00pm. It was 8.02! So we went to the only other place for six miles, where we were told that we had to order quickly as the kitchen closed at 8.30. But the food was simply wonderful – the English have no idea what meat is. When we finished we asked for a number for a taxi back to our B and B – about two miles. The barmaid told us not to be silly, asked another customer to look after the bar, got out her car and gave us a lift back.

I had already been rethinking my frustration at nowhere serving food late. We have become so used to instant gratification that it is worth reminding us of the values of life before rampant consumerism, when the contract between supplier and consumer was based on more equal respect. We will cook you a most delicious meal of local produce, but only at a reasonable time that enables us to finish work and enjoy the rest of our evening. This is a world away from modern society where you can get anything 24 hours a day, but entirely due to the exploited immigrant labour in the kitchen, and the food is rubbish, with thousands of frozen air mils to it.

Now where did I put that kaftan?

I have now ploughed through all 120 pages odd of the Government’s new Prevent Strategy, which manages to be even more illiberal and more turgid than the original. It claims that the last Prevent Strategy was misguided – but for all the wrong reasons. Rather amusingly, it starts with a message of endorsement from Lord Carlile – who also endorsed the last strategy which it criticises so strongly. The truth is, Carlile will endorse anything for any government which gives him status – he loves status – “It has my considered and strong support” he concludes his endorsement – you have to imagine saying it with marbles in your mouth and a degree of insufferable pomposity – “It has my considered and strong support”- wanker.

The report has many errors. but its fundamental flaw is iits explicit assumption that terrorism is actuated by a hatred of democracy.

” There is evidence to indicate that support for terrorism is associated with rejection of a cohesive, integrated, multi-faith society and of parliamentary democracy. Work to deal with radicalisation will depend on developing a sense of belonging to this country and support for our core values. “

That may in part be true; but with stunning intellectual dishonesty the government refuses to tackle in the report the fact that terrorism in the UK has been driven by disgust at British foreign policy, and especially the invasion of Iraq, and the continuing occupation and civilian deaths in Afghanistan. This is not speculation on my part; the 7/7 bombers not only referred to this specifically in suicide videos, they also indeed cited extraordinary renidition and torture as motives of their actions.

The Prevent Strategy ignores this and instead chooses to adopt the stupidly simple mantra of George W Bush to explain terrorism; “They hate our freedoms”. This is precisely the sole cause of terrorism which the Prevent Strategy defines as the problem. When the problem is defined fundamentally wrongly, you can hardly expect the solutions to be correct.

And those conclusions are stunningly illiberal – much more so than the mainstream media has picked up This is a direct quote. I am not making it up:

But preventing terrorism will mean challenging extremist (and non-violent) ideas that are also part of a terrorist ideology.

The (and non-violent) is there in the original. Really.

So peaceful support for a united Ireland should not be allowed, because it is “also part of a terrorist ideology”? That is absolutely the implication of the report. But it is plain it only applies to Muslim groups, on the grounds that they “pose the greatest threat” to the public,

So what it means is that believing that the UK should be governed by Sharia law, even if you hold that belief totally lawfully and without violence, and wish to campaign for it through democratic means, should not be allowed.

But it goes further than that. Universites, healthcare providers, NGOs and faith groups are to be vigilant in searching for those who hold such beliefs, and reporting them to the police. We have already seen where this leads. At Nottingham University two students were thrown out for researching information on Al Qaida on the State Department website, and then a lecturer was sacked for defending them.

Pages 15 to 19 cover support for terrorism and the drivers for it. There is one single phrase in five pages that acknowledges western foreign policy as a motivator for terrorism, but this is then ignored, while all the other factors are treated at great length. The opinion polls cited on pages 16 to 17 on Muslim attitudes to terrorism refrained from asking any question about western foreign policy or giving any chance for respondents to refer to it.

There is an accidentally hilarious part of the report where it denies that Prevent is used for spying on Muslim communities. That, they say, falls under a related programme called Pursue, and should not be confused with Prevent! But twenty odd pages after their lengthy passage claiming Prevent has been unfairly accused of spying, which is the task of Pursue, we find:

“Taking action against propagandists and radicalisers requires careful coordination between work in the Pursue and Prevent areas” p. 52

Which is something of a giveaway.

There is also yet another example of the Tories fulfilling their pledge to reach the target of 0.7% of GDP spent on development aid, by classifying war and “security” expenditure as development aid.

The Department for International Development (DfID) also has a role to play. Although its main purpose is to reduce poverty, overseas development work in some areas can help to build resilience to terrorism through programmes that strengthen governance and security,

With my interest in the university sector, it is some of the stuff on universities I find most chilling. It is full of reasonable sounding propositions that reveal the feeble grasp of a limited intellect:

Universities and colleges have an important role to play in Prevent, particularly in ensuring balanced debate as well as freedom of speech.

There is no obligation on universities to provide “balanced debate”. Do they have to have a creationist speaker at every lecture on evolution? There is still less of an obligation on them to ensure balanced debate in the extra-curricular activities of their students. Does there have to be a Tory speaker at every meeting against the cuts? And remember, that the Prevent Strategy makes plain that the “extremist speakers” they wish to guard against specifically include speakers with a non-violent ideology.

But the great news is, that restrictions on what you are allowed to think at university are all for your own good:

to ensure that all institutions where there is risk of radicalisation recognise their duty of care to students to protect them from the consequences of their becoming involved in terrorism, and take reasonable steps to minimise this risk;

This incredible piece of Orwellian justification for the end of academic freedom is breathtaking in its audacity. The practical consequences could easily be transposed into a manual of the Third Reich, of Stalin’s Russia or Pinochet’s Chile. Again I am not making this stuff up, this is what the report says about universities:

work with the police and other partners to ensure that student societies and university and college staff have the right information and guidance to enable them to make decisions about external speakers.

support local police forces in working with those institutions assessed to be at the greatest risk;

Under New Labour I had the peculiar experience of finding myself banned from entering a Cambridge University building, and therefore delivering a speech to a large crowd of students who gathered in the foyer to hear me as I shouted through the open doorway. I honestly did believe that the Lib Dems and even the Conservatives would be better. I was very, very wrong.

This new Prevent Strategy is a document which sadly proves that the staff of MI5 and the Home Office are, on average, not very bright, and will always favour their own power over liberty. Media reports have focused on the decision to withdarw government funding from those organisations viewed as “extremist”, because that is what the government press release said, and no mainstream journalist will ever actually read the report.

In fact I favour withdrawing that funding. Personally I don’t think the government should fund any faith group or institution.

One organisation which will still receive plenty of government funding under the Prevent programme is the Quilliam Foundation,. This taxpayer funded body attempted by subterfuge to gain personal financial details from me. That says all you need to know about Prevent, which is a secret service led programme.

In fact, if the government got much smaller, and stopped funding attacks on foreign countries, we would all be vastly safer, which would be a real “Prevent Strategy”.

Unlike journalists of the mainstream media, I am going to read through the government’s new paper on the Prevent Strategy before I comment on it. From first glance I am not impressed, but I will read it properly and write it up tomorrow morning.

Meantime I can break the news that a major terrorsit attack was foiled today at the British Library. I went to use the reading room of the British Library to look at some Alexander Burnes manuscripts, on which I have been in email discussion with the curators. I took my passport with me for identification. But they would not let me in as I did not have proof of address. They needed to see both a passport and proof of address “For security reasons”.

I did have, as it happens, several documents containing my address on in my pockets; including a doctor’s prescription, a hotel bill and a library card. Surely in addition to my passport that would do? No, I was told, “for security reasons” only a specified list of documents was acceptable, which the police have advised the Library contain securely verified addresses. A NHS registration is apparently not verified; a credit card statement is (which is bollocks – some of my credit card statements all go to an ancient address, from which someone kindly forwards them, and at which false address I could now register at the British Library as this false address will be acceptable on a specified document)

But it doesn’t stop there. I was asked why I wished to access the British Library; I replied that I was researching a biography of Sir Alexander Burnes. I was told that I must provide evidence of that. What? You think I am pretending to be researching a biography of Alexander Burnes? That I have some obscure motive in seeking to read some of the most obscure and neglected documents in the British Library? I offered to produce the emails from the Library’s curators about the documents I am looking for. These were not acceptable as emails were not “original documents”.

I was then assured that all of this was in the interests of security, and part of the anti-terrorism advice received by the British Library from the Police. It was obviously expected by the young man telling me this that I would therefore accept that all this nonsense was both sensible and necessary.

I gave up. The British Library can no doubt be delighted that they have foiled a major Al Qaida plot to insert a sleeper cell of false Alexander Burnes researchers.

Why on earth do we put up with this total bollocks, whereby ludicrous “security” regulations, administered by half-educated low paid staff steeped in the insolence of office, are used to block individuals from going about their lawful business? Karl Marx famously wrote Das Kapital in the reading room of the British Library. He would never get in now. “Can you prove that you are researching the relationship between Capital and Labour then, sir?”.

Readers of this blog can get a £10 discount off weekend camping tickets for this year’s Doune the Rabbit Hole Festival using this discount code: elated.

It is the first and probably last time this blog has ever given anything but thoughts. I shall myself be giving a talk at the festival, and it really is a great time, as much about thinking and a way of living as the music – of which there is an extraordinary 100 bands.

I intend to be mostly in the beer tent. Feel free to buy me a pint.

I mark with great sorrow the death of my friend Miriam Karlin. Even I am too young to remember when she was at her most famous, one of the biggest stars of British television in the early 1960’s. A RADA and RSC actress of great distinction, she maintained that the same discipline of performance needs to be applied to sitcom work, and that is why sitcoms seldom do work nowadays.

Of course I knew her largely as a political campaigner, with a great interest in human rights everywhere. Her activism, despite ill health, against the war in Iraq was just a continuation with a life constantly devoted to helping the underdog, be it struggling actors or victims of human rights abuse in Palestine or Burma. Towards the end she could not do much more than compose letters to editors, but she still kept doing that.

I recall arriving in her little flat near Great Portland Street tube station a few years ago, to be met by Miriam, hobbling on her stick, brandishing a copy of The Times at me, eyes flashing with indignation. It was how I found out that David Aaronovitch had published an article calling me anti-semitic. Miriam was even more furious on my behalf than I was myself, and wrote a letter to the paper (it wasn’t published). But I won’t forget what she said; she said her own mother was an Aaronovich, and that many of their family had been killed in the holocaust, and that those who had suffered would be horrified to see their legacy perverted to a neo-conservative agenda.

I also remember her coming to see Nadira’s one woman show at the Arts theatre to give Nadira notes. There are hundreds of actors who have benefited from Miriam’s generosity with her time and experience over decades. She told Nadira to let the words paint the picture; the text contains all the emotion – just deliver it clearly, and as your character would. You don’t have always to convey the emotion other than simply and through the words.

Miriam really did live her life largely for others. I am so sorry it has ended.

The IoS did a splendid job of presenting my article. But the original, before editing for space, was rather more stylish, i feel. You might also note that the passage on Libya was an addition at the resquest of the IoS. I suggest I think my headlune was rather better:

Trouble Abroad for Clegg

I recently received a circular email from a friend, a Liberal Democrat activist, a well known and respected party conference speaker for many decades, of precisely the type whose dress sense has provided cheap lines to political commentators throughout that period. He was furious that party conference delegates, elected by their constituencies, are to be required to submit their details to the police and to a private security company for vetting. He is of course absolutely right – it hardly promotes democracy for party conference delegates to be subject to police veto.

In any other decade of the last century and a half, such an arrangement would have been ridiculed out of existence. Unfortunately, the number of people who really care about such questions of liberty appears to be fast dwindling. But undoubtedly there is a concentration of people who do care about liberty in the Liberal Democrats.

Liberty is of course an universal concept, and Liberal Democrat activists, as witnessed by their conference resolutions, are distinguished by an extraordinary interest in two places – their local government, and abroad. Human rights, ethical foreign policy and support for international law are a part of the very weft of the liberal tradition.

There is therefore mounting concern that the foreign policy of the coalition government is entirely indistinguishable from that of New Labour, or that which William Hague might exercise were he not in coalition. That is likely to become a more acute pressure point for their activists than the media has so far noticed.

Let me refer to one touchstone issue; extraordinary rendition and the use of intelligence obtained under torture. Lib Dems believe that British complicity in the excesses of George Bush’s CIA
at the height of the “War on Terror”, represents a deep dark stain on the record of New Labour. In the second of the Prime Ministerial election debates, Nick Clegg startled his opponents by devoting part of his vital opening comments to this issue. Last year’s annual Liberal Democrat Assembly in Liverpool saw a full conference debate.

But the issue is a prime example of a win for the Lib Dems evaporating in delivery.

It was announced with great fanfare at the start of the coalition government that there would be an inquiry into the question of UK complicity in torture. But then the establishment clawed the ball back. It was announced, astonishingly, that the inquiry would be conducted by Sir Peter Gibson, former Commissioner for the intelligence services, who had every year in that role reported that MI6 were “trustworthy, conscientious and reliable”. Sir Peter Gibson was thus being asked to investigate whether he himself was negligent, amoral or corrupt.

Next the inquiry was kicked far into the long grass. It would not take place until the conclusion of a number of court proceedings relating to individuals who allegedly had suffered torture. As if that were not enough, it has been decided that its proceedings will mostly be held in secret. Worst of all, its terms of reference will be limited strictly to individual cases of torture, rather than whether there was a general policy of collusion with torture by hideous regimes abroad.

This particularly concerns me because I was the only British civil servant to enter a written objection at the time to UK complicity in torture. I have testified before both the European Parliament and the Council of Europe inquiries that I have eyewitness evidence that there was such a policy. But I have been warned by senior friends still within the FCO that Gibson’s terms of reference are specifically being tweaked to exclude my evidence.

So much for the inquiry. But more crucially, the policy has not changed either. MI6 still receive, via the CIA, “intelligence” from Uzbekistan’s torture chambers. They were receiving “intelligence” from Mubarak’s torture chambers until the moment he fell, and still do so from other countries, including Saudi Arabia and Bahrain. An FCO spokesman even used the killing of Osama Bin Laden to justify the efficacy of intelligence gained from torture.

All of which leads to the wider question of human rights and the consistency of our support for liberty abroad. It is to me astonishing that a government with a Lib Dem component is silent about the atrocious torture and murder of pro-democracy demonstrators and human rights activists in Bahrain, and even the continuing imprisonment and mistreatment of 53 medical staff whose crime was to treat demonstrators shot by the security forces.

It astonishes me still more that our policy in Central Asia toadies still more to the world’s most vicious dictators than it did under New Labour, in the interest of supply lines to Afghanistan and future oil and gas contracts..

Still less is there any sign of an intention to address dreadful longstanding British wrongs, such as the deportation of the whole population of the Chagos Islands to make way for a US military base on Diego Garcia.

The FCO still publishes an annual human rights report. Under Robin Cook, each country’s human rights record was subjected to stern analysis. That caused embarrassment by pointing up the gross double standards with which we treat Libya, Burma and Zimbabwe on one hand, and Bahrain, Saudi Arabia and Uzbekistan on the other. So Jack Straw had the format changed. Rather than by country, the report is ordered by theme, so that inconvenient abuses by allied states could simply be (and are) elided.

The coalition government has made no attempt to change the format or the mindset it represents.

There is a Liberal Democrat minister in the FCO, Jeremy Browne. In theory, he precisely carries ministerial responsibility for human rights. Now I have tried every internet search engine and scoured Hansard. But I can find absolutely no connection between Jeremy Browne and human rights before he was given this portfolio.

I strongly suspect that his lack of interest in the subject was his chief qualification.

Karzai has been privately assured by both the US and UK that neither will quit Afghanistan before his term of office ends in 2015 and he and his family leave to enjoy their very substantial fortune. His two predecessors as puppet rulers in Kabul, Dr Nasrullah and Shah Shujah, both met grisly ends once their sponsors departed, and the White House and No 10 both realise a repeat would make it hard to claim victory.

The greatest betrayal of liberalism by the coalition is the failure to tackle the increasing miltarism of British society, and our new assumption that war is the normal state of the nation. That great Liberal, Gladstone, was prepared to take on all the forces of jingoism headlong. While Leader of the Opposition, campaigning against the Second Anglo-Afghan War, he declaimed:

“Those hill tribes had committed no real offence against us. We, in the pursuit of our political objects, chose to establish military positions in their country. If they resisted, would not you have done the same?”
Political sophistication in this country has declined since Gladstone made that speech in 1880. It is impossible in 2011 to contemplate any mainstream politician, let alone the leader of the opposition, admitting that those fighting the British Army may have right on their side. Now our media is swamped by jingoism, and the liberals in government appear to have lost all connection with the tradition and philosophy they pretend to espouse.

Commentators have not in general considered foreign policy as an area where Clegg will face party revolt; they may be wrong.

In today’s Independent on Sunday I attack coalition foreign policy and the lack of any liberal element in it.

Given continuing technical problems with comments here, I shall respond on the IoS site to any comments there requiring a response.

Some news just wants to make you dig a hole and gibber quietly at the bottom of it. Henry Kissinger is being brought in by Sepp Blatter to advise on cleaning up corruption in FIFA! I expect Lord Triesman and Chuck Blazer to be disappeared by death squads, and carpet bombing in the Lancaster Gate area.