Thing is the EU is neither democratic nor socialist. Since democracy is the only way of transitioning between government agendas without some severe political tumult, Benn might just have noticed that entrenching a centralised state is perhaps not the best way to achieve his political ends (surprisingly, this position is still controversial amongst some socialists).

Who knows, perhaps in a couple of decades or so, socialists will even be political libertarians, having realised that privacy, free speech and freedom of association is the only stable way to allow peaceful transitions between different ways of living and relating.

Yes, a bit scary, I agree with your concern. As I agree with your logic of agree/share. If agreeing with the Tories on Lisbon means opposing Lisbon then ruddy rock on, but agreeing with the Tories means agreeing with their reasons for opposing Lisbon, which, indeed, a Socialist should never do.

I have only now stopped laughing.

Aren’t Benn’s and the Tories’ reasons for opposing Lisbon/EU power exactly the same reasons – ie both recognise that the EU can/does/will prevent them from implementing certain kinds of policies, no matter whether such policies have a clear democratic mandate in the UK itself.
Obviously those policies, let’s say immigration controls for the Tories and support for ailing industries for Benn, would likely be very different.
But the *reasons* both oppose the EU are identical – that it imposes (undemocratic) constraints.

I don’t understand the OP. Or at least, what I think it means is so contrary to what life seems like to me that I feel I must be missing something.

Hmm. Tony has a point, I think. Who’s doing things (or saying them) is less important than what’s being done. That became, fairly soon after 1997, my big problem with New Labour: a lot of what it was doing could have been done by the Tories, but a lot of people backed them four-square because they had “Labour” in the name. It works the other way: lots of wet, one-nation Tories whose views on a whole bunch of issues one might agree with are beyond the pale simply because they’re branded Conservatives.

I’d love to see a party-less Parliament where people vote for the candidate in their constituency that best reflects their own view or speaks best to local issues. What’s wrong with groupings coalescing around individual issues when they arise?

Surely Benn’s always been an anti-EU crank…?

(@3, the suggestion that the EU imposes undemocratic constraints is as false as it was last week. The EU is democratic *at a pan-European level*, in the same way that representatives chosen by voters in Surrey get to decide what the laws are in Manchester. There is a legitimate argument that the EU, although democratic, makes decisions at an insufficiently regionalised level – but pretending that has anything to do with a lack of democracy per se is a nonsensical smear)

I tell you what, having the bourgeoisie swinging from the lampposts will be the kiss of death to this blog.

Anthony Wedgwood-Benn is a man who, above all, believes in principles of liberty and democracy. These are values that Labour have betrayed and the Tories are embracing, at least in opposition.

So it’s not surprising to see old wedgers finding himself on the same side of the debate with the Tories’ soi disant leader of the Libertarian faction.

@3: “But the ‘reasons’ both oppose the EU are identical – that it imposes (undemocratic) constraints”

At least Benn has the merit of consistency. He was campaigning against the capitalist club of the European Common Market even prior to the referendum in 1975 during Harold Wilson’s government, which yielded a 67% majority in favour of continued membership. Despite that, the Labour Party manifesto for the 1983 election included a commitment to negotiate a withdrawal from the Common Market but the Conservatives were re-elected to government with a majority of 140.

What I can’t understand is the Conservative position.

In 1961, the government of Harold Macmillan applied to sign up to the Rome Treaty but that course was finally vetoed by De Gaulle in 1963.

Ted Heath’s Conservative government (1970-74) successfully negotiated Britain’s accession for January 1973.

Mrs Thatcher’s Converative government negotiated and ratified the Single European Act of 1986.

John Major’s Conservative government negotiated and ratified the Maastricht Treaty of 1992.

Both those treaties extended the scope and depth of integration so I don’t understand how Conservatives can now disown the EU as fundamentally “undemocratic”.

@8:

It certainly suits Thatcher’s ends now to pretend that we were all somehow “duped” into the EU against our will by dangling the single market carrot in front of our stupid British faces, before pulling the old bait’n'switch on us.

I suspect the truth is that Maastricht (or thereabouts) was roughly the level of European integration British people and the Conservative Party were comfortable with, and that everything after (Amsterdam/Nice/Lisbon) has been too far.

“There are issues I find myself in agreement with some of the Tories on”

This is quite different from saying that he’s in agreement with the Tory party, or Tory party policy. He cites David Davies, but he’s a backbencher now, ignored by the front bench. I think all that Benn is saying here is that he approves of those Tories who are able to put their own moral views ahead of the party line, which is a basically admirable trait in any human being and deeply uncontroversial (or is it?).

Also, the issues in question are sort of ‘meta-political’ issues. Civil liberties and Europe are issues which fundamentally affect the ‘rules of the game’. Too harsh restrictions on, say, “domestic extremism” might prevent future socialists from organising for radical objectives (we’re already edging towards criminalising the radical right and the radically religious). Case in point: you’ve just publicly called for the lynching of the bourgeousie; if you had substituted ‘Asians’ or ‘Jews’ or ‘homosexuals’ there, you could probably have been charged with a crime. It’s only a matter of time before a Conservative government decides that, in the name of consistency, calling for harm to be done to the privileged majority will be viewed as a hate crime too. Imposition of greater control from Brussels without further democratic reform of European institutions could mean that a future socialist majority is unable to enact its agenda. In that sense, these are issues which go beyond ideology and strike at the question of whether having an ideology or a political platform is worth bothering with. Benn is defending extremism, the possibility of which is a necessary prerequisite of both socialism and other radical ideologies. In doing so he makes common cause with other ‘extremists’ which, these days, seems to mean ‘most people with a brain’, the remainder of the population being those who join, support, vote for and are elected for the NewToryLabour party.

Tony Benn is something of a hero to me, given his tireless efforts to destroy the Labour Party over the last forty-odd years. This only redoubles my admiration.

[/trolling]

Hear Hear, Mr Eug.

I saw a recent 5 minute B.B.C.interview with Tony Benn. On youtube I believe it was.
Reffering to his part in WW2,he said

“Yes I was In Dads Army where I was trained as a terrorist to shoot people”

And this from a man who lost an older brother in the war.
Its that mind virus of moral relativity again,that has insidiously infected western civilization.
You lot will be the death off us. Saul Alinsky disciple—my arse Sunny

It’s a shame this happened so late in his life. It’s probably too late for him to join the tories and do to their party what he did to ours.

Ask the Tories what their opinions are on drugs, how to deal with persistent crime, ASBOs, binge drinking and smoking and any number of similar issues, and you’ll see how deep their commitment to this kind of faux anti-state guff is. About as deep as a puddle, I suspect, whatever ostentatious pronouncements you get out of opportunists like David Davis – plenty of barking and precious little bite.

@ Martin: I tell you what, having the bourgeoisie swinging from the lampposts will be the kiss of death to this blog.

Can’t speak for anyone else who’s had a contribution here, but I’m an office drone and my Dad’s a car mechanic. Presumably, given his wide-o patter, Martin works fourteen hours a day down a coalmine.

booo! hiss! Tories bad! We mustn’t say we agree with them even when they’re right!

And anyone who doesn’t take this line must be old and losing their mental faculties and ought to shut up so the ideologically pure can keep fighting the good fight…

hmmm

Nuff said?

“The Sun newspaper asked ‘Is [Tony Benn] the most dangerous man in Britain?’ Fellow socialist and MP, Tony Crosland, said he was ‘just a bit cracked’, while Harold Wilson called him a man ‘who immatured with age’.”
http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbcfour/features/tony-benn.shtml

@14, the Home Guard were intended to be (and the French Resistance actually were) terrorists who shot people. This highlights the *really rather important to understanding the world* point that sometimes you can be a terrorist who shoots people *and* be in the right.

(that may not fit your politically-correct worldview, which presumably believes in ignoring truths that don’t feel sufficiently patriotic, but its factual correctness is unimpeachable)

“I agree with what you say but I’ll lay down my life protecting my right to stop you saying it”.

Liberal Conspiracy – the thinking man’s Judaean Popular Liberation Front.

Benn? Traitor! Splitter!

Tony Benn was one of the few socialists within the labour party (past or present), as other writers have pointed out, Benn was always against the E.U. Benn also supported Margaret Thatchers’s resurrection of free-market politics (not for the same reason as Thatcher.)
@8 Yes, Benn has always been consistent, and still is. As for Labour/New Labour and the Conservatives, it is now difficult to discern where one stops and the other begins.

What Benn has realised, and is saying, is the truth that so many commenters on here here fail, or are unwilling, to embrace.

The fulcrum of political conflict is no longer the relationship between classes. That was the dialectic of last century and it cannot continue because the conflicting classes no longer exist in the Marxian terms in which they were originally defined or in reality.

The key questions in the future are going to relate to the relationship between the state and the individual and between enterprise and corporatism. The current rise in intellectual libertarianism is the forerunner of this conflict and is an attempt to define what these questions will be and where, and on what terms, the battles will be fought.

Many will argue that this will be a short uprising (that the statists and corporations have already won the war) but I have to say that, in my view, the medium term prospects for the nation state and the centralists are far from rosy.

So why is it that the old socialist war horse understands this when the parasitic lobby fodder he is surrounded by don’t get it?

Put quite simply, he is cursed with a superior intellect.

“consistent advocacy of democratic socialism ”

Are we talking about the same man whose insane proto-communism put the left out of power for a generation and meant that valueless, principle-free shit like New Labour – and its zenith, Tony Blair – could come to power?

The Benn Myth needs some serious revisionist treatment:

http://badconscience.com/2009/06/21/benn-thatcher-and-the-state-were-in/

John b ( 19 )

“that may not fit your politically correct world view”

Now who was being politically correct here–Benn or me.
This was Benns—Orwellian Double Speak.One mans terrorist is not ALWAYS another mans freedom-fighter.

“When terms loose their meaning,there is chaos in the land”
Confucius

Well, let’s suppose that sooner or later there is a referendum on some aspect of the EU or other. When that day comes everyone who considers themself to be a leftie will have to vote either in favour of more capitalism or in the same column as the BNP (which appears not to worry Benn one jot). Or, possibly, abstain or take a foreign holiday.

Bob B points out that Thatcher introduced the Single European Act – I think at Whitelaw’s gentle persuasion. I recall at the time telling a friend that she’d gone mad and I defy any Tory reading this to list anything she did after 1986 which has lasted.

I don’t oppose what the Tories do because the Tories do it. Heath index-linked my pay (and a lot of other people’s) to inflation in 1973 and not a Trade Unionist in the country objected. Mostly, however, what they do increases inequality and a significant number of them want me (and you, if you’re a leftie) dead (you can find them on Mike Smithson’s site if you’re feeling really ghoulish).

23 – Paul writes (from the link to his blog) :

“Yet post-1979, Benn’s presence on the Labour front bench, along with Michael Foot, helped drag the party to a position probably the most extreme outside of the Soviet Union”

Just quickly to debunk this – friend of a friend moved to Sweden from the UK in the early 1980s. He was a Bennite, and so looked at the policy positions of the different Swedish political parties to find which one had the most similar policies to those of Tony Benn and co.

…and he ended up voting for the Moderaten (Swedish Conservatives).

@24 no, you’re being politically correct; Benn’s being factually correct.

There is no sensible definition of terrorism that doesn’t also encompass the French Resistance, or any UK Resistance that would’ve existed in WWII. You’re refusing to acknowledge that fact, because it would involve you admitting that terrorism can sometimes be the correct thing to do.

David Davis the arch-liberties obsessed Tories?

Rubbish. Did he say anything on the G20 protests when people were kettled? Did he say anything about the £6 million database on protesters across the country?
Does he say anything about the environmentalists who keep getting harassed and arrested across the country?

He is typical of Tories in that they care about “liberties” when it comes to a small bunch of issues, especially when it may affect his main constituency of white men. Why not say something about “stop and search” and how that’s a violation of civil liberties?

If the Tories cared about the issues they’d put Dominic Grieve or Davis at the Home Office. Instead they have Chris “the Wire” Grayling.

Too bad Tony Benn has gotten sucked into this, but I suspect its more the newspaper is being mischievous.

Sunny @ 28,

David Davis the arch-liberties obsessed Tories?

Rubbish. Did he say anything on the G20 protests when people were kettled?

Yes.

Sunny,

He is typical of Tories in that they care about “liberties” when it comes to a small bunch of issues, especially when it may affect his main constituency of white men. Why not say something about “stop and search” and how that’s a violation of civil liberties?

I think some people could infer that a “small bunch of issues” doesn’t matter very much. But when that “small bunch of issues” includes things like fair trials, I think it matters a great deal.

Returning to the OP and the wider topic, I appear to have missed nothing – other commenters here seem of similar mind.

I wonder why some find it so hard to countenance working with their enemies on issues – sorry – where they have common ground. I’m glad the 20-30 Labour MPs, the entire LibDem contingent, and the majority of Tory MPs, haven’t appeared to find it so difficult when resisting Labour’s assault on our liberties in Parliament.

Sunny,

You managed to pull the rabbit out of your hat in the third paragraph.

This was the one conversation I certainly didn’t expect to descend into the cul-de-sac of racial politics.

David Davies – Is it cos he’s white?

The Tories make noises about civil liberties because they are in opposition. In government this will stop. Labour, for all its faults, can point to an actual legislative record on civil liberties. Davis believes in putting convicted criminals to death. He is not a liberal. He is a defeated and disgruntled leadership candidate. Benn said what he said because he knew it would get attention, which has always been his main goal. Davis did what he did to undermine Cameron. You can see why Benn can relate to him.

@22 pagar.

Spot on geezer. The goalposts have moved – question is, when will everybody else?

Jimmy,

Labour, for all its faults, can point to an actual legislative record on civil liberties.

Indeed – Labour attacks all of them.

‘Indeed – Labour attacks all of them.’

Beat me to it. They have a proven track record of violating civil rights and there’s no sign of it stopping. And maybe it’s coz I is white but there is a small minority of Tories who support civil rights – maybe only for temporary electoral advantage – while New Labour are determined to drag us back to the reign of King Richard.

Tony Benn hasn’t changed, the political landscape around him has and while I may personally disagree with him on Europe he’s held that opinion since I was in nappies. I’m not going to suddenly get irate with him now.

He is typical of Tories in that they care about “liberties” when it comes to a small bunch of issues, especially when it may affect his main constituency of white men. Why not say something about “stop and search” and how that’s a violation of civil liberties?

If the Tories cared about the issues they’d put Dominic Grieve or Davis at the Home Office. Instead they have Chris “the Wire” Grayling.

Sunny, in your third paragraph you say that Davis isn’t interested n civil liberties (because he’s a nasty old racist) and then in your fourth paragraph you say that he is. I think you’re getting a little confused.

ukliberty: I think some people could infer that a “small bunch of issues” doesn’t matter very much. But when that “small bunch of issues” includes things like fair trials, I think it matters a great deal.

I’ll come back to a point Tim F made earlier about civil liberties.

Any agenda on civil liberties that does not include the right to: ‘freedom to move’, ‘freedom to politically organise’ (unions), and freedom over their own bodies (abortion) is not worth having.

The Tories are vehemently against all three. I stand corrected on G20, thanks for pointing that out. That still loves several other points.

Hang on, Sunny. Do you mean by the freedom to politically organise as a union, the freedom to unilaterally break employment contracts and prevent other people from engaging in lawful work? Because that is a bit more specific than the right to associate which I don’t think is threatened even under a Tory government.

Freedom of abortion is not going to be touched by any mainstream Tories. Obviously it would be nice to get Nadine et al de-selected to ensure that cannot change. The same freedom to do what you will with your own body also implies no control on drug use, which is a great aim but rather radical for any left or right coalition.

Then you have freedom of movement. I don’t think the Tories are against anyone being able to move within this country. And well freedom of immigration is a wonderful thing to go for, but against I think you would struggle to put together either a left or right wing coalition capable of treating that as a shibbolith. I think your setting your civil liberty standards a little too high for anyone to reach!

[37] Sunny, please produce the evidence that the Tories as a party – i.e. as opposed to a few loud-mouthed individuals – are against abortion. In any case, the phrase is meaningless unless you specify the term of the pregnancy and any justification required – surely none of us think that a woman who is 35 weeks or so pregnant has a right to an abortion because she suddenly fancies one..?

@39 *raises hand*

[40] I knew there’d be one. Presumably you want to decriminalise infanticide, too.

No – I think there’s a massive and obvious difference between something that’s physically part of you and something that isn’t.

Although that said, the ethical foundations behind the pro-infanticide viewpoint are more solid than most positions that people actually adopt on abortion (the Catholics are an exception).

[42] Hmm, interesting. I think your distinction is an aesthetic one, not an ethical one. (I would argue that our censure of public nudity is a matter of aesthetics which we pretend to have something to do with morality – so why not with late-term abortions, too?)

…surely none of us think that a woman who is 35 weeks or so pregnant has a right to an abortion because she suddenly fancies one..?

Lots of people*. There are, I shamelessly assert, two dilemmas when considering abortion: when it’s wrong to end human life, and whether the woman has the right to terminate something that’s physically a part of her. If you agree with the latter (irrelevant of your opinion on the former) you’ll have a tough time arguing against the criminalisation of abortion – at any time until birth (one could, I suppose, argue against terminations from the time that a foetus could survive independently, but…*looks around at pleading faces*…yeah, some other time).

[* Not necessarily me; I don't have a well-formed opinion.]

None of the Tories are “vehemently” anti-abortion, though. In fact, it’s odd how placid opponents of abortion are: even Nadine doesn’t act as if the state’s slaughtering hundreds of thousands of innocents each year.

@25: “I defy any Tory reading this to list anything she did after 1986 which has lasted.”

Strictly, I don’t qualify as I’m not a Tory but how about the privatization of Rolls Royce in 1987? Rolls Royce plc is doing rather well making jet engines. The company had been nationalized in 1971 by the Heath government to save it from collapse, an act of pragmatic politics. It was restored to good commercial health by the Thatcher governments.

The record of her government in the late 1980s was seriously tarnished by Nigel Lawson’s gross mismanagement of the economy in his capacity as Chancellor. He resigned as Chancellor in October 1989 and was succeeded by John Major, who joined us up to the European Exchange Rate Mechanism in October 1990, just about the time inflation took off again.

Sunn,

Any agenda on civil liberties that does not include the right to: ‘freedom to move’, ‘freedom to politically organise’ (unions), and freedom over their own bodies (abortion) is not worth having.

I’m sorry but I can only describe that as fatuous.

I guess this piece means that Dave Osler is against the Tories even when Labour manages to be both more anti-socialist and anti-liberal than the Tories. That makes sense; but does it still make sense fro him to support Labour?

Civil liberties aren’t strictly a party political issue but it’s obvious that a vote for New Labour will be treated as a mandate to continue on the authoritarian path they are on.

And can I take this opportunity to tell Keith Vaz to keep his fucking hands off the games I play on my PS3? ‘Killing’ characters in a videogame is not the same as supporting death threats against a flesh and blood author who may or may not have offended your imaginary friend.

‘Although that said, the ethical foundations behind the pro-infanticide viewpoint are more solid than most positions that people actually adopt on abortion (the Catholics are an exception’

Catholicism is wrong but you are right that they’re philosophically consistant on the subject.

On the other hand the idea that a child becomes a baby only when the umbilical cord is cut is mystical twaddle worthy of Laurie ‘a miscarriage is like going to the toilet’ Penny.

In my new favourite superstore (Morrisons) a week or so back, I noticed a promotion for video games, including one about the sinking of the Titanic, which has been nagging at me since.

I mean, how does a video game about the Titanic disaster develop?

Don Paskini:

Any chance of responding to the substantive points raised as oppose to Tim Worstall-esque nit-picking of one non-central contention?

And I’m sorry everyone, but the libertarians are winning today

Labour’s record on civil rights is absolutely fucking appalling. We’d all be better off just admitting that and then attacking the Tories for all the things they can be attacked for without trying to defend Labour’s indefensible at the same time.

surely none of us think that a woman who is 35 weeks or so pregnant has a right to an abortion because she suddenly fancies one..?

Yes I do. I don’t even know why this question is being raised, unless you think women should be policed or criminalised over their own bodily decisions. I’m for the full decriminalisation of abortion like Canada. Full stop.

Nick: Freedom of abortion is not going to be touched by any mainstream Tories.

And so under what basis are they planning to reduce the 24 week legal limit? Because there certainly aren’t any scientific ones.

I think your setting your civil liberty standards a little too high for anyone to reach!
And that’s my point – right-wingers have their own version of what liberty entails and they’ll stand up for that. Other stuff I mention is a bit too off the charts for them. There are plenty of lefties for free movement across countries.

ven Nadine doesn’t act as if the state’s slaughtering hundreds of thousands of innocents each year.

She calls it the “abortion industry”. She is a loony on the issue

‘I mean, how does a video game about the Titanic disaster develop?’

Maybe you get to play as the iceberg?

Ok, well here goes. I believe that the Human Rights Act, Freedom of Information, (yes I know a PMB but impossible w/o govt support), s28 repeal, to name three off the top of my head were genuinely progressive moves which simply would not have occured under a tory govt, one of which at least they are committed to repealing. I’m certainly not going to defend every line of anti-terrorist legislation but to suggest that the civil liberties option involves voting for the party that campaigned last time on withdrawal from the UN Refugee Convention is simply delusional.

Sunny, have you ever met a woman who’s had an abortion, or even thought about having one?

I’m basically with BenSix on this – I don’t think an embryo is a person, but neither do I think a foetus at 35 weeks is a mere part of a woman’s body comparable with, say, her appendix.

[56] I agree. The problem with Sunny’s position is that by the same logic he would never argue anyone out of trying to kill themselves – an otherwise fit, young extreme depressive might have a notional “right” to suicide but (said he, taking anothere punt) none of us would want them to exercise it.

Sunny, have you ever met a woman who’s had an abortion, or even thought about having one?

Yes, several.

The problem with Sunny’s position is that by the same logic he would never argue anyone out of trying to kill themselves

No, it’s emphatically not. And it’s ludicrously stupid to assume so. Every abortion, even when thought about ten weeks in should be debated and thought through properly. There are ethical, moral and other considerations to be made then too.

But I want to get the state out of legislating on women’s bodies and deciding how she should behave on the issue. It is more immature to assume that if a woman has an abortion, at any time, it is a choice made easily and without much consideration.

Labour’s record on civil rights is absolutely fucking appalling.

Well said, Paul.

And I don’t suppose you’d be willing to bet against my prediction that the next Tory government’s record will be worse?

There are plenty of lefties for free movement across countries.

And all libertarians.

Can’t we find common cause to oppose those who seek to curtail our freedoms, to fight the vapid totalitarians that have appointed themselves to control our lives?

[58] By that logic you would be opposed to the State (via the NHS) providing contraception. Which I’m pretty sure you’re not.

“And I don’t suppose you’d be willing to bet against my prediction that the next Tory government’s record will be worse?”

As bad or worse.

It’s down hill from here. Read your Foucault on the surveillance society. What he would have made of Google…

Start for 10, for Sunny and everyone else:

- What’s the difference between ethics and morals?

Mike Killingworth @ 60

By your logic you need to go back to logic class.

What’s the difference between ethics and morals?

OK. I’ll have a stab.

Morals are the social constructs by which groups of people determine how our lives should be lived.

Ethics relate to the individual’s view of him/her self and the parameters within which he/she chooses to live his/her life.

I want a mark out of 10!!!!

9/10, on account that it’s well formulated and looks deceptively as though the distinction could be maintained.

Nobody gets 10/10 because the terms of effectively synonyms*. For example:

“Ethics are social constructs by which groups of people determine how our lives should be lived”

“Morals relate to the individual’s view of him/her self and the paramaters within which he/she chooses to live his/her life”

–

* This is my own personal belief, being presented as fact. There is no philosophical consensus on the distinction. Which encourages me to believe i’m right.

#46

Why is it fatuous?

The point I was making (on another blog, months ago!) was that the civil liberties people choose to care about reflect their politics. People like pagar like to suggest that we’ve moved on from class politics and that the authoritarian/libertarian divide is more important, but tories (whether with a capital t or not) tend to prioritise civil liberties which affect middle-class and wealthy people rather than ones that affect, for example, working-class migrant women. There are few more fundamental liberties than control over what happens in your own body, or to move your body where you like, or the freedom to organise politically to improve your position. It isn’t possible to move on from class politics while we still live under capitalism. It permeates all politics, and the politics of civil liberties is no different.

What happened to the temporary edit button? That feature was great. Anyway, I was going to say I raise my hand too (from earlier in the thread).

Surely there are no ‘tories’ only ‘Tories’ (unless you are talking about Irish bandits). Think you are getting confused with Conservative vs. conservative.

There is no philosophical consensus on the distinction. Which encourages me to believe i’m right.

You are.

But I’ve never scored 90% at anything before, so let’s try to retain the distinction between ourselves.

#67

Of course you’re right, but you’re also being needlessly pedantic ;p

I meant people who are not paid-up members of the Conservative Party, but share most elements of their outlook (or at least seem to from the vantage point of an unwashed lefty).

Jimmy,

Ok, well here goes. I believe that the Human Rights Act, Freedom of Information, (yes I know a PMB but impossible w/o govt support), s28 repeal, to name three off the top of my head were genuinely progressive moves which simply would not have occured under a tory govt, one of which at least they are committed to repealing.

Yes, great, Labour introduced the HRA (didn’t include Article 13 of the ECHR, right to an effective remedy, btw), spent the next decade undermining it – including its former champion Jack Straw, who was a big fan of it before it went on the statute book. Freedom of Information, likewise – nor did the government give the ICO sufficient resources.

I’m certainly not going to defend every line of anti-terrorist legislation

Good, at least you agree that’s pretty appalling. But it isn’t just about terrorism legislation or law and order legislation, it’s the whole panoply of law, regulation, proposal, surveillance, all the chipping away, in order to assert control (distributed authoritarianism?) and look Tough on whatever we are worried about this week, with no evident thought about the risks and consequences.

We live in a society where it has been seriously proposed by Labour that:

our walking around in public should be recorded (CCTV)
our car journeys should be recorded (ANPR)
our international journeys, whether by air, train, or boat, should be recorded (PNR)
every detail of our telecommunications (except for content, probably on practical rather than principled grounds) should be recorded (IMP)
every child’s interaction with the state should be recorded (ContactPoint)
our every interaction notionally involving proving our identity should be recorded (National Identity Scheme)
our medical records should be available to anyone notionally involved in healthcare (Connecting for Health)
all this data and more should be shared, with Gord knows who, at the whim of Government (data sharing provisions in the Coroners and Justice Bill)
people should be locked up without charge for 90, 60, 56, 42, 28 days.

It has been proposed at times to do away with jury trial for all sorts of cases. It has been proposed to lower the standard of proof for rape, organise crime, and terrorism cases. We have a ridiculous amount of criminal justice legislation but the ‘justice gap’ is ever widening. There are now more types of civil orders that prohibit you from doing things or oblige you to do things on pain of committing a criminal offence. There is more widely drawn (and badly drafted, unscrutinised law) than before – the Labour government is particularly fond of legislation that allows it to make new powers without bothering Parliament with the job of scrutinising them. We’ve got officials at all levels misusing or abusing these widely drawn powers but not being punished. And it’s not just about all that either, it’s about things like reducing funding for legal aid – that means less lawyers and reduced justice for the poor – and a real lack of accountability when it comes to Ministers and public servants failing.

I could go on. I will leave it with this: forgive the near-verbatim quote, but Roger Smith of Justice summed it up for me (at least in part), when he said,

“Labour has been careless about process in the pursuit of desireable goals. … I think that carelessness with process runs through the government. … The Labour government hasn’t been interested terribly in what it would see as the sort of shibboleths of the criminal justice system and that I think has been one major failing. The other, which lies behind the 3,000 new offences, the swathe of legislation which has poured out – I mean, the criminal justice act 2003, 340 sections and 38 schedules. It’s enormous, it’s far too big to be subject to any meaningful Parliamentary scrutiny, full of major changes to legislation and I think it was about changing perception. And there’s been this notion running through criminal justice policy in particular for the Labour government that what matters is showing the public that you’re doing something rather than actually doing it.”

@ 65

It isn’t possible to move on from class politics while we still live under capitalism.

Capitalism is not the issue except for the insidious symbiotic relationship that has been established between government and the major corporations.

The only difference between the UK in 2009 and the DDR in 1979 is the level of subtlety used to exercise control, masked, as it is here, by the facade of democracy.

If Tony Benn can grasp that, surely we all can…..

“The only difference between the UK in 2009 and the DDR in 1979 is the level of subtlety used to exercise control, masked, as it is here, by the facade of democracy.”

Well, that and the forced labour camps. And the Stasi. And the lack of food. Or other basic goods.

(You’ve been doing well tonight, please tell me you were being sarcastic and it got lost in typelation?)

Tim f,

#46 Why is it fatuous?

Surely it’s self-evident – it entails a wholesale rejection of all other civil liberties improvements on offer without consideration.

As pagar asked, “Can’t we find common cause to oppose those who seek to curtail our freedoms, to fight the vapid totalitarians that have appointed themselves to control our lives?”

How’s the pottery buisness going Anthony. That person has been worth a couple of million votes away from Labour for decades.

Accepted that the relative levels of prosperity are not comparable, but there is a sense in which the up front totalitarianism of a Stalinist state was honest by comparison with the more subtle statist control we are moving towards.

We are being persuaded to become complicit in our own subjugation by abrogating our right to individual freedom and responsibility. Because the ruling authority offers to insure us against the associated risks.

We need to be vigilant because that strategy has more chance of success.

ukliberty,

I would agree with much of your post but I the argument I was addressing was the idea that a conservative government would improve the situation. That strikes me as extremely unlikely.

Sunny,

I wouldn’t suggest that women have abortions on a whim and don’t take the decision seriously. The problem some of us have when you say “I want to get the state out of legislating on women’s bodies and deciding how she should behave on the issue” is we feel that at some point during the pregnancy, and I accept that from a medical or moral standpoint it is impossible to say exactly when, it is no longer just her body.

I believe that as far as possible the moral decisions around abortion should be left to the women concerned and not made by the state, but I do think that abandoning time limits altogether would be going too far.

Pagar,

If you think Britain in 2009 is like the DDR in 1979, then you have completely lost the plot.

Best to take off the tinfoil hat, put away the von Mises, the Hayek and the Nozick, and step out into the real world for a few hours.

EU? Abortions? I thought this thread was about Tony Benn.

It does feel a bit like Mark Thomas and Billy Bragg releasing a charity single for the Atlantic Alliance, but I think that’s because the Conservatives have softened rather than Mr Benn hardening.

At the heart of Liberalism is (imho) individualism – the idea that you can’t just write off huge sections of society, or even a single individual, without dealing with the root causes that affect that individual.

I always saw Benn as an anti-Reaganite rather than de facto Socialist; I’m sure we all remember him on Newsnight, when the Iraq invasion was being played on the screen behind him. He looked at the interviewer and said:

“You are watching people being murdered.” Not “An invasion” not “An illegal occupation,” not even “A regime change”, but individual people with lives and feelings being murdered for reasons scarcely connected to their own existence.

That to me was Tony Benn – the man who saw the individual spirit behind the broadbrush stroke of “evil”, the narrative that better serves political masters.

God, that sounds like an obituary.

[79] It’s called a winding thread. No known preventative.

[77] At the risk of winding up Paul Sagar again, I have to say I’ve changed my mind. (I’ve slept on it…) Sunny has to be right, unless we are willing to criminalise (attempted) suicide amongst pregnant women. There are two issues of course – the rights and wrongs of what the woman does, and whether the State should interfere through the criminal justice system. Actually, I think there is a third issue – the need for the State to be a rational actor in order to deserve the respect of the citizen. And so the thread winds further…

Best to take off the tinfoil hat, put away the von Mises, the Hayek and the Nozick, and step out into the real world for a few hours.

Or not post at 1.00am when the single malt tends to fuel the hyperbole !!!

OK. Would you be prepared to accept that the UK is more like the DDR in 1979 than it was 12 years ago?

Do you agree with me that, unless we change direction, we will be more like it still by 2020?

Paul, I think that deep down you are a libertarian- you just don’t know it yet.

“Would you be prepared to accept that the UK is more like the DDR in 1979 than it was 12 years ago?”

No.

One very obvious counter example is that one of the defining characteristics of the DDR was the restrictions on people moving to live and work in other parts of Europe. It is much easier to live and work in other parts of Europe in 2009 than it was in 1997.

Hi Paul,

Why so grumpy?

“Any chance of responding to the substantive points raised as oppose to Tim Worstall-esque nit-picking of one non-central contention?”

I thought your substantive point was that Tony Benn was an insane proto-communist. He wasn’t.

As for civil rights, Labour’s record is mixed, with some absolutely appalling policies and some good ones.

Don,

Grumpy because trying to write PhD proposal, have nothing to say, don’t know what I want to spend 3 years working on, and am feeling sorry for myself (ergo, apologies).

My substantive point was that Benn was out of touch enough with reality so as to help keep an unpopular prime minister in power for long enough to radically transform this country in ways that I think we would both wish hadn’t happened. Benn’s not a hero. We may differ about just how looney he was – but at the end of the day, he and Foot enabled Thatcher. I want that acknowledged more often.

Pagar,

Well, OK, I guess I’d have to cede that, but it looks like kind of a vacuous statement given how radically different from the DDR we still are.

And no, I am not secretly a libertarian. I am aware of how messy the world actually is.

Edit: I’ll cede that given obvious counter-points like Don’s, hence ceding only the point that Britain has become more authoritarian in some ways – but moving back to me original point which is that any comparison with the DDR is vacuous and silly.

Hi Paul,

you have my every sympathy – if it helps, sounds like what every prospective PhD student goes through at roughly the point you are at. Good luck!

I don’t think it’s right to link Foot in with Benn (whichever one you are a supporter of, or like me neither). They had very different visions of what democratic socialism meant. The first explusions of Militant took place under Foot, for example. There might be a legitimate comparison between the Foot of the 50s and the Benn of the 80s in some aspects, but not between the Foot of the 70s/80s (an altogether more constructive beast) and Benn in that period.

It is much easier to live and work in other parts of Europe in 2009 than it was in 1997.

And easy to understand why so many Britons have opted to do so……

Pagar, Don:

“In all governments, there is a perpetual intestine struggle, open or secret, between Authority and Liberty; and neither of them can ever absolutely prevail in the contest. A great sacrifice of liberty must necessarily be made in every government; yet even the authority, which confines liberty, can never, and perhaps ought never, in any constitution, to become quite entire and uncontroulable.”

- David Hume, On the Origin of Government.

(See, the past is relevant to today. This is my excuse for being online.)