March 24, 2010
Priceless
I should probably write something highfalutin’ about the budget.
But I’m exhausted. Listen to this instead.
Because Pigs Are Only Human, After All
Confession time: I really don’t like going on demonstrations. It’s not so much the standing around for hours, bored, whilst the police stare at me in a menacing fashion (though that is unpleasant). It’s more because I’m a thoroughgoing misanthropist with a low tolerance for twits. As a result, I find demonstrations irritating because of the people I find myself alongside.
Whilst almost everyone at a leftie demo is well intentioned, there’s a lot of muppets. Take the greasy-haired snivelling students trying to flog you the Socialist Worker Party rag. Looking snooty when you turn them down, it’s highly tempting to shout: “excuse me, but as a member of the Socialist Worker Party when was the last time you actually did a day’s work?” Then there’s the self-righteous preachers who always manage to magic-up a microphone in order to shout idiocies such as (and I quote from Saturday) “what is happening today is exactly like Italy in the 1920s!”
There’s the usual black-flag waving anarchists, screaming about how they hate authority – even when (pace subsequent lies and distortion) the authority of the police is presently preventing their weedy little bodies being kicked to pieces by a gang of drunk football hooligans. There’s the mandatory contingent of hemp-wearing vegetarian environmentalists, handing out leaflets about how we need to cycle everywhere and eat nothing but lettuce to save the planet. About how we need a “green new deal” that can rescue the planet and create jobs…with no actual economics printed anywhere on their recycled-paper dross. Then there’s the hard-line wingnuts, such as the lady I bumped into on Saturday. Selling copies of her magazine “1917”, she was part of the International Bolshevik Tendency (total worldwide membership: 100), which advocates universal gun ownership and the right of North Korea to have nuclear weapons to defend itself from capitalist imperialism.
Finally there’s the awful, insufferable, toneless, out-of-time chants and songs, most of which are manifestly idiotic. “Black and white, together we are dynamite”? That’s right. At an anti-racist protest, why not sing about how race-mixing leads to explosion? Genius.
The above all combine to make protesting a fairly irritating experience. So why do I go? Usually because I think a cause is sufficiently worth throwing my weight behind; suffering packs of twits for a day is a relatively small price to endure. It’s also made more bearable if I go with friends so we can bitch and moan together.
But why am I telling you this? Because personal emotive reactions matter to how one views a situation and a group of people, and how that influences one’s action. And everybody has such emotive reactions – including especially the police.
Following my blog about the Bolton anti-EDL protest, several people have quizzed me about what the police motives for misrepresenting the UAF/anti-EDL protest could possibly be. Am I just being paranoid? Why would the boys in blue play silly buggers? Here’s some thoughts.
The first thing to remember is that the UAF initially attempted to disrupt the police’s plans for two separate demonstrations. As a result, police officials may well have sought to teach the UAF a lesson. Mess with our plans and we’ll arrest a lot of you (perhaps also to gather information). Then we’ll tell the media that you were a trouble-causing minority, which will hurt your cause.
I think that’s very plausible, but there’s something deeper to consider. Something more worrying for those whose default attitude is to view the police as neutral enforcers of the fair rule of law.
When I recently blogged about police spin regarding the tragic death of Ashleigh Hall, “Yurrzem” made the following insightful comment:
“Those of us who remember the miners’ strike have a naturally sceptical attitude to the media and the police. It’s notable that a lot of the today’s senior coppers must have cut their teeth at the time.”
This was followed-up by John Q. Publican:
“…the generation of top coppers who have led, planned, directed and then lied about the litany of over-reactions, brutality and political violence were learning how to behave as policemen in the 1970s and 1980s.
There are forces which have gotten past this, because some of the honest coppers from back then got promoted; but in the Met, Sir Paul Condon drove out progressive and liberal senior officers and actively pursued an agenda of social authoritarianism and the suppression of protest. His protégés, fast-tracked by him because they were his type of copper, are now running the Met and in charge of the various high-profile anti-protest operations; Stephenson, Blair and company.”
I’m not qualified to comment on John Q’s specific assessments of individual police officers – but the overall picture looks convincing. Top coppers in charge today cut their teeth when the police was crushing organised labour at the behest of the Thatcher government.
Left wing demos are still characterised by considerable numbers of union activists, usually with branch banners proudly on display. The police in charge of contemporary operations must surely view left-wing activism and organised labour events with enormous suspicion and hostility. Why wouldn’t they, given their past experiences? No doubt most police are contemptuous of the EDL, many of whom are probably known as petty criminals and football hooligans already. But it’s entirely reasonable to suppose that the police top brass has a particular antipathy towards, and suspicion of, organised left-wing protest. If you’d made your name and rank cracking miner’s skulls in the mid-1980s, wouldn’t this be your attitude too?
We’d all like to live in a world where the police are apolitical, neutral enforcers of fair laws. But the police – and this includes its commanders – are just people. They too have prejudices, allegiances and suspicions, built-up over a lifetime of experience. I don’t go on as many demos as I could because I find many of my own “side” irritating in the extreme. It’s reasonable to suppose that top police officers are highly suspicious of leftist protests, for the same basic reasons of antipathy rooted in personal prejudice and animosity. Accordingly, they will be happy to do left-wing protests down, be it through arrests on the day or in the press afterwards. Pigs, after all, are only human.
Yet once that fact is recognised, it should be up to our elected politicians to introduce measures safe-guarding against, and correcting for, police prejudice.
I am not, however, holding my breath.
March 23, 2010
Social Housing, Tories and Poisoned Chalices
Last night I attended the Fabian Society/TUC event “The Real Middle England: Lessons for the Left”. Housing Minister John Healey and the TUC’s Paul Nowak were the panellists. Both discussed strategies for how the “real middle England” – those earning around the median full-time wage of c.£24,000, and households with a total income of between £14,000 and £33,000 per year – could both be appealed to during the election and, more importantly safeguarded and helped over the next 5 years.
Inevitably discussion turned towards avoiding a return to recession and protecting the fragile economic recovery. Nowak was forthright about the need for an investment-led future, and the importance of considering the option of increased taxation as an alternative to pure cuts. Healey agreed, yet was resistant to the idea that – as Chair Nick Timmins suggested – the Government plans of halving the deficit in 4 years, including swinging (and never before witnessed) 25% cuts in some areas of public spending, was simply unrealistic. Both panellists emphasised the unpopularity of cuts, and the danger of a vicious Tory assault on the public sector.
Opting to throw a curve-ball at Healey in particular, however, I offered a provocative suggestion from the floor: given that cuts are coming and will have to be made regardless of who is in power, do Labour really want to win the next election? Already out of ideas and looking exhausted after 13 long years, does Labour want to be wielding the axe during a period of austerity that many voters will blame upon the party? The popular backlash could put Labour out of power for a generation – whereas if the Tories win, it could be they who earn the hatred and disapprobation of the electorate, allowing a speedy return for a Labour government.
To his credit, Healey rose to the challenge and gave me a heartfelt and sincere answer. For him, there was one reason above all others that the Tories must not be allowed to win: the devastating impact of a Conservative win upon the 8 million vulnerable tenants living in social housing.
Healey claimed to have seen Tory documents which reveal plans to increase rents for social housing tenants by two or three times, taking them to near-par with the private sector. At the same time licensing agreements would be drastically reduced, thus removing housing security from some of Britain’s most vulnerable. Healey explained that the Tory plans were acquired via Freedom of Information requests, and that Cameron has refused to deny that they are at the forefront of Conservative policy.
Healey looked me in the eye and explained that he wanted a Labour win. Not just to keep his job. Not just because as a minister he has to beat the party drum. But because he felt it was his duty to keep the Tories out, protecting those at the bottom.
Nowak agreed, and added the point that whereas a Labour government would have to make cuts it would see this as a challenge to be faced down. By contrast, the Tories will see cost-cutting as a welcome excuse to slash the state, hurting those people at the bottom, but also in the squeezed middle.
These are good arguments, possibly the best that can be given in reply to my challenge. But here’s the rub. They all fall dead when a simple point is recalled.
If Labour win the next election the chances of emulating the Tories post-1992 are enormous. If the party is subsequently out of power for a generation, the Tories will carry forward all their plans – not for one term, but for decades. The brute fact is that the Conservatives are going to win an election eventually. We just have to accept that. But once we do accept this brute fact, it strongly implies that the poisoned chalice of the next ballot is the “best” one for the party of the privileged few to triumph in.
–
Read more about Tory plans for social housing at Labour List and the Unite website. Sunder Katwala at Next Left blogged last night’s event.
March 22, 2010
Teabaggers
As everyone will now know, healthcare reform has been achieved in America. The bill doesn’t go as far as many hoped, but I think it’s important to recall the bizarre political context of contemporary America, the fierce opposition Obama encountered, and the pusillanimous behaviour of right-wing Democrats which threatened to scupper the bill completely.
Not perfect, but a big step forward. Given that Obama’s presidency would have been dead in the water if this bill had failed – and given that it puts clear distance between the (loyal) Democrats and Republicans – this event may well turn out to be a watershed in US politics. It’s been 30 years since Reagan took that country in a markedly right-wing direction after around 40 years of more left-liberal tendencies. We’re due for a swing back to the side of sanity, and it may have just begun.
Of course, not everybody will be pleased. Glenn Beck might already be dead from apoplexy, which risks leaving his fanatical “tea partiers” leaderless. Indeed, one can only hope. For without Beck (and his ilk) to whip them into a frenzy, will right-wing Americans continue to tolerate – or worse, participate – in behaviour such as this?
March 21, 2010
EDL, Police Misrepresentation and Future Tactics
The mainstream media reporting on Saturday’s English Defence League and Unite Against Fascism demonstrations in Bolton has proved worryingly misleading. It indicates that important lessons must be learned by UAF and all those who oppose the growth of the far-right EDL.
Frustratingly I was stuck in a 2-hour tailback on the M6 on Saturday morning, so missed the first stages of the counter-demo. However, I’ve been able to piece together the following from speaking to people in the afternoon and from media reports (though more on whether to trust those later).
Essentially, the EDL and UAF demos were scheduled to begin around 1pm. Greater Manchester Police had established two distinct protest areas for each group, separated by barriers (and later by police with dogs standing between the barriers). However, UAF protestors attempted to occupy the entire protest area in the morning, in a bid to deny the EDL the ability to protest at all. The police response was one of zero-tolerance: riot police and horses were sent in, and the area cleared. The majority of UAF arrests – that have been so publicised in the media – were therefore made in the morning before the EDL had arrived. Certainly, I only saw one arrest in the entire course of the afternoon, and nothing like the 55 reported.
I must therefore say that it was a tactical mistake by the UAF organisers to attempt to take over the entire protest area. Police spokesmen had already been bragging about how the day would test their resolve, and that they were going to show zero-tolerance. By attempting to subvert the police’s plans for two controlled demonstrations, UAF invited the police firstly to initiate arrests, and secondly – as we shall see – to spin the day against the anti-fascist protest and in favour of the EDL. Let me be clear: I have no problem in principle with taking measures to prevent the EDL from being able to demonstrate at all. Yet tactics must be picked carefully, and yesterday they weren’t.
However, this does not excuse – though perhaps it helps to explain – the shockingly misleading reporting that has subsequently been carried in virtually all of the mainstream media.
Let’s start with the figures for participation. By late Saturday evening a uniform figure of 2,000 EDL and 1,500 UAF was being carried by most outlets. Yet this figure cannot possibly be correct. By my reckoning, the anti-EDL protest outnumbered its rival by at least 3-1. Indeed, the UAF and affiliates were contained in two separate “kettles”, versus the EDL’s one. Furthermore, the UAF “kettle” facing that of the EDL was manifestly and considerably larger in size, as anybody present could have seen. There is simply no way that the official figures being presented are correct.
Yet by carrying these figures – and by emphasising the greater number of arrests on the UAF side due to the morning attempt at taking over the entire protest area – a very disturbing thing has occurred: the anti-EDL/UAF protest has been represented as a minority of troublemakers. The EDL is now being portrayed as the bigger (i.e. more popular) group, and that causing the least trouble.
Yet, again, this is highly misleading. The anti-EDL/UAF-side of the protest was characterised by your normal myriad of leftist protestors. Old men in flat caps, girls in punk gear, trades unions representatives, middle-aged women with prams. Standard fare for anyone who has ever been on a leftwing demo. The EDL side, however, was difficult to distinguish from what most of its members are – a gathering of angry, drunk, football hooligans. Indeed, this assessment was backed up by more than just appearances. At about 2.30pm, missiles started to be launched from the EDL side of the barriers. Starting with cigarette lighters, those on the UAF side soon found themselves under a rain of coins, half-filled plastic bottles, crushed beer cans and, eventually, glass bottles. In the end I counted at least 5 glass bottles smashing to the ground, narrowly avoiding the heads of people on the anti-EDL side. This continued for over an hour, until the police finally responded to calls of “do your job!” and cleared the EDL out of the protest area.
It’s worth repeating: although some UAF protesters picked up the missiles thrown at them and returned the favour to the other side, the vast majority of missiles were being thrown by the EDL. Indeed, the situation started to become so dangerous that the police had to clear the EDL away. Not the UAF/anti-EDL protesters. And it’s worth noting that this also gives good indication of the relative size of each group: the police cleared out the thugs first, because there were fewer of them.
Yet you will search high and low to find reports of how the protest ended in the mainstream news reporting. Some stories state that two UAF protesters suffered minor head injuries – but where are the accompanying clarifications regarding how those head injuries were (likely) received, and why this resulted in the protest being cleared? I don’t know if the girl I saw take a lucozade bottle in the face was one of the reported injured, but she was lucky not to lose an eye.
What appears to have happened is that the mainstream media has taken its news reports – which show a suspicious uniformity given how few journalists were present – from wire agencies, and from (surprise surprise) police statements. Certainly, the police must be issuing the (manifestly wrong) participation figures.
The result is that an incredibly skewed image of the protests has emerged. This is made worse by the media focusing especially on dramatic images such as this. To the unsuspecting eye, that looks photo like a raving, snarling, out-of-control rioter. Of course, if the context was that the woman had been snatched at random (as happens at protests) and was having her arms twisted behind her back, that could simply be a look of pain and outrage. Without the context, we don’t know. But using that image and similarly confrontational depictions of the anti-EDL/UAF protest, along with reports of anti-fascist demonstrators being arrested, re-enforces the impression that the anti-EDL protest constituted a minority of troublemakers.
Yet as those of us who were actually there will tell you, the exact opposite was the case.
Those who oppose the rise of the EDL must learn important lessons from this. Although the UAF/anti-EDL demonstration won the protest on the day (it was the EDL that was forcibly cleared for its violent behaviour) it looks like the EDL have won the battle nonetheless. The news reporting – helped by misleading police figures and emphasis on the early UAF attempt to occupy the entire protest area – has, if anything, allowed the EDL to come off best. Given the now clear bias of the police against the UAF, and the media’s supplicant willingness to uphold that interpretation, we must all trend incredibly carefully from now on. This is not an even battlefield we find ourselves upon.
–
Daily Heil Extra
It’s worth casting a quick eye over the Daily Heil’s reporting of the demo. The text of the article is predictable, and for the most part churns out the wire agency dogrell with the standard right-wing twist.
But what’s really interesting is to note the pictures. Observe how all the pictures of the anti-EDL/UAF protest show protesters in direct confrontation with police, with people snarling and shouting and apparently causing trouble. Interesting that the two EDL photos paint a different picture entirely. The first could be mistaken for an England international pre-match crowd shot. The second is clearly just a good-natured lady having a bit of a joke.
From shots like these, you’d never guess which side was throwing the bottles and the coins at people’s heads. They say a picture paints a thousand words, and indeed the Daily Heil appears to know full-well that it can imply its leanings and allegiances via its photos and not its words.
They also say that leopards don’t change their spots. So that’s two clichés that the paper of Oswald Mosley and support for Hitler has endeavoured to prove.
March 20, 2010
EDL Counter Demo, Bolton
EXTRA UPDATE: the MSM reporting on today’s protests that is now emerging is horribly misleading. The numbers being presented cannot possibly be correct. Accusations of violence against UAF are dubious to say the least. No mention is being made of the fact the police cleared the EDL from the protest area because they were hurling glass bottles at a peaceful counter-demonstration. I will blog at length on this matter on Sunday. To say that I am disturbed and concerned at the police reports and MSM coverage is an understatement.
UPDATE: After an hour of the EDL throwing bottles and coins, the police finally cleared them out of the main area of protest. A victory for the counter demo.
Some people say there was heavy-handed policing this morning, but I was stuck on the M6 so I don’t know.
Will blog if anything interesting happens today.
March 19, 2010
In Praise Of…Graham Allen MP
Following on from the earlier post about teenage fathers, it’s nice to see that not all MPs are platinum imbeciles.
Although Graham Allen lays it on a bit thick in his last paragraph, this is a refreshing perspective.
(h/t Palermomike)
Teenage Girls Have Sex. Get over it.
Liberal Conspiracy recently reported the hilarious, if disturbing, remarks of Tory MP Tim Loughton:
“We need a message that actually it is not a very good idea to become a single mum at 14. [It is] against the law to get pregnant at 14. How many kids get prosecuted for having underage sex? Virtually none. Where are the consequences of breaking the law and having irresponsible underage sex? There aren’t any.”
So, The Guardian asked, should there be prosecutions?
“We need to be tougher. Without sounding horribly judgmental, it is not a good idea to be a mum at 14. You are too young, throwing away your childhood and prospects of developing a career.”
Without sounding horribly judgmental, anybody who thinks that there are no consequences to getting pregnant, and that a criminal record promotes a happy childhood and helps develop a healthy career, is a Platinum Imbecile.
Platinum Imbecility aside, there’s something to note about the bizarre universe Mr Loughton resides in: girls get pregnant by magic.
In the universe I inhabit, pregnancy outside of IVF clinics requires two people, male and female. Assuming that most teenage girls are having sex with teenage boys, the preoccupation with “teenage mothers” is thus striking. Why don’t we hear more about “teenage fathers”?
Sadly it’s not just idiotic Tories that insist on believing that Britain’s teenage girls are experiencing immaculate conceptions. Idiotic Labour MPs are possessed of this bizarre mysticism too. Check out this obnoxious nonsense from Tom Harris. Teenage mothers are the problem, he shrieks. But what about the boys who are getting them (if you’ll pardon my French) up the duff? Not a word about the lads.
Things become especially bizarre when we recall Don Paskini’s post highlighting that teenage motherhood can be an overwhelmingly positive experience. It’s just not the case that teenage motherhood necessarily results in packs of feral youths roaming the streets, gleefully breaking Britain. The problem is not with teenage motherhood, it’s with poor parenting. And that can happen whatever a parent’s age. A more sensible attitude, therefore, entails developing strategies to aid parents in difficult circumstances, not obsessing about their age and stigmatising them accordingly.
And you know what? I really have no problem with teenagers having sex – and even getting pregnant – per se. There, I said it. Scandalous. But it strikes me as obvious to any sane person that Teenagers Having Sex is only a problem if, for example, a particular teenager is personally not ready for the “consequences” of sex. Say because they are pressured into it, or find the experience traumatic. Or because they end up with an unwanted pregnancy.
But these qualifications are crucial. Sex is not bad per se, even for teenagers. Sex is bad when it’s attached to undesirable experiences and consequences. Perhaps the risks of “bad things” is higher for sexually-active teenagers. Maybe. But even then, a sensible approach is to make judgements using evidence, on a case-by-case basis. What’s silly is to condemn all teenage sex just because it is teenage sex. There is no inherent reason why teenagers can’t have sex without negative consequences. Thousands do on every day of every year – whether the Daily Express likes it or not.
Which brings us to an interesting point. Our society exhibits a bizarre hysteria about teenage sex. Most especially, there is an overwhelming hysteria about teenage girls having sex. We live in a world of paradox. Advertising, music videos, film and TV push relentless images of sexual availability in young females. Teenage girls are constantly encouraged to look available and attractive. Yet actual sexual activity by teenage females is viciously scorned and stigmatised. Adolescent girls are to look and act as though they are sexually available – but should they ever actually be sexually active and available they earn the labels of slut and slag. (Boys, of course, are players and studs – a significant attitudinal difference, I would suggest).
It’s the bizarre, confused, quasi-Victorian mania about female sex and sexuality that largely animates Loughton and Harris. The blunt horror of even thinking about teenage girls having sex so overwhelms them that they forget that girls do not have sex alone. Teen mothers are vilified by Harris, while Loughton demands they suffer criminal penalties. The question of whether teenage fathers bear responsibility, or are worthy of our extreme moral disdain, or even our attention, never makes it onto the radar. That these politicians’ attitudes are the norm tells us something important about our society.
March 18, 2010
Justifying my state-subsidised life of Riley
By popular request, a blog about my favourite subject. Me.
Last week I remarked that I live the life of Riley at taxpayers’ expense. I’m not a benefit scrounger. I’m a fully-funded post-graduate student. I get money to sit around and learn about the history of political thought. This is nice for me. But Grace was concerned:
“Do you ever feel a bit bad that (indirectly and to a small extent) poor people are paying for you to pursue the kind of life you want? Yes studying philosophy may have millions of benefits, you can’t measure impact of ideas etc etc *but* any benefit that does arise from the sacrifice of the poor won’t actually accrue to them (even though perhaps it will to their descendants years in the future) how can you justify such a policy to those individuals?”
Do I feel bad that “indirectly and to a small extent” poor people are paying for me to study? Well like a good philosopher, I’m first going to challenge the premise. Are poor people “paying for me to pursue the kind of life I want”?
I get my fees (c.£4,500) fully paid, and I get a London-weighted maintenance stipend of about £15,000 a year. So let’s say £20,000. Very nice. Does this money come from “the poor”? Well, if “the poor” pay taxes, then in some way I am being funded by “the poor”, insofar as I receive money from the state’s total tax-take. But I’m also receiving money from “the middle” and “the rich” and “corporations” and so on. To say that poor people are “paying” for me to do a masters degree seems quite misleading. The state pays for me to do a masters degree, and some of the money the state uses for this is raised from taxes on poor people. Certainly, of the total AHRC budget some of it will be made-up by tax contributions from “the poor”. But it seems to put the wrong spin on things to make a direct statement such as “the poor are paying for my MA degree”. It’s not that simple. Yet making it sound that simple misleads our intuitions, and distorts the thinking about whether I should feel bad about my funding.
However, I do want to flag something about my “feeling bad”. If I “feel bad” about anything, it’s not that I’m being “funded by the poor”. It’s that I am incredibly lucky. For no better reason than I was born cleverer than average, had supportive teachers and parents, got lucky in my admission to Oxford University, whilst being the grateful recipient of outstanding teaching over a decade, I get to lead a very easy life indeed. Sure, I work (really) hard. But I’ve had opportunities that the vast majority of people never did or will, simply because of the arbitrary chance of my birth. whilst it can be irritating when people tell me I’ve had everything handed to me on a plate (as I say, I work damn hard), I do feel bad that many people are forced to scratch out a subsistence-living whilst I don’t. And there is – at root – no good reason for that disparity. I’m just lucky.
However, I believe a better way of thinking clearly about this issue than whether “the poor” are funding me is to notice that I’m getting £20,000 that is therefore not going to poor people. Let’s use an easy (hypothetical) example. If I didn’t receive an AHRC scholarship, let’s suppose that money could be used to establish a Sure Start centre which would vastly improve poor children’s lives. Should I feel bad that I’m getting the money?
It depends how we cash this one out. If we did it in the following way, then I would feel bad. Imagine the choice is straightforwardly between my getting funding, and children in deprived circumstances being denied Sure Start centres. In this case, I would not only feel bad about getting funding, I would say it was wrong for me to get funding. Deprived kids’ futures are more important than mine (not least because I’ve already had a lot of state help).
But it’s not actually that simple. In reality we’re talking about my being just one beneficiary of the entire AHRC scheme, which helps thousands. On the flip-side, there are many Sure Start centres out there. So we need to ask: do I feel bad being one beneficiary recipient of an enormous scheme, when there are many measures in place to help the poor already? But of course, if all the AHRC money was diverted to helping the poor, there could be even more measures to help them – so what do I say about that?
At this stage, I want to note a few things. Firstly, without an AHRC scholarship I couldn’t have done an MA. Now I’m by no means from a poor background. But if we’re talking about fairness and the impacts of government funding, receiving funding compensated for my arbitrary disadvantage of not being as well-off as those who can afford masters degrees (or whose parents can pay for them). So whilst I may feel bad that I’m lucky vis-a-vis “the poor”, the knife on this one can cut both ways.
Secondly, and more importantly, let’s think about the trade-offs between having AHRC funding versus channelling money into helping “the poor”. Part of me wants to say that AHRC funding is justified because it encourages academic study and the process of learning that wouldn’t be as well-sustained without state support. I think these are good and valuable things, and that it is justifiable for state money to be used to promote them. Yes, that’s a form of “perfectionism” (perhaps even “elitism”). I’ll live with that. I think denying it entails a rather ugly sort of philistinism, an unstable appeal to a chimera of neutrality, or a suspect over-reliance on free-markets to do the state’s work.
Now, we do have to be careful. If the situation was as simplified as this:
Either: Poor people get absolutely nothing and the state pays for people to pursue academic endeavours
Or: The state cancels all money for academic endeavours and channels the money to help the poor
Then of course I’d pick the second. I’m that sort of leftist. But we don’t live in that simple world, and furthermore I’m a value pluralist. I certainly think helping the poor is incredibly important – but I also think fostering the arts, and learning more generally, are very important too. I want to have both, and I think that in this world we can. Crucially, I think that paying for AHRC scholarships so that people of high ability can pursue academic careers is justified on this reasoning. Not least because we are also helping poor people whilst putting money into the AHRC, and if we want to help poor people more than we do at present I’m hostile to the idea that the money should therefore come from ending AHRC scholarships.
Of course, there are further points. Paying for AHRC scholarships leads to talented people becoming university teachers, who then train the “next generation” with the “skills of the future” (Christ, it feels like I’m filling out an AHRC form now). This is likely to benefit the entire population, over the very long-run. Even if my research never has a jot of economic “impact”, I guarantee that my teaching will. But the returns on that are in the very long-term, though it will nonetheless “help the poor” when assuming that a rising tide lifts all boats.
Ultimately “helping the poor” is not my only value – even if it is one of my most important ones. I also think it’s important for the state to fund the future of research in intellectual pursuits – pursuits that enrich our society not just (or even especially) economically, but via the intrinsic value that study just has in and of itself. If funding the future of such pursuits means people like me get to live the life of Riley, then I can live with that. Metaphorically and literally.
March 16, 2010
Sen, Miliband and Distributive Justice
Last night Nobel laureate, groundbreaking economist and political theorist Amartya Sen delivered Demos’ annual public lecture. He was joined by Baroness Shirley Williams, Ed Miliband MP and Aryeh Neier of the Open Society Institute.
Sen focused upon one of his major contributions to contemporary political theory: the capabilities approach to justice. Most recent academic theorists have focused upon issues such as income differentials between individuals, or the extent to which citizens have access to basic goods (food, water, shelter and so forth). They have then argued about the extent to which inequalities between individuals relating to such goods can be justified.
Sen has taken a different approach. He has argued that what matters is not some basic metric of goods that then needs to be allocated on a fair basis, but what those goods allow people to do. In part, Sen is motivated by the insight I drew attention to last week: that merely having formal rights isn’t enough, people need resources to make those rights meaningful. What matters is not that individuals get some given quantity of (for example) money, that lofty egalitarian philosophers have decided is just. What matters is what that money allows the recipients to do with their lives; what capabilities it enables. Thus Sen urges us to focus on securing things like income and basic goods for individuals – not simply for the sake of abstract equality, but so that individuals can enjoy things like good health, the ability to move about freely, and being able to appear in public without shame.
This idea has proved attractive on the left. Egalitarians of many stripes have been drawn to the capabilities approach insofar as it suggests that income and wealth inequalities need to be narrowed not simply for the sake of abstract demands for equality, but as a way of improving the lives of the worse-off. Yet the capabilities approach also appeals to “sufficientarians” like Demos’ own Richard Reeves. Those who say that we should care only about the welfare of the poor and downtrodden in turn ensuring they achieve basic minimums, whilst ceasing to pay attention to the rich who can then be left alone.
The capabilities approach has also been welcomed because it offers concrete policy proposals. How much should governments distribute to the poor? Whatever is required for them to actualise the basic capabilities necessary for living good and meaningfully free lives in the specific circumstances of the day. (And to an extent this is praise well-placed. Compared to tedious debates about whether the state should give pre-phylloxera claret to those who deliberately cultivate a taste for it, or whether the government must write cheques (accompanied by rude mailouts) to people born ugly, Sen’s approach is refreshingly practical).
Interestingly Ed Miliband praised Sen accordingly, declaring that “as a politician” he found the capabilities approach appealing for its practicality. Miliband also claimed that it offers a way of showing that state-minimalists are wrong. That having the state get out of the way won’t necessarily increase everybody’s freedom or well-being. If people lack the capabilities to make their freedoms or rights meaningful, then rolling-back the state won’t benefit them. By contrast, if the state can distribute to people so that they can actualise their capabilities, then freedom and well-being are increased.
But isn’t this a bit rich coming from Miliband? After all, his government has been in power for 13 years and has failed to undertake anything like the redistributive action that a genuine commitment to Sen’s capabilities approach would demand. Should we therefore condemn Miliband as a hypocrite?
Not necessarily. We do not live in a world in which people – or governments – are responsive to the sorts of interventionist demands that Sen’s capabilities approach makes. People are generally sceptical about redistribution. In Britain we are still living the legacy of the state-hostile, pro-market capitalism of Thatcher. This conditions much of our thinking about the role of the state in securing the basic needs people have if they are to enjoy genuine freedom, or the meaningful exercise of basic rights. Although the story is not a simple one, the predominant view in Britain remains that people should work to help themselves, and that the state should get out of the way.
So it is unsurprising that New Labour has never committed to actualising something like Sen’s vision (though we might still be disappointed that it hasn’t done more to try). Yet last night Miliband appeared to speak with sincerity, and he seemed to genuinely understand the case that Sen was making (and has been for many years).
More generally, it’s worth remembering that it takes a long time for ideas to filter from the academy into the thinking of politicians and policy-makers. But as John Maynard Keynes remarked:
“The ideas of economists and political philosophers, both when they are right and when they are wrong, are more powerful than is commonly understood. Indeed the world is ruled by little else. Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influence, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist.”
Sen’s capabilities approach may yet have its day. Insofar as Demos are helping to bring such a day closer, I applaud them for their work in bringing the idea of capabilities approaches to justice into the mainstream of British public discussion.
