Anthony Barnett (London, OK): Trevor Smith tipped me off about Jack Straw's appearance before the House of Lords Committee on the constitution last October. I quoted Straw's view of our democracy - the executive proposes, parliament disposes and no nonsense about Athens - in December. Re-reading the full transcript read it here as a pdf I thought it was worth reproducing this exchange Straw had with Trevor about Britishness. See if you can understand what is the difference between being exclusive and distinctive or what it is about the Union that "transcends" English, Scottish or Welsh or Northern Irish values - over and above a plaque.<!--more-->
Lord Smith of Clifton: Lord Chancellor, I noticed earlier that you talked about a Statement of British Values, which I can understand, but officially it is a British Statement ofValues, which I cannot for the life of me understand. I commend you on your change in language and terminology. Could you explain to me why it is a British Statement of Values as opposed to a Statement of British Values?
Mr Straw: Not really! It is like the essay that I was set when I was a law student, to explain the difference between a breach of a fundamental term and a fundamental breach of a term and I have still been trying to find the answer. There is obviously a difference about the adjective but we are talking about British values, essentially.
Lord Smith of Clifton: What do you envisage as being distinctly British about the Statement of Values and the Bill of Rights and Duties? What are they likely to include which is not shared across Europe and the Commonwealth? And are there implications for the Human Rights Act?
Mr Straw: On the Statement of British Values, I would like to think that many values that we regard as being distinctly British are now ones which have been reflected elsewhere in the world, and we have had an evangelical role – we have, genuinely – when it comes to ideas of liberty and values. I cannot say what will be distinctive about this until this process is finished but I would like to suggest that personally I think one of the things that is distinctive about the United Kingdom – and is not exclusive, which is a different point, but is distinctive – is our tolerance. I think there is a remarkably high level of tolerance in this country. How will it differ from other statements? In France they have this very strong sense of what they call solidarity and we do perhaps have a vague idea of what it means but it does not translate very well – I am looking at Baroness Quin, who may have a stronger idea of what it means than do we – and I am always struck by that in Europe. So it may be the order in which the values are set out, the precedence it is given that is distinctively British as well as some of the values themselves. On the Bill of Rights and Responsibilities, what I said in my speech at the Party Conference, in shorthand, as it were, is that we do not want to undermine the Human Rights Act and fundamentally the incorporation of the European Convention into British law, which I happen to think was a very important and a durable Act, and in the end it is worth recalling that after some changes were made in the Bill that we did achieve a broad party
consensus – indeed, I remember Lord Lyell, I think, saying at the Third Reading that we had got it into better shape – and we had, on all sorts of parts of it. What that process on the Bill showed is that we have some choices when you come to incorporation; there are still some parts of the Articles of the European Convention which are not incorporated, most notably Article 13 on Remedies. The other point which again I made at the Party Conference speech is that I think we have learnt – and I have certainly learnt – over recent years that we need better to articulate into the equation the fact that with rights go obligations and responsibilities – they always have done. That side of the equation was taken for granted by the drafters of the European Convention, which were British lawyers – almost exclusively British lawyers – and I think that in today’s world we need to take better account of that, so that is what we are seeking to do and so not to undermine the Human Rights Act and still less the European Convention, but to see ways in which it can be supplemented and complemented and this crucial balance of rights with duties and responsibilities and a mutual obligation is brought out.
Lord Smith of Clifton: Might I ask what have been the reactions from the Scottish Executive, the Northern Ireland Executive and the Welsh Assembly Government to the proposed British Statement of Values?
Mr Straw: I do not recall, because it is an early stage preparation, that we have had a formal response from them, but we are a Union and I was privileged to take part in a ceremony today where Mr Speaker unveiled a plaque in St Stephen’s Hall to the three centuries of the Union. There are British values which transcend English, Scottish or Welsh or Northern Irish values.
Comments
To be fair, GB [Gordon Brown] does believe in fair play but he calls it 'British fair play'. See http://politics.guardian.co.uk/labour/story/0,9061,1256550,00.html#article_continue or again http://www.hm-treasury.gov.uk/newsroom_and_speeches/speeches/chancellorexchequer/speech_chx_270207.cfm.
QED Ian!
David, aka Britology Watch
Is it not amusing that the Labour Party, who are the ones directly responsible for the beginning of the break up of the Union, are increasingly unable to keep up with the pace of change? The Labour Party are stuck in a semi-Imperialistic fog, harking back to the good old British days and scrambling about with rhetoric, in an attempt to lure the people back under the wings of their British colonial rulers in Westminster.
Increasingly, the British government and other British parties are looking like creaking old cronies and not fit for the 21st century.
We in England need an English government fit for purpose, not a purposely unfit British government. They are holding us back deliberately and we will be treading water until they accept the inevitable and let us move forward into the future.
Independence IS that future. The sooner they accept this, the less painful it will be for them and us - because it is painfully embarassing to watch them cling on by their fingernails.
Judging by past performance, what is clear, is that our British rulers will not go voluntarily. They will do all they can to drag us down with them and create friction where it did not previously exist in an attempt to divide and rule. The welfare of all our citizens and the state of neighbourly tolerance depends solely on this minority rule in a most undemocratic system of power.
And still they presume to dictate the terms of democracy to countries across the world? We should all be ashamed of the British mindset in our midst.
Jack Straw and the Labour government in which he is a Minister of State have done more to alieanate the English from the notion of Britishness than any government in the last 300 years.
This was evidenced by the almost total lack of recognition let alone celebration of the 300 anniversary of the Act of Union on 1st May 2007.
In fact there was a Justice for England demonstration held that day protesting at the apartheid system being perpetrated against the English since UK devolution from which the English have been and still are denied a say.
The Scot Michael Martin, Speaker of the House of Commons, showed his "Britishness" by denying the demonstrators the opportunity to march past the Palace of Westminster. He, Jack Straw nor Gordon Brown are part of a government that the former East Germany would have been ashamed of, so we English will take no lessons in Britishness from them.
It is difficult to identify those British values that Mr Straw believes transcend English, Welsh, Irish and Scottish values - because there are none.
As Neil Ascherson told Gordon Brown some time ago, the British values that he claims to espouse are in fact English ones.
Perhaps there some additional values that may be distinct to Ireland, to Scotland to Wales that are not necessarily shared by England. I don't know.
Britain is an 18th century construct and in the 21st century the Union should rest on the consent of the people in each of its constituent nations.
Papering over the Union with 'Britishness' is not going to work and it is only being sold to the English anyway. The Scots have their own ceremonies for British citizenship, featuring the saltire, and Scottish schools are not proposing to teach Britishness even if anyone can decide what it is.
By giving devolution to Scotland and Wales the Labour government has enouraged those countries to develop and strengthen their own national identity.
Mr Brown hopes that he can persuade the English to give up theirs but he has underestimated the latent strength of English national identity.
One of the so-called English values, not always honoured, is 'fair play'. It is not one that Mr Brown recognises.
I'm toying with the idea that nationhood / national identity is a category that applies most accurately to England, Scotland, Wales and (Northern) Ireland, and describes the culture of those countries; the state is the UK; and Britain / Britishness is an attempt to join up and bridge those two separating parts of the equation (to create British nationhood or make / keep the UK a nation, which it has never really been).
The project of defining Britishness attempts this bridging task by seeking to ground nation and state in 'common' or 'shared' values. These are transcendent - supposedly - because of that commonality but also because of their universality in a philosophical sense. That is why they are common to Western liberalism (e.g. the European Convention) in general. The particular expression of them in the British context (distinctive not exclusive) relates to the fact that they bridge both the domains of fundamental principles (of philosophy and of a state) and the domain of culture.
For this reason, we're dealing with both a 'statement of British values' because they are the transcendent / uniting values of the 'British nation' in a sense that is EXCLUSIVE to British culture; and a 'British statement of values' because they are the DISTINCTIVELY British expression of universal values in the philosophical sense.
Just to go off on a tangent, I find it interesting that he mentioned that the Government didn't give effect to Article 13 of the Convention in the Human Rights Act:
Everyone whose rights and freedoms as set forth in this Convention are violated shall have an effective remedy before a national authority notwithstanding that the violation has been committed by persons acting in an official capacity.The European Court made it clear in Burden v UK that a 'declaration of incompatibility' is not an effective remedy within the meaning of the Convention, contrary to the claim made by the Government. So if your rights are violated, and you can't obtain a domestic remedy other than a declaration of incompatibility, you have to go to the European Court.
I often wonder why the Government saw fit not to include Article 13 and would be interested to know.
The English peasants revolt 1381 John Ball gathered the people around him after sunday church saying;
"Good people, things cannot go right in England and never will, until goods are held in common and there are no more villeins and gentlefolk, but we are all one and the same. In what way are are those whom we call lords greater masters than ourselves? How have they deserved it? Why do they hold us in bondage? If we all spring from a single father and mother, Adam and Eve, how can they claim or prove that they are lords more than us, except by making us produce and grow the wealth which they spend? They are clad in velvet and camlet lined with squirrel and ermine, while we go dressed in coarse cloth. They have the wines, the spices and the good bread: we have the rye, the husks and the straw, and we drink water. They have shelter and ease in their fine manors, and we have hardship and toil, the wind and the rain in the fields. And from us must come, from our labour, the things whcih keep them in luxury. We are called serfs and beaten if we are slow in our service to them, yet we have no sovereign lord we can complain to, none to hear us and do us justice. Let us go to the king--he is young--and show him how we are oppressed, and tell him that we want things to be changed, or else we will change them ourselves. If we go in good earnest and all together, very many people who are called serfs and are held in subjection will follow us to get their freedom. And when the king sees and hears us, he will remedy the evil, either willingly or otherwise.". . .
Take note Mr Straw! [self proclaimed stalinist]
We have a constitution and require no other, a constitution that offers the British people full protection from those at Westminster.
Why discuss anything foreign to our laws?
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