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On the legitimate use of force

Feb 26

Posted by Malc in Democracy, International | 24 Comments

You know I verge on the ridiculous with some of the comparisons I make in these posts, but bear with this one – it is of gigantically ridiculous proportions, even for me.  But there is, hopefully, a point somewhere here, which I think is worth exploring.

As you’ll know if you read this blog regularly, I’ve had a bit of an obsession with democracy recently, based mostly on the research I’ve been doing.  That obsession is likely to change to relate more to political theory (I’m teaching it this semester) but the two dovetail quite appropriately when considering the uprisings across North Africa and the Middle East at the moment.

What we’ve seen, in each case there thus far, is protesters gathering in opposition to their governments, demonstrating that opposition by employing both peaceful and not-so-peaceful methods, gathering momentum against the regime and, in some cases already, bringing down their government.  In turn, what we have seen from governments in these places has been varying levels of reaction to the protests, from policing them through to turning their armies and air forces against the public.

At the outset here, I want to point out I’m not condoning either violence against governments or violence against citizens.  And neither do I want to risk further irritating  some folks on twitter who already think I’m not taking the Libyan case seriously enough because I happened to concentrate on the political communication aspect of it.  And, thirdly, I don’t want to compare the aspects of democracy that we enjoy (and perhaps not cherish, though we should) here with the Gaddafi regime in Libya… but there are similarities, not with the regimes, but with the protests and reactions to them.

Think of the UK situation – remember the havoc caused in London by the protests against the government’s decision to increase the charge for students in England to go to university.  Remember the anger felt by people, the level of rage in the demonstrations, (fire extinguishers thrown off buildings at policemen) the damage to property and, of course, the violence involved – in protest at the actions of our governing regime.

Think of Egypt and of Libya.  Okay, the reasons for the protests there are different – they want rid of dictatorial tyrants and in their place – democracy (the irony in which I’ve dealt with in a previous post) whereas we’re demonstrating because we have a democratic government who said one thing to get elected and did something else when they got into power (okay, I’m paraphrasing – but it helps make my point!).  But they’ve taken to the streets, employed peaceful demonstrations, rioted and even moved into open rebellion (in the latter case more than the former) in order to get their way.

And both here in the UK, and in Egypt and Libya, the governments have moved to secure their position, in our case employing riot police to control the protests, in Egypt both police and army in unison (though in a mostly peacekeeping manner) and in Libya, the army, using live ammunition, as the situation has descended into open conflict.

The point I’m making is that governments – both democratic and totalitarian – take measures in order to secure themselves against their people.  In our case, this is a bit of a paradox – democracy, in Lincoln’s famous phrase, is “government of the people, by the people, for the people” – so the government shouldn’t be afraid of the people it represents.

But what it boils down to really is your perception of the state and who has legitimacy over the state structure – in business terms, I guess, who owns the brand?  Here, we accept representative government – but we like to remind them now and again that we have the power to overthrow them, if we can be bothered putting down our pints to go out and actually do it.  So I suppose, the state is the state – and this means that they, to cite Max Weber, have a monopoly over the legitimate use of force, so we accept the role of the police in managing protests against them.

In Libya, (and again, to a lesser extent in Egypt) we in the West seem to have decided that the state leaders – Gaddafi’s regime – has lost legitimacy, and therefore the right to claim the legitimate use of force.  Which means that their use of the armed forces against the people – to secure their position – is unacceptable.

Look, I know the comparisons are off (not least because in North Africa we are talking about significant loss of life whereas in London folk suffered minor inconvenience in travel for one day) and we’re talking about the use of a civilian police force to effectively do crowd control against an army told to fire against crowds of people – but isn’t there something of an inconsistency here?

This thought isn’t quite clear in my head, so I do appreciate people’s thoughts on it.  But if we accept that one of the factors that constitutes the legitimacy of a state is monopoly over the use of violence (Max Weber’s definition) then we have to accept that the state CAN use violence (or the threat of violence) to secure its position (this is consistent with the police in London for example, taking “violence” in loose terms to include “incarceration against your will”).   If that follows, Gaddafi is within his rights to use the army to protect the state.  But we’ve decided his regime is not legitimate… or at the very least, his use of force to preserve the regime is not legitimate.  But does that then mean that we don’t think force should be used to protect governments?  Or is it simply the level of force he was/is employing?

Answers on a postcard to UN Security Council…

Not paying Vodafone as we go

Feb 24

Posted by Jeff in Economy | 47 Comments

Anyone that has ever tried to cancel a phone contract will know how arduous a task it can be. One needs to be determined, one needs a certain mental strength and even then it’s not unlikely that one will come off the call tied into a new two year contract with a Skype bolt-on to boot, whatever that is. 

So on one level Patrick Harvie’s proposal to cancel the Scottish Parliament’s contract with Vodafone should be treated with caution. Even Mike Rumbles could botch the job by not being headstrong enough. These call centre commandos can break the toughest among us. 

Patrick’s central argument that politicians (of all people) shouldn’t stand idly by while large companies seemingly avoid paying their fair share of tax is perfectly fair and a convincing proposal. I haven’t bought a blouse in Top Shop since UKUncut got going so I like to think I’m doing my bit. 

Of course, the other side of this £6bn tax avoidance story was the weak contribution from Revenue & Customs. Discussions between the tax body and Vodafone ended surprisingly early and with R&C ‘caving in’ on its belief that more money was due from the phone giant. However much we don’t like it, private companies are not in the business of voluntarily handing over cash to the Treasury so it is no wonder that it’s Governments that end up getting tapped for extra cash if Corporation Tax receipts are not as high as they could and perhaps should be. 

But ripping up a phone contract two months shy of an election, incurring unnecessary charges and all for a symbolic point that realistically not many will heed? I’m not so sure. If this is not the only driving factor and BT or O2 can undercut Vodafone then I say crack on. 

But surely lobbying the UK Parliament directly and urging MPs to intervene at the core of the issue is better than any well-meaning but ultimately ineffective stunt? Didn’t someone once say it’s good to talk? Maybe that should include legal arbitration of some sort. 

The above is not too say that the Scottish Green Party’s calls are not a smart move. It is quite understandably attempting to capture the zeitgeist of the moment, to align itself with the protesters and the complainants that see the coalition as taking the country down the wrong path and the official Opposition, be it Labour in London or SNP in Edinburgh, as not doing enough to argue the other way. Who is the party of the Twitter-driven, student-heavy apolitical protest? There’s no reason to not expect the radical Greens to win through there. 

When you are the plucky outsider in the Parliament, not even getting invited to election debates etc, it makes sense to use that to your advantage. 

Shopping around for a better deal can be tiresome, but it can be worth it just as much for clapped-out phone contracts as it can be for clapped-out political parties.    

Who does David Cameron want to win the Holyrood election?

Feb 22

Posted by Jeff in Holyrood, Westminster | 25 Comments

There is only one form of answer that David Cameron would realistically give to the question: ‘Who do you want to win the 2011 Holyrood election?’ and it would go something like this:

‘We are working very hard to make sure that Annabel Goldie has a strong bloc of Conservative MSPs in the Scottish Parliament, arguing in favour of the United Kingdom, arguing in favour of keeping household bills down, arguing for more police numbers and making sure some of the ballyhoo that we’ve seen over the past four years is not repeated’.

Well, ok, he’s not going to use a silly word like that. What does ‘bloc’ mean anyway?

For the viewers watching at home, they would unreasonably but understandably be hoping for a single answer – either ‘SNP’ or ‘Labour’.

Tavish, Annabel and Patrick are going to be asked this question of who they want to be the biggest party time and time again up to May 5th and they are well within their rights not to say either way.

They may well have formed a view and there is surely no doubt that the Prime Minister certainly has. So who does Dave want? Labour or SNP? Let’s look at the options shall we….

DavidCameron4SNP

Without wishing to invite the tired accusations of Tartan Tory, it is quite patently the case that Alex Salmond and David Cameron get on with each other rather well. The relationship between the two posts has certainly surely improved since Gordon Brown vacated Number 10, a period that included a whole year elapsing before the two leaders were in contact.

The calls made directly by Salmond to Cameron since the General Election include payment of the Fossil Fuel Levy, borrowing powers for the Scottish Parliament, a fuel duty regulator, capital acceleration for budget spending and Barnett consequentials from spending on the 2012 Olympics. There seems to be an implicit understanding of ‘some you win and some you lose’ around these demands, seemingly accepted with a hearty degree of respect on both sides, despite the attention-grabbing rhetoric delivered for the media headlines.

So there is a healthy, combative working relationship in place between current FM and PM but what of the thorny issue of independence? David Cameron claims to have the union jack stamped onto his insides like a stick of rock which surely rubs awkwardly against a First Minister whose main objective is to break up the United Kingdom?

Well, so far it doesn’t seem to be a problem. David Cameron is somewhat ‘above the fray’ in terms of constitutional affairs, leaving such issues to the Liberal Democrat body armour that he fashioned around his party. Alex Salmond’s main aim is to ensure the voting Scottish public is, at some point (and preferably on the day of any referendum), in favour of Scottish independence to the tune of 50.01% of turnout. That Scotland-focussed aim doesn’t really affect Cameron and his Scottish Conservative MPs. Sorry, MP. Consequently, there is no head-on collision between the two leaders. Two polar opposite views are not crossing paths and, so, not causing problems.

I would wager that the highly unlikely prospect of Cornish independence causes more headaches for David Cameron than Scottish independence does as there are more seats in the South West of the UK that the Conservatives can realistically win in 2015 than there are in the whole of Scotland.

I honestly believe there would be no hidden grimace nor silent grinding of teeth if the Prime Minister had to phone up Alex Salmond and congratulate him on a second term on May 7th.

DavidCameron4Labour

When Scottish Labour shared power at Holyrood with the Lib Dems from 1999 to 2007 there was very little discord with the, admittedly Labour, UK Government.

The Conservatives may, quite reasonably, be concerned at the prospect of being attacked by their main opposition rivals from two angles and balk at the prospect of Ed Miliband and Iain Gray being able to coordinate policy and party message with the not inconsiderable Westminster and Holyrood resources that they would have available to them.

That said, Ed Miliband has endured a timid (if not quite torrid) start to this tenure as Labour leader. Ed hit the ground sauntering and, on current evidence, there is a very high likelihood that Iain Gray would hit the ground dawdling given the lack of policy he has ready to implement and the apparent power struggle at the top of his party. David Cameron would arguably welcome having leaders that are perceived as anonymous by the Great British public across the Chamber in Westminster and at the helm in Holyrood.

In terms of policy, and independence to one side, there is probably little to choose between Labour and the SNP with regard to direct impact on the UK coalition. Both parties will complain that spending is being cut too sharply and that changes to health and education south of the border have a significant impact on Scotland as a nation that does not have the public appetite to turn GPs into accountants, quasi-privatise the NHS and charge students the earth just to go to university.

Indeed, the main concern for David Cameron in terms of the Scottish Parliament election result is what the irascible Liberal Democrats will do next. A formal coalition with the SNP or Labour in Scotland while there is a formal coalition with the Conservatives in London is surely a nightmare scenario for the Prime Minister. A tantalising thought for those of us who believe the Lib Dems sold out but surely an unworkable situation in the medium to long term nonetheless.

How the Liberal Democrats can continue to operate as a single entity while implementing contradictory policies either side of the border is beyond me. And how the coalition can continue if the Liberal Democrats were to finally sink under the weight of its own impossibly duplicitous political dexterity is anyone’s guess.
For those reasons, of which Clegg and Cameron are surely acutely aware, it is surely not possible for a Holyrood coalition to work from 2011 in any conceivable way. The Conservatives will continue to be rebuffed, the Greens will continue to be too small in number and the Lib Dems as coalition partners will quite simply be too problematic a consideration for their London leaders’ tastes.

May 2011 will see a single winner, a minority Government under one single party’s control and David Cameron must have a preference in mind. Broadly speaking, one has to think that the Prime Minister has not had too many sleepless nights over the fact that a Nationalist is currently the First Minister of Scotland and perhaps, just perhaps, David is thinking that it is a case of ‘better the Nationalist you know rather than the Unionist you don’t’.

On proportionality and consensus politics

Feb 22

Posted by Guest Blog in Democracy, Elections | 2 Comments

Continuing what appears to be a never-ending series on democracy, we have another guest post, this one from Labour’s candidate for Edinburgh Eastern in the forthcoming Scottish Parliament election, Ewan Aitken.  He’s very much an advocate of proportional electoral systems – and a new kind of politics – which you’ll discover below.

The first public election I took part in was back in 1982 in the student union elections at the University of Sussex. It was run under the single transferable vote system and having experienced it first hand I was a convert to proportional voting systems, (not just because I won either!)

Some 24 years later in 2006 I became Leader of the City of Edinburgh Council.  To have been Leader of Scotland’s capital city is a huge honour and one I remain deeply grateful to have received but it always struck me as unfair that I was leader because of a Labour majority based on a fraction under 28% of the vote.  That’s why, even though I knew it would mean we might lose power, I was in favour of PR for Local Government. As it happened we did lose by 6 votes on the 8th distribution in one ward (which meant that the seat distribution was 17 Lib Dems to our 15 rather than 16 each), but I still think proportionality is a better way to choose our decisions makers.

Proportionality gives three things to any voting system; it makes sure that anyone elected, (or in the case of closed list, their party), has majority support, its gives voters a greater sense of influence over who will make decisions on their behalf and it embeds in the voting system the idea that power should not be held in the hands of one party or group.

Its that third principle that leads me to say something will be perhaps a surprise to some.  Although I disagree with many of the decisions of the present Scottish Government, the fact that they have attempted to run a minority government has been good for the maturing of the Scottish Parliament and so for our democracy.

It means for transparency about the big decisions and a different dynamic for those not in office that is not solely about opposition.  We know, for example, why the Lib Dems and the Conservatives supported the budget recent motion. Voters can then decide whether or not the price of a parties vote meant that their priorities had been achieved.

I contrast this with the two partnership agreements between Labour and the Lib Dems. Although I believe they delivered more for Scotland than the present Government at one level, the way the agreements were structured and portrayed restricted the ability of those administrations to be as radical as they wanted to be and as responsive as they needed to be at times to changing circumstances. There were times when what we needed was not what had been agreed two or three years previously (often with very specific numeric targets), but to change the agreement would have been portrayed as having failed or as a sign that the coalition breaking up.

Minority Government does not necessarily mean that decisions are fewer in number or achieved more slowly as has sometimes been suggested. What is does demand is a greater and more developed ability to negotiate and collaborate with those from different parties that our conflict culture allows for at present.

At local government level the problem we have is that we have a new way of counting the votes but and old way of doing politics, Edinburgh being a prime example. So for local authorities I would embed proportionality in the distribution of power into the structures. The largest party would nominate the leader and whoever chairs the Council. Other positions would then be distributed proportionally to the number of seats held by each party. The job of the leader would be to manage a coalition that is created structurally not by political deal. Each party would be hold some responsibility to help deliver for their authority and have to reach agreement with others for the services for which they have responsibility. What they would then bring to the voters at elections would be their track record of delivery in a context of having achieving collaboration and move away from the conflict culture that pervades and undermines local authority debates and decision-making.

Neither system is perfect. This article is not a criticism of partnership agreements or of my party for entering into two of them. It is a reflection that on balance, minority Government might achieve more in terms of changing political culture through its processes. As ever, the challenge is to find a system that at least reflects the principles of transparency and collaboration even it involves some frustrations as well.

How to make friends and influence politicians?

Feb 21

Posted by Guest Blog in Democracy, Elections | 4 Comments

Another one of our previous guests, Rev Shuna Dicks, returns looking for some advice about participatory democracy (you see how this links in to some of the posts we’re done recently?).  Please be nice – and constructive!

As part of my role as convenor of a sub-committee of Presbytery (a local gathering of clergy and elders of the Church of Scotland – one of its ‘Courts’) I have been asked to consider organising a hustings in the run up to the Scottish Parliamentary Elections.

The committee I convene is ‘Church & Community’ and so far this year we have been pretty focussed on events surrounding the two air bases within the bounds of the Presbytery of Moray – the hot political topic for the area at the moment. The future of the bases is a defence issue, which is a reserved matter. But the impact of any closures (I am reminded that RAF Kinloss has not closed and will not be fully closed and that there will still be some work happening at and from the base) will have a dramatic effect on the local economy, schools, support services etc – all devolved matters. This will obviously have an impact on campaigning for the election.

The Scottish Churches Parliamentary Office has produced a good paper on how to plan such events and I have been studying this in order to get some advice as to how to go about running such an event. As well as a traditional Hustings (a panel with questions from the floor) they give the suggestion of a ‘Speed hustings’ and ‘virtual hustings’ both of which I like. The Speed Hustings give people in small groups a chance to quiz individual candidates for a set amount of time before the candidate moves on to another group. Each candidate then is given a short amount of time at the close to say a few words.  The virtual Hustings suggests issuing each candidate with a set of questions to answer in writing by a certain date and then simply publish the answers.

This is where I would like your help – what questions as a faith community should the churches be asking of the candidates?

Also – just out of curiosity, are hustings meetings still relevant in 2011?