The West, Islam and the nobility of the human spirit

There are times through the course of history ,when the actions of individuals and communities does something to lift the spirit of humanity; in the same way that the actions of others may do something to depress and subjugate that spirit. These contrasting moments often seem to appear in juxtaposition, where an act of oppression may be quickly followed by something sublime or vis -versa.

One such moment was 9/11 where an act of nihilistic rage was  followed by the courage and nobility of  the survivors, the New York Fire and Police Departments, and the passengers of Flight 93. In that single day we were collectively smitten and lifted by the actions of the murderous and the noble in an event that would shape relationships across the world for what has already been a decade, but paradoxically it was neither the murderous nor the noble who would have the greatest impact that day. That accolade must go to the actions of two devout Christians, George Bush and Tony Blair, who decided to respond to violence with violence, to claim an eye for their eye.  This is not to say that violence does not some times inevitably bring about more violence or that some problems do not require the violence of the state, however there are times when the resort to violence can and must be seen as an act of mediocrity. Acts which stand in quiet contrast to the actions of  the noble. Declaring a military and intelligence war on Islamic Terror represents an example of one such act of spiritual and political mediocrity. It was an act of mediocrity that would nuture and feed what it sought to destroy.

Irrespective of any questionable theological  justification, the violence of  Islamic Terror, has an essential charachteristic, it is violence that is justified by a doctrine of moral and spritual virtue. The West is struggled against because it is seen as decadent, immoral and without virtue. It is often portrayed, for good reason, as imperialistic and as exploitative, and for its seemingly arbitary use of power. But the West is also struggled against because it is successful. Whatever it's flaws, the West offers its citizens greater freedom; for those who are sucessful it offers greater material wealth and in some parts it offers greater protection to the weak and vulnerable. But above all and whilst imperfectly applied, perhaps the greatest virtue of the enlightened West are the principles of justice and equality that have been integral to its progress and success. Whatever, Islamic Terror might say about about the decadence of the West, the thing that it really fears is its virtue, its nobility and the perceived legitimacy of its justice.

So whilst the terrorists might proclaim western decadence and imperialism as their target, their real objective then and now remains the deconstruction of western virtues and the nobility of its values. When perceived in this way the attacks on the Twin Towers might have failed, if their lasting legacy had been the nobility of the survivors, the New York Fire Department and the passengers of Flight 93. But their spiritual virtue has been lost in the thinly veiled war on terror that has come dangerously close to being and becoming a war on Islam. Thus 9/11 became a triumph for the terrorists, because what Bush and Blair failed to understand then and what nobody seems to have understood since, is that the correct response to Islamic Terror is not state Terror. The correct response was never Iraq nor Guantanamo, nor Rendition. It is not the brutality of waterboarding nor the detention of those may or may not be innocent, without trial and justice. It is not machine gunning civilians, nor raping girls and murdering their families. The correct response to the crimes of 9/11 was always due process.

In reacting to the attacks of 9/11 without understanding the importance of virtue and the nobility of the human spirit, Bush and Blair responded predictably and with a mediocrity that would entrench and embed Islamic Terror for at least a generation. They failed to understand that the solution to Terror within Islam, is an Islamic world that shares and contributes to the success of the West and is a full partner in its aspirations. The paradox is that , if the West is not able to include Islam within its project it will ultimately destroy the very principles upon which it was founded and which justify its existence.      

It is with this in mind that our leaders should view the current struggle of the Arab people for greater democracy and justice. In this time, when the peoples of the Middle East are responding to despotism with incredible bravery and nobility, we should support their aspiration for freedom and not fear the choices that their freedom brings. Because in pursuing liberty and in the struggle for their own freedom, the men, women and children of islam will not only make the world a better place for themselves, but in doing so will wield the ideas and values that Islamic Terror most fears. 

Everyday revolution and the big society

For most people the idea of the Big Society remains rather vague. For many it means absolutely nothing, for others it is an internet/marketing derived buzzword that has somehow been adopted into the language of government.

We want to give citizens, communities and local government the power and information they need to come together, solve the problems they face and build the Britain they want. We want society – the families, networks, neighbourhoods and communities that form the fabric of so much of our everyday lives – to be bigger and stronger than ever before. Only when people and communities are given more power and take more responsibility can we achieve fairness and opportunity for all.

Building the Big Society, Cabinet Office, 2010 

This is all very nice and aspirational, but in the context of the cuts to public spending it is meaningless. In this instance the use of the term Big is not better, it fails to describe and represent the dark and the light of an idea that on the one hand is simply the ideological cloak for ‘big cuts’ and 'smash the state' and on the other has the potential to genuinely transform the nature of social relations in the UK. But regardless of what it might be, the cuts are happening and into the vacuum that is being created, we are presented with the inevitable progress of the large business service corporations, because the progressive and the left quite understandably view the whole agenda with suspicion and more. And because the objective, of giving power back to the people and their communities, that lies at the centre of the ‘Big Society’, is often viewed by the progressively inclined as libertarian and individualistic; seen as a classic attempt on the part of the Right to distance itself from its responsibilities toward the socially excluded.

But that charge is based upon the premise that the existence of the state is somehow in the interests of the dis empowered and excluded. That somehow the very existence of a government department, with policies and officials is sufficient to bring about social justice and equality. This juxtaposition of the concept of the state with the ideals of progressive politics has led us to believe that the well being of the oppressed can actually only be defended by the traditions and organisations of the left; principally the labour and union movement. Whilst the labour movement has gone a long way to defend the rights of the working class, the articulation of the institutionalised left/ public sector/ and the apparatus of the state can and should no longer be viewed as the resistance of the oppressed. It is the resistance of the employed and the organised, and whilst it may well in many instances be progressive it is at most the resistance of the middle, rather than that of the dispossessed. 

The record and experience of the New Labour government provides us with some indication of the difficulty that New Labour had in achieving it’s progressive ambitions through the organisations and institutions of the state. For example despite its acknowledged commitment to the eradication of child poverty, in 2008/09 after over 10 years of progressive government, and before the onset of the recession, 2.8 million children were still living in relative poverty. Whilst this represented an improvement of 600,000 over the all time high of 1998/99 it still fell far short of what Tony Blair and Gordon Brown aspired to when they came into office. All of this despite the significant amounts of funding that had gone into a broad range of initiatives, from Sure Start and the Children’s Centres to Tax Credits and Every Child Matters. The inference must inevitably be that, child poverty and social inequality cannot be tackled by policy and money alone and that in the end, the power of the state is limited in its ability to reach out to the communities that it most needs to serve. The lesson of the New Labour decade may well be that communities cannot be governed into opportunity and that the power to bring about change will not always fall within the remit of the state and its infrastructure.

In arguing that the ultimate failure of New Labour to redress social inequality lies in the limitations of state authority, I am not suggesting that the retrenchment of the state associated with the advent of the Big Society is not indicative of a reactionary agenda, or that if left to the Tories and the big corporations things won't get much worse. Because politically, the meanings that we attribute to the idea of the Big Society would indeed seem to draw on a range of conservative ideals, from the neo-liberalism of the citizen as consumer to the moral and social values of the responsible citizen. Nevertheless, the paradox that underpins the idea of the Big Society is that when the power of the state is withdrawn the citizen consumer might actually be a citizen activist, or even a pragmatic revolutionary drawing on communitarian ideas of the empowered and emancipated stakeholder, and whilst the concept of the Big Society could well be framed in the language of the Right, the lived reality could also be participatory, emancipatory and inclusive. But that will only happen if progressive politics recognises that the public sector is not the only vehicle through which the interests of the poor and oppressed may be advanced. 

The paradox for Cameron is that the emancipatory potential and ultimate success of the Big Society, will not lie in its ideological coherence or in letting George Osborne and Eric Pickles run riot, but rather in what happens once the genie really is out of the bottle. If progressive politics gets its act together, the political outcomes of the Big Society will be determined by the creativity, resistance and emancipatory ambition of ordinary people in the context of their everyday lives and rather than becoming another play ground for global capital, may actually become a battle ground for the people.          

"We were on a break" The real David Cameron

Its been an interesting couple of weeks in politics. In lieu of there being much to discuss, the debate around the referendum has become increasingly petulent. In the context of that debate we now have what might be described as a temporary break in the Clegg/Cameron relationship, not unlike that other break that Ross and Rachel once had in Friends. Whilst Clegg remains relatively faithful to the spirit of the coalition David has rushed off to indulge in an orgy of conservatism with his old chums.

In what has been a carefully choreagraphed and planned campaign, they began with the onslaught against immigrants. As we all know for the Conservative Party, immigrants are the cause of a great many of our woes. They bring crime, forced and sham marriages, abuse of the benefit system, place a burden on schools and hospitals, and take jobs from hard working Britains. Well some hard working Britains because David introduced a new notion towards the end of his speech:

The real issue is this: migrants are filling gaps in the labour market left wide open by a welfare system that for years has paid British people not to work.
That's where the blame lies - at the door of our woeful welfare system, and the last government who comprehensively failed to reform it.
So immigration and welfare reform are two sides of the same coin.
Put simply, we will never control immigration properly unless we tackle welfare dependency.

In a single paragraph that 'not quite so nice David Cameron' had brought together two of the Conservative Party's favourite targets; the undeserving poor and immigrants; all done in what he argued was an attempt  to starve extremist parties of the oxygen of public anxiety. In actual fact what he was seeking to do was to appropriate the language and political discourse of the right and unsurprisingly the BNP were outraged at the Prime Minister's foray into their ideological territory. But, 'not quite so nice David's' break, with the supposedly moderating influence of Nick Clegg didn't stop with immigrants and the economically inactive, and yesterday another target of his approbrium got the other barrel.

Alcoholics, drug addicts and people who are obese are apparently to lose their benefits and are to be encouraged (forced) back into the job market. Supporting people who have to deal with these difficulties is  is fine, encouraging them to work is fine, but as the experience of the Labour government illustrated, getting people off drugs and drink just isn't that easy. So what we will be faced with, is a situation where increasing numbers of people are thrown off benefits because they don't conform to the Conservative ideal.

Every country will have a proportion of their citizens who are either economically inactive or who do not appear to contribute to the good of the nation; some will be drug addicts or alcoholics, some will be artists whose pictures will one day sell for millions of pounds; others will be members of a government who will lose their seats at the next election, but all of them have the right to our support when times are hard.
In choosing to target the socially vulnerable in the way that they have done over the last couple of weeks, we have gained an insight into the real David Cameron and the heart and soul of conservative Britain. And Nick just in case you still havn't realised, David has been cheating on you with Eric Pickles and George Osborne and if he tells you, that 'you were on a break' you really shouldn't forgive him; although I suspect you will.           

Independence Red

I'm not quite sure why I've called this blog Independence Red. It just felt right. Its got something to do with the importance of Karl Marx as a social theorist and a recognition that despite the social progress that many in the West have made and the so called End of History, ultimately we all still live in what can only be described as a global capitalist society, one in which so many of us benefit from the exploitation of the world's poor.

In the light of that acknowledgement I guess I've called it Red, because Red remains a symbol of the fight against the exploitation of the poor and oppressed, but it doesn't feel like a class war. In this post modern age of digital media the boundaries have blurred and the certainties of traditional class identities have disappeared and been replaced by 'the middle' who count and 'the others' who don't. I guess that is why so many on the left are pre-occupying themselves with re-inventing socialism as purples and whites in the context of policies that in reality can best be described as blue with pink dots.

That would be where independence comes in, where the issue is not in changing the colour of progressive politics but rather its focus. The fight becomes the struggle of vulnerable and exploited people, who experience their oppression not as an economic collective, but as individuals, families and communities engaged in an everyday campaign to maintain their independence, their integrity and for some their very existence.