Around the World: Corruption, Operation Car Wash and the Rousseff Impeachment

National Congress of Brazil, in Brasilia, where now former President Dilma Rousseff was impeached in two majority votes. Photograph: National Congress of Brazil from Pixabay (License) (Cropped).

Dilma Rousseff has lost her battle against impeachment in Brazil, with the Senate confirming the decision of the Chamber of Deputies to expel her from the office of President (Watts & Bowater, 2016). Three-quarters of Senators voted to impeach her on charges of corruption and mismanagement of the budget.

That is unlikely to be the end of the controversy. But for now, it marks the end of a chain of events set against a backdrop of general unrest, with protests against money being spent on huge international events like the World Cup and the Olympics, instead of on practical measures to support the people - like housing and welfare - and an economy deeply affected by the global crisis.

A lot of the present crisis surrounds Brazilian oil. Accusations of bribery surrounding the state oil company Petrobras surrounding the awarding of contracts and its deep connections in Brazilian politics, was uncovered by the corruption investigation known as Operation Car Wash (Watts, 2016).

The result has been a political crisis that has seen Rousseff's predecessor Lula da Silva set to face a corruption trial and the larger part of the political class implicated in the corruption. Rousseff's adversaries have also manoeuvred to have her thrown out of office, though as she is so far avoided direct connection to the scandal, they have pursued her through accusations of fiscal malpractice (Prengaman, 2016).

The impeachment leaves Rousseff's former ally, and now leading figure amongst her opponents, Acting-President Michel Temer in the office of President. While he has the support of the political Right and business that wants austerity measures imposed, he isn't popular - having been booed during the Olympic opening ceremony.

Like Italy's Mani Pulite (Clean Hands) investigation that wiped away the country's established political system and all of its political parties in the early 1990s, Operation Car Wash has thrown open the doors to show how Brazil's system operates behind closed doors - and no one working within that system is likely to come out clean.

That situation is what has toppled Rousseff. The worry is for the political vacuum that might follow the toppling of the rest of the establishment - in Italy it was occupied by the arch-populist Silvio Berlusconi for twenty years.

Yet despite her defeat in what has been denounced as a parliamentary coup, Rousseff insists upon appealing her impeachment by who she describes as usurpers and coup-mongers (Watts & Bowater, 2016). But against a backdrop of massive political-corporate corruption, it is unclear what more can be done at the federal level until it is all swept away.

Clearly, Brazil needs a path out of this dense tangle of overlapping problems. The clear implication is that a new approach is needed.

One option that has been proposed is to embrace the municipal movement, most notably at work in Barcelona, at the local government elections in October and November (Wyllys, 2016). What municipalism offers is a chance to do things a bit differently.

Movements in Brazil are already organising around municipal principles - Muitxos: Cidade que Queremos (Many: the City We Want) in Belo Horizonte, for example (Gutierrez Gonzalez, 2016) - as a way move power away from political-corporate cliques.

With Brazil's federal politics - where pro-market corporate forces face off with populist social democrats over tax and spend projects like social welfare - mired in corruption and accusations, shifting the focus to local government instead could provide a route for citizens to get into politics in a more direct way and perhaps even start to dismantle the corruption from the ground up.

As elsewhere in the world, national politics has been choked by political-corporate cartels, whether de facto or de jure, that restrict political action and assume the driving seat in decision-making.

That path has lead to failures of leadership, where vigilant oversight is lacking - of which, if anything, Rousseff might be legitimately accused, due to being in a senior position during the height of the corruption and yet claiming no knowledge of what was going on.

Devolving power to citizens in their communities and encouraging open city government could help renew the system. And for the municipal movement itself, success in the cities of Brazil would be a major breakthrough.

It is one thing to argue for open source cities, using the twin means of free online resources and open participatory public spaces, that make the municipality a place where people can express their real political power (Gutierrez Gonzalez, 2016{2}).

It is another entirely to see municipal ideas applied to cities on different continents, with different contexts, and see them challenge massive corruption from below by engaging with people in their own communities and returning hope and power to them.

PMQs isn't fit for purpose. But it is the symptom not the disease

Week after week, the noise at Prime Minister's Questions has gotten louder. The half hour sessions have been drowned in noise growing more inconsiderate, more deliberately vindictive, with each passing week. Having to listen to the Conservative benches braying, on live television, to drown out the questions of the opposition, can be an exercise in masochism.

It seems pretty obvious at first look that PMQs is broken. And yet, it fits so perfectly within the Westminster system. That in itself is a sign of a much deeper problem in the British political system.

The essential trouble with PMQs is that it fits in a little too perfectly with the adversarial political culture in the UK. The two sides, the government and opposition, line up opposite to one another to, supposedly, hold the government to account.

The trouble is that this polemic is bias refined, a subjective contest where the government holds one view and thinks it is right and the opposition holds another and thinks it is right. What follows is a sparring match between the unstoppable and the immovable.

That contest is perfectly fitted to the UK's us-versus-them, first-past-the-post and winner-takes-all politics. Two implacable foes, coming from fixed positions having arguments that by their nature cannot be resolved. The government will do what it will and the rest is theatre.

There is certainly am uncontestable need for the public to see, in the flesh, what it is that each side stands for, argued for, hopefully, eloquently - maybe even persuasively. Yet PMQs is one the very few public moments in which there is an opportunity to enforce upon the government - handed extraordinary power in the UK - some kind of accountability.

However, when you cross the two purposes, the party publicity exercise and holding the government to account, only one of them is ever going to win. Accountability is sunk beneath bravado, noise and petty point-scoring.

In Scotland there has been attempt to début a revised First Minister's questions, changing up the system to provide more time for a calmer session with more interrogation. But even that is limited in what it can achieve.

It cannot escape a political culture of fixed adversarial positions and that is expressed, at its worst, in an exercise that is not supposed to be 'political' being consumed by politics.

Ideally, the process of holding the government to account would be something akin to a committee hearing. The Prime Minister would be brought before them and have to give acceptable answers to fundamental questions: What is your government doing? From where does it derive the mandate for that action?

The government's reluctance to put PM David Cameron into the election debates suggests an immediate weakness to this particular alternative: Would the party political machine ever submit to the Prime Minister and the government being put so clearly on trial? Probably not.

Right now the European Union's democracy is under scrutiny. But Westminster's shortcoming shouldn't be swept under the rug. Winner-takes-all makes a mockery of political representation and the adversary system simply reinforces the alienation of citizens from their government - keeping the real business far from the vigilant eyes of those who would want answers to the difficult questions that could hold it to account.

Ideology in politics is unavoidable, but transparency should be as well - we need the facts to scrutinise policies and the societal ideal they are designed to build

As Romano Prodi, former President of the European Commission and Prime Minister of Italy, put it: the incorrect way to use facts is as a drunk uses lamp posts - more for support than for illumination. Photograph: Lamp Post in Rome from Pixabay (License) (Cropped)

Yesterday, George Osborne went before the Commons Treasury Committee to answer more detailed questions on the budget he announced last Wednesday (Sparrow, 2016). The Chancellor and his budget came in for some difficult questions.

During the hearing it was disclosed that, since the Coalition ended, the Chancellor had stopped analysis that would have showed, as the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) analysis shows, that the budget appeared to be redistributing money from the poorest to the richest (Stone, 2016). The Chancellor's defence was that he believed that the statistics provided could be misleading, and make deficit reduction look like "a bad thing".

According to both Iain Duncan Smith and the IFS, the welfare changes will disproportionately - for the obvious reason that welfare is mostly needed by those in lower incomes - hurt the poorest 20% (Inman, 2016). It was this fact that Osborne was accused of attempting to hide by changing the way the Treasury analysed the budget impact.

Playing with facts to suit political purpose is bad enough on its own. But this was also the suppression of facts - showing austerity and deficit reduction, at the present time and by the present methods, appear to be disproportionately damaging to the poor - in order to protect an ideological political project (Dudman, 2016).

Yet the problem is not so much the ideological motivation. As Romano Prodi put it, the incorrect approach to using facts is as a drunk uses lamp posts - for support rather than illumination.

In order to reduce so called 'welfare dependence', Osborne has ignored the data in order to treat welfare as the problem in and of itself - rather than a symptom. That means ignoring the fact that high welfare bills are the result of its corrective role.

In reality, welfare at its best is a safety net that helps to guarantee basic freedoms and at worst can be criticised as a form of corporate welfare, when policies like tax credits or the personal allowance subsidise companies paying low wages - but either way it is a redistributive mechanism that anchors the affluence of the rich to the wellbeing of the poor.

In both cases a high welfare bill is a symptom. It represents people struggling with low or no incomes, a lack of access to affordable housing and a lack of opportunity (Johnson, 2015). But as conditions improve, as the low incomes turn into living incomes, housing becomes more affordable and greater opportunity spreads, the welfare bill decreases.

Ideology is an inescapable aspect of politics. It is the philosophical view of what the world is, the ethics of how to behave on a personal level and the shaping of society around those beliefs to enhance them and produce the ideal outcomes. But that is no excuse for a lack of transparency.

If the Chancellor believes that there is a positive outcome in the changes he is making, he should have no fear in these statistics. He should be able to explain how his changes fit his ideological narrative, and produce, from his perspective, a positive outcome.

Instead of trusting people with the facts, the people are shown fragments designed to fit a narrative. If people are to hold those in public office to account they need the facts. Vigilance can only do so much, without access to the facts and openness from public office holders and parties as to the big picture, broad context narrative, that they see written in the data.

Policing and Crime Bill, with oversight and transparency reforms, goes to Commons unlikely to face much opposition

Theresa May's Policing and Crime Bill has a stated aim of improving disciplinary and complaints systems, along with the Inspectorate, in order to improve public confidence in the Police.  Photograph: Police Motorbike from Pixabay (License) (Cropped)

In Parliament today, Home Secretary Theresa May presents her Policing and Crime Bill to the Commons for its first formal vote (Parliament, 2016). With a Conservative majority, its passage at this stage should be just a formality - particularly when English Votes for English Laws is applied. That only makes it all the more important for those outside of Parliament to pay particularly close attention.

The government claim the bill will 'finish the job' of police reform (Home Office & May, 2016). Included in its aims are reforming the police disciplinary and complaints systems, strengthening 'the independence of HM Inspectorate of Constabulary', increasing protections for people with mental health problems, allowing chief officers to "confer a wider range of powers on police staff and volunteers", and introducing a requirement for 'suspected foreign nationals to produce a nationality document'.

While moves to increase oversight and accountability are always welcome, along with further considerations for mental health, elements of the bill have faced some criticism. For instance, the expansion of volunteers in police service with police powers has raised some concerns (BBC, 2016) - with suggestions that it may be an artificial way to inflate police numbers in the face of austerity and cuts. There is also some scepticism regarding the continually expanding role of the Police and Crime Commissioners (Russell Webster, 2016), though it has been argued that accountability brought by PCC's election are having a positive impact (Baird, 2016).

The Policing and Crime bill itself is being steered through Parliament by Theresa May. As Home Secretary, Theresa May has already overseen a number of disputes over law enforcement and policing policy.

May has been the force behind the slow and controversial progress of the Investigatory Powers Bill, the so-called snooper's charter (Watt, 2016). Nick Clegg, as Deputy Prime Minister, had forced early bills covering public surveillance, particularly on the internet, to be withdrawn. The most recent attempt has been criticised, not just for being an infringement of liberty, but for being largely unworkable (The Guardian; 2016).

By way of contrast, a positive move was made by May in response to Boris Johnson's wish to deploy water cannon in London. May promised never to deploy police with military style equipment, for fear of undermining the legitimacy of the police (Dodd, 2015) - which is supposed to be based on the principle of policing by consent.

Between refusing water cannons and promoting mass data gathering, and her lack of surety on elected Police and Crime Commissioners (BBC, 2016{2}), Theresa May has cut an inconsistent path as Home Secretary. That inconsistency, along with the Conservative government's poor attitude towards human rights, since cutting loose the Liberal Democrats in May 2015 (Bowcott, 2015), call for a particularly critical eye to be turned on any reform efforts they spearhead.

It is only the early stages for this bill. A bill whose aims will likely be disrupted by disputes over further 'efficiencies' to be found in police budgets (ITV, 2016) - and maybe still further cuts as those scarcely avoided by the Chancellor last time, through heavy dependence upon the prediction of an improved economy, may well come around again in next week's budget with the economy struggling and tough choices expected (Elliott, 2016).

Yet whenever one party seeks to make changes to the enforcement of law and order, it is important to stress the need for the public to remain vigilant. Reform is need. Oversight and transparency are needed. Clear statements of powers, who has them and when, are needed. But the process of reform should too be constrained by those principles.

Avengers: Age of Ultron warns of the danger when we let fear and powerful emotions drive us to trust in power without vigilance

Spoiler warning: This article contains spoilers for Marvel's Avengers: Age of Ultron

When the times are evil, and the world is at its worst, we look to  protect ourselves and those traditionally dearest to us - our family, our friends, our people. Whatever the motivation - fear, regret, vengeance, or even ambition - it does not necessarily guarantee that we will act cleverly.

In Marvel's latest entry to their Cinematic Universe (MCU), Avengers: Age of Ultron, the inception of Ultron, and the events for which Ultron is the catalyst, serve as an exploration of the danger that such motivations can pose.

The main driving force behind the events of the MCU so far have been these deep motivations, crystallised in forms such as Tony Stark's fears and Loki's ambitions. In Avengers: Age of Ultron, we see Tony Stark's fears exposed. Stark, in response to those fears, seeks control over events, even over the world, as his way to combat the danger that chaos brings. In Ultron, he seeks to create an entity that cares about humanity and will act independently in its stead as a suit of armour around the world.

The Maximoff twins, Wanda and Pietro - Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver - enter the MCU driven by a desire to seek redress for what they have suffered at the hands of Tony Stark. Yet, their quest for vengeance against one man, for the death of their parents and to protect their people, draws them into dark and dangerous alliances with villainous figures like Hydra and Ultron, that ultimately threaten far more people.

Into that mix of motivations comes Ultron. The artificial intelligence offers to those seeking action a means - but in their need, driven by their own persuasive motivations, they do not consider that Ultron may have its own purposes and ways of achieving them. In their fear, in their wrath, they are not careful and so they get something for which did not plan.

Stark and the Maximoff twins saw something that could be a tool to their own ends, but they did not consider what that tool might mean in context or what it could do in the wrong hands. Their strong emotional motivations allowed practical necessity to win out over the ideal, and so they perceived that the power of  Ultron could help themselves achieve their goals, but did not take the time to properly comprehend the full nature of the AI and what it might or could do. As the enigmatic Lutece siblings remind us in BioShock Infinite:

"Perception without comprehension is a dangerous combination."

In the old world you were warned to beware Greeks bearing gifts, for fear of a Trojan horse. In all worlds you must also beware false heroes bearing a Trojan cause. Those who will bring their own purposes, veiled within populist solutions, pose an incredible threat to those who are not vigilant and allow their own fears or selfish motivations to blind them. Marvel's Avengers: Age of Ultron reminds us that they may be used against us and exploited to achieve ends which we never intended.

Second jobs for MPs, conflicts of interest and separation of powers

In response to the recent lobbying scandal, Labour took the opportunity on Wednesday, 25th February, to test the government by making a motion in the Commons to ban all Members of Parliament from holding second jobs (BBC, 2015). However, squabbling between the two main parties as to what payments or sources of income are considered a conflict of interest - Labour focussing on consultancies and directorships, the Conservatives on the trade unions - killed the chances of the Labour motion passing.

Under the present rules MPs are allowed to have second jobs, with the majority of those taking advantage being Conservatives - although two of the three highest earners are former Labour Prime Minister Gordon Brown and Respect MP, and former Labour MP, George Galloway (Moseley, 2015). Yet, support is low for MPs juggling their time between public and private commitments (Shakespeare, 2015). There are understandable fears of corruption and conflicts of interest.

These problems are exacerbated by the fact that conflicts of interest are virtually built into the Westminster system of government used in the UK. The Prime Minister is also an MP, the Ministers in the Government are MPs, the Speaker is an MP, the members of the committees are also MPs.

In the Westminster system the executive branch - the government, that carries out the business of state - is formed by members of the legislative branch - the parliament where laws are subject to debate and vote. Theoretically this ties the everyday business of governing to the will of the people as embodied by the parliament, in what is known as responsible government.

In the UK, however, this creates a situation where MPs, elected by constituents to represent their interests in debates regarding lawmaking, are caught between various allegiances, ambitions and duties. They are conflicted between the interests of their constituency and their office, whether just an MP or a Minister in the government; the interests of their constituents, their office and their political party, from which stems the opportunity to take office; and between the conflicting duties of the parliament, to make laws, and the government, to administer and enforce them.

Furthermore, the system creates a conflict of interest between Parliament and the Government. The Government cannot govern effectively without the majority support of the Parliament, and yet if majority support is given the role of the Parliament is significantly reduced. These pressures have, over time, changed the Parliament into more of a factional power-base for Government action, than a body of representatives, itself carrying responsibilities on behalf of electors.

With the private and financial interests of MPs placed on top of these conflicts, inherent to the system, Parliament becomes mired in competing interests. The Labour Party's attempt to ban certain additional roles for MPs is just the latest, with previous attempts at restricting various outside political interests including a government-sponsored lobbying law drawing heavy criticism (Mason, 2014).

In other countries, and other systems of government, there have been attempts to avoid the inherent conflict. The separation of powers has been used, by dividing the functions of government into separate branches - typically known as executive, legislative and judicial - to, at once, ensure that the different branches might hold each other to account, and keep separate the different functions that might result in conflicted allegiances.

That idea of separation, used to address the inherent conflict, might also be applicable to our thinking regarding the public and private interests of MPs.

While serving as Members of Parliament, these elected individuals are representatives with functions, responsibilities and duties, which they carry on the electorate's behalf, in the public service. For the carrying out of their role they are compensated, to the amount of £67,000, plus expenses (White, 2015). The aim of paying these elected representatives is to ensure that they were able to devote their full time attentions to the role, and to ensure their independence.

There are understandable and reasonable arguments for a public representative to be grounded in the working realities of the world outside, or to be able to keep themselves in practice in technically complicated professional fields, such medicine or law (Wintour, 2015). Whatever the fears of the emergence of a class of career politicians, it becomes problematic for those representatives to continue to pursue - beyond some limited practices - their own financial interests while in office.

There must be a middle ground, with some room for compromise and compensation for individual service, that maintains the independence of public bodies. However, while there are no straight forward answers, it is clear we need to keep competing interests separate. As we need to remain wary of letting the powers and functions of government merge, to ensure oversight and avoid corruption, we also need to keep the private interests of individual representatives separate from the public interest which they serve.

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References:
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+ Frances Perraudin's 'Straw and Rifkind deny wrongdoing amid 'cash for access' claims'; in The Guardian; 23 February 2015.

+ 'MPs reject Labour's call for a ban on second jobs'; on the BBC; 25 February 2015.

+ Tom Moseley's 'What MPs do as second jobs'; on the BBC; 25 February 2015.

+ Stephan Shakespeare's 'Voters support ban on second jobs for MPs'; from YouGov; 25 February 2015.

+ 'MPs' second jobs: What are the rules?'; on the BBC;

+ Rowena Mason's 'Lobbying bill passes through House of Lords'; in The Guardian; 28 January 2014.

+ 'Lobbying Bill to become law after Lords rebellion falters'; on the BBC; 28 January 2014.

+ Michael White's 'Straw and Rifkind were loose lipped but MP salaries are part of the problem'; in The Guardian; 23 February 2015.

+ Patrick Wintour's 'Straw and Rifkind scandal renews questions about MPs' outside interests'; in The Guardian; 23 February 2015.

HSBC scandal shows the disturbing connection between wealth and political influence in the UK

Over the last week there have emerged allegations of massive tax evasion amongst wealthy individuals, facilitated by the international banking concern HSBC (Tran, 2015). The most disturbing elements of the story have been the connections drawn between the bank, those evading tax, and the UK government.

There has been an alleged failure on the part of the treasury to pursue and prosecute, while authorities elsewhere across Europe have co-operated to secure prosecutions and recovery of moneys (Syal & Garside, 2015). There have been extravagant donations from those dodging tax to political parties here in the UK - £5m to the Conservatives, and as much as £2.5m has been connected to Labour (Leigh et al, 2015). The former chair of HSBC, Stephen Green, is even a government minister (Garside et al, 2015).

Prime Minister Cameron has thus far issued the same kinds of denial that he made in relation to the scandal surrounding his former director of communications Andy Coulson, even as Labour have tried to press home the connections between the Conservative Party and the perpetrators of this latest scandal (Watt & Wintour, 2015). Other political figures have even been quick to suggest that light avoidance, though not necessarily outright evasion, is normal in British society (Wintour, 2015).

As with the hacking scandal that brought Rupert Murdoch before a parliamentary inquiry, the extensive connections between wealth and political influence are disturbing. Money-making capitalist enterprises have been allegedly helping the wealthy break the law for a profit, all while both groups are closely connected to UK government ministers and political parties.

We are reminded once again of the need for vigilance. But sometimes even that isn't enough. When powerful institutions are shrouded in secrecy, hidden by their wealth and influence, we need something more. We need greater transparency, in both the public and private sectors, along with comprehensive political reform to ensure that justice and democracy can't undermined for a price.

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References:
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+ Mark Tran's 'The HSBC files: what we know so far'; in The Guardian; 11 February 2015.

+ Rajeev Syal & Juliette Garside's 'HSBC files: tax chief 'confident' civil servants told ministers about data'; in The Guardian; 11 February 2015.

+  David Leigh, James Ball, Juliette Garside & David Pegg's 'HSBC files show Tories raised over £5m from HSBC Swiss account holders'; in The Guardian; 11 February 2015.

+ Juliette Garside, David Leigh, James Ball & David Pegg's 'Ex-HSBC boss Stephen Green: the ethical banker with questions to answer'; in The Guardian; 9 February 2015.

+ Nicholas Watt & Patrick Wintour's 'Ed Miliband attacks 'dodgy' PM for failure to answer HSBC tax questions'; in The Guardian; 11 February 2015.

+ Patrick Wintour's 'Lord Fink: tax avoidance is normal in British society'; in The Guardian; 12 February 2015.

Charlie Hebdo, John Stuart Mill and the Harm Principle

The events in Paris have put freedom of speech at the front and centre of political debate around the world. Governments are discussing their response, including expansion of surveillance powers particularly in the domestic sphere (Watt, 2015).

In the light of the attack upon the offices of Charlie Hebdo, which has been defended as a satirical publication, conservative voices are arguing that some things are sacred, and cannot be ridiculed (Topping, 2015). In response, others have accused conservatives of blaming victims for 'provocation', rather than condemning those who wield violence to achieve their ends (Toynbee, 2015).

The question is, what is free speech? What does it look like? Why is it important? How can we use it?

John Stuart Mill, an influential figure in liberal political philosophy and contributor to utilitarianism, argued that free thought and expression were key to the discovery of the truth, and to keeping honest the establishment that is supposed to embody that truth. Out of these ideas, Mill developed his harm principle:

"The sole end for which mankind are warranted, individually or collectively, in interfering with the liberty of action of any of their number, is self-protection. That the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not a sufficient warrant... Over himself, over his body and mind, the individual is sovereign."

The point of individual freedom is that you may do as you will freely, but only where you do not impose upon the freedoms of others. The question raised by recent events, and by the opinions thrown out by public figures, is what happens in the grey area?

For Mill, there exists, between the clear freedoms of any two parties and the clear infringements of those freedoms, a grey area of debate. It is in that space that governance takes place - and it requires two voices: one liberal and one conservative, one for progress and one for the status quo. Freedom of speech plays an integral role in the relationship between the two. It is part of the encouragement of individuality, and protection of it. It is part of our defence against powerful establishments that reinforce their own opinions against criticism, tyrannies both of government and of the majority.

Something that the events in Paris brought into particular focus are the tools that those without institutional power use within that grey area. Protest, terror and satire.

Protest and terror are two sides of the same coin. They seek to create an alternative form of power to that of the establishment, in order to project their views and challenge the authority of the established position. One of them is about peaceful civil action or disobedience designed to persuade, and the other is about using force, fear and violence in order to coerce.

Satire follows a different path. Rather than creating a source of power, it instead seeks to undermine power with humour - ostensibly in order to hold it to account. It is meant to be the tool of those who want to challenge a powerful establishment, from a position of relative weakness or powerlessness. The humour of satire aims to dispel the seriousness with which ritual and adherence are followed, to create a dehallowed critical space.

That is, of course, a difficult task. It means walking a line between irreverence towards the things that people hold dear, and a fall into racism, homophobia and sexism, the cheap tools of cheap victories. How do we go about challenging the presumptions of others, or basis of their power, without falling into those traps? How can we safely disrespect the taboos of others, in order to shine a light on the unquestioned, unchallenged or corrupt?

On the matter of how we express ourselves through free speech, and the idea that we ought only to be 'temperate' in that speech, Mill's answer was pragmatic. He argued that while law and government could not, and probably should not, shut down sophistic, 'invective' or 'intemperate discussion', they were none the less tools best not used.

"The gravest of [the principal offences] is, to argue sophistically, to suppress facts or arguments, to misstate the elements of the case, or misrepresent the opposite opinion. But all this, even to the most aggravated degree, is so continually done in perfect good faith by persons who are not considered, and in many other respects may not deserve to be considered, ignorant or incompetent, that it is rarely possible, on adequate grounds, conscientiously to stamp the misrepresentation as morally culpable, and still less could law presume to interfere with this kind of controversial misconduct."

While those methods - like lying about your opponent and their views or using generalised slurs to sully your opponent and therefore anything they say - are effective at shutting down debate, these tools serve only to sully the causes connected to their use, and to damage our chances of understanding truth by distorting or stopping the contributions of free voices.

"It is, however, obvious that law and authority have no business with restraining either [intemperate argument professing the prevailing or contrary positions], while opinion ought, in every instance, to determine its verdict by the circumstances of the individual case - condemning everyone, on whichever side of the argument he places himself, in whose mode of advocacy either want of candor, or malignity, bigotry, or intolerance of feeling manifest themselves; but not inferring these vices from the side which a person takes, though it be the contrary side of the question to our own; and giving merited honor to everyone, whatever opinion he may hold, who has calmness to see and honesty to state what his opponents and their opinions really are, exaggerating nothing to their discredit, keeping nothing back which tells, or can be supposed to tell, in their favor."

Conservatism seeks to argue that some things are sacred, and cannot be made fun of. To build up dogmas, religious and ideological, to be adhered to. The whole point of satire is to the contrary - to poke fun at, and so undermine, the things people hold sacred when they become corrupt and despotic. To call into question those things that people fail to think about, to critique, for themselves and instead follow blindly.

That aim is at the heart of free speech. We are to be free in our opinions so that truth will not be lost or suppressed, and so that the powerful may be held to account. Those who seek to shut down free speech likely have a vested interest in the prevailing opinions, regardless of whether they are right or wrong. Those who fall into racism, homophobia, sexism and other kinds of chauvinistic bigotry also wish to protect a vested interest in an opinion, but through the use of such methods only mark themselves and their cause.

Free speech for Mill was about peaceful, calm and reasoned debate, a process necessary for the discovery of truth and for the advancement of good governance. In the everyday sense, it translates to thinking and expressing yourself freely, but that those thoughts and expressions are not free of criticism, from being challenged and proved false, and that this is the very point of free speech. It is how we move forward, how we learn, how we discover the truth. Ad hominem attacks, bigotry and violence contribute nothing.

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References:
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+ The Guardian's World News section devoted to the Charlie Hebdo attack.

+ Nicholas Watt's 'Ed Miliband rejects calls for revival of snooper’s charter after Paris attacks'; in The Guardian; 11 January 2015.

+ Alexandra Topping's 'Pope Francis: freedom of expression has limits'; in The Guardian; 15 January 2015.

+ Polly Toynbee's 'On Charlie Hebdo Pope Francis is using the wife-beater’s defence'; in The Guardian; 16 January 2015.

+ John Stuart Mill's 'On Liberty'; 1859. [Buy Now]

The 2015 UK general election leader's debate might not happen. But is that a bad thing?

As January sees the campaign for the 2015 UK general election begin in earnest, so too does it see the negotiation over possible televised debates become more intense. Following the impact of the 2010 debates between Prime Ministerial candidates, there are obviously those who want more of the same this time around.

A group including YouTube, The Guardian and The Telegraph have proposed to expanding the format with a digital debate between the five main UK-wide parties (The Guardian, 2015). However, all of the proposed debates have already resulted in a lot of squabbling.

The rise in polling support for UKIP and the Green Party has seen demands for the presence of their leaders on the podium alongside those of the Conservatives, Labour and the Liberal Democrats (Hodges, 2014; Morris, 2014). Yet, the presence of reactionary right and radical left parties at the debates are only likely to make the bigger parties less interested in the debates happening at all - no one particularly wants to be upstaged (Rentoul, 2015).

In fact, those in power see so little reason to voluntarily put themselves on the same platform as those claiming to offer even slight alternatives, let alone drastically different approaches, that the debates may not even happen at all (Rentoul, 2015). UKIP and the Greens may want in, but Cameron and the Conservatives, it appears, do not (Watt, 2015) and without the sitting Prime Minister the debates would struggle to be considered representative.

From one perspective, being denied the opportunity of seeing the five UK wide parties debating would be a disappointment. Politics in the UK already struggles to engage with voters, is already too remote and inaccessible, without then cutting off one main focal point through which the majority can stay in touch.

However, the short format of a couple of hours of television makes it difficult to ensure depth of discussion and analysis of the ideas presented. The ideas and critique are reduced witty or snide one-liners, jabs aimed at the subjective weak spots of an opponent.

Informative analysis - something needed to keep the people, who ultimately have to make the choice, well informed - can be given much more space when offered in other formats, like newspapers (print and online) and blogs. If done well, and presented well, they can even reach as wide an audience, if not wider, through the internet than might engage passively with a couple of hours of prime time television.

Whether or not we want to see the political parties debate their ideas, there are still some things to consider about the format. Do the televised debates increase visibility and engagement enough to make up for its fairly limited approach to analysing the facts? Or does it just present grandstanding populists with an opportunity to score cheap points with simplistic sentiments, and so to distort the facts and the argument?

We must be wary that, in seeking to increase the visibility of politics and in attempting to reach out to engage with people, we do not lose the depth and complexity of analysis required for the making of sound decisions.

==========
References:
==========
+ 'An invitation to UK party leaders digital debate'; The Guardian; 9 January 2015.

+ Dan Hodges' 'Nigel Farage is desperate for Ukip to join the cosy Westminster clique'; in The Telegraph; 14 November 2014.

+ Nigel Morris' '260,000 people sign petition to include Green Party in election debates'; in The Independent; 12 November 2014.

+ John Rentoul's 'I agree with David Cameron – there will be no TV debates'; in The Independent; 11 January 2015.

+ John Rentoul's 'Footnote on TV debates'; in The Independent; 11 January 2015.

+ Nicholas Watt's 'Cameron is running scared from TV election debates, says Ed Miliband'; in The Guardian; 11 January 2015.

Strikers and protesters are demanding a better future - how long will it take Westminster to catch up with reality?

In the last week, thousands of people have taken to the streets in protest. From strike action taken by NHS staff on Monday, protesting the refusal of a 1% pay rise (The Guardian, 2014), to the Trade Union Congress (TUC) 'Britain Needs a Pay Rise' protest on Saturday (Johnston, 2014), people are taking to the streets in opposition to public sector cuts and austerity - with more strikes planned for the coming weeks.

The NHS strike received wide support, being particularly broad on twitter, that once more demonstrated strong positive public feeling towards public services, and in particular the UK's health service. The TUC protest for better pay only confirmed the increase in opposition to the public sector cuts.

At the coalition's inception a narrative was laid out that stressed the apparent necessity of cuts to public spending. That narrative came with a promise: 'We're all in this together'.

That idea was challenged from the beginning (Butler & Malik, 2010), and the statistics gathered by the government's social mobility commission, chaired by former Labour cabinet minister Alan Milburn (Boffey, 2014) confirm that young people are being disproportionally burdened with falling pay, fewer opportunities, and in many cases left without either the ability to find work or to find homes.

This crisis extends beyond young people, however. Prices are rising as wages and social security continue to fall across the board (Roberts, 2014). That situation is deeply affecting people's confidence, and leaving them with little hope of a better future (Mason, 2014).

Combined with incongruous contradictions like refusing a 1% pay rise for all NHS staff but approving an 11% rise for MPs (Campbell & Johnson, 2014), or the super rich getting richer as the rest of us are getting poorer (Dorling, 2014), it seems that the cuts, if the necessity of them was ever conceded, have now been pushed far enough to become a bitter pill people are no longer willing to swallow.

There is a growing feeling that the cuts are an ideological project, rather than a commitment to a pragmatic public policy. Part of an ideology opposed to the government collecting and spending money on the behalf of the people. An ideology opposed to the wealthiest contributing a proportional share to the commons. 'We're all in this together' is looking like a hastily slipping façade.

Society is becoming absurdly unbalanced, and the economic crisis continues. At a time when conditions are getting more and more difficult for those hit hardest by the continuing economic crisis, taking away public services, reducing public sector employment and drastically cutting back public welfare & support is making that situation desperate.

As Thomas Paine reminds us (1795), there has to be something in it for the worst off within civilisation.

'In taking the matter upon this ground, the first principle of civilization ought to have been, and ought still to be, that the condition of every person born into the world, after a state of civilization commences, ought not to be worse than if he had been born before that period. But the fact is that the condition of millions, in every country in Europe, is far worse than if they had been born before civilization began.'

Otherwise, why should they care or participate? Today, Paine's words remind us of society's duty to ensure continued hope and enfranchisement of each new generation. But those obligations are being shattered by attacks on social security.

In response people are out in increasing numbers to strike, and to protest. They are resisting. Yet they are also finding it hard to make themselves heard where it matters. It is not a coincidence that these difficult conditions have been accompanied by the rise of far-right populism across Europe. As Charles Kennedy (2006) warned us:

'The danger in all of this is that if sufficient people conclude that there is nothing in the conventional political process for them then they may opt for more simplistic and extreme options on offer. I remain an optimist. But across the mainstream political spectrum there is a candid recognition of the danger.'

It was in these kinds of conditions that movements like the protests of May '68 in France emerged, when an entire fifth of the country's population went on strike. From Occupy, to the student protests in Chile, to the democratic movement across the Middle East and North Africa, and protests against austerity across Europe, people are taking to the streets to demand a better future.

In the UK, these strikes and protests are becoming a common sight. Public sector workers, trade unions and government commissioners are warning that society is slipping into dangerous levels of inequality and unfairness. How long will it take Westminster to catch up with reality?

==========
References:
==========
+ The Guardian's 'Unite workers vote to strike in NHS staff pay dispute'; 26 September 2014.

+ Chris Johnston's 'Tens of thousands take to UK streets in pay protest'; in The Guardian; 18 October 2014.

+ Patrick Butler's & Shiv Malik's 'All in it together? Young people and the cuts'; in The Guardian; 8 December 2010.

+ Daniel Boffey's 'Alan Milburn says Britain is on verge of being permanently divided between haves and have-nots as young miss out on recovery'; in The Guardian; 19 October 2014.

+ Yvonne Robert's 'Low-paid Britain: 'People have had enough. It's soul destroying''; in The Guardian; 30 August 2014.

+ Paul Mason's 'The unending economic crisis makes us feel powerless – and paranoid'; in The Guardian; 19 October 2014.

+ Denis Campbell & Sarah Johnson's 'NHS strike: clinics close and operations cancelled in dispute over pay'; in The Guardian; 13 October 2014.

+ Danny Dorling's 'How the super rich got richer: 10 shocking facts about inequality'; in The Guardian; 15 September 2014.

+ Thomas Paine's 'Agrarian Justice'; 1795. [Buy Now]

+ Charles Kennedy's 'How we lost people's trust'; in The Guardian; 4 August 2006.

The party conferences reveal different visions for our economic future

With the next UK general election now only months away, this round of political party conferences is all about building towards polling day. That means each party is beginning to mark out its territory, and to lay out the policies that voters will be asked to choose between.

With the economic crisis refusing to abate, and a series of deep cuts to public sector funding likely to be followed by more in the next parliament - certainly if the current government survives the election - the economy is going to be a major factor for consideration.

On the matter of economics, political parties seem to adhere to a set of rules that ensure that things don't change too much. But the main parties all have their own visions, even if there are some common themes. Each of those visions reveals to us a little bit about the differences between the parties.

Amongst the most telling are the policies of the right-wing conservatives, who will have the novelty of being represented by two parties at the next general election. The Conservative Party and UKIP represent the same fundamental political positions, though in UKIP's case it has been taken to some extremes.

Savage cuts to public services appear to be on the Conservative Party agenda for the next parliament, with the wealthiest looking likely to be the main benefactors (Ball, 2014). UKIP's offer looks astoundingly similar, if anything even more weighted towards the upper middle class and upwards - to be paid for, they say, by leaving Europe, and so ending Britain's contributions to things like the Regional Development Fund and support for Agriculture and Fisheries, and by cutting foreign aid (BBC, 26/9/2014).

Both conservative parties are also offering to copy the Liberal Democrats and their stated commitment to take the poorest out of income tax. Along with that, go commitments to give tax cuts to those earning up to £50-£55,000 a year, along with making fairly tenuous promises to 'protect the NHS' (Wright, 2014).

The question is, with all of the tax cuts, how exactly is the NHS going to be protected? Unless by more cuts to other public services or more privatisation? It has been suggested that the cuts will only really benefit the wealthier. Those concerns will become a reality if keeping public healthcare afloat means even more cuts to basic services that the poorest depend on.

With those kinds of attitudes towards the role of government, and to the running of public services, along with the belief of both conservative groups in dismantling Europe's Human Rights framework, the way ahead does not look rosy for the poorest should one of the conservative parties get their way.

Labour Shadow Chancellor Ed Balls has focussed his economic pitch on standing out from the other main parties. Rather than raising many of the lowest paid out of tax, Labour want to increase the minimum wage. They want to combine that with a freeze on energy prices (BBC, 22/9/2014).

The issue comes with Labour's unwillingness to commit to whether or not they will continue with the Conservative Party's cuts to public spending (Peston, 2014). This has happened before. Throughout the last four years Labour haven't ruled out continuing the cuts, and Ed Balls' conference speech has done nothing to offer reassurance on the matter.

The Labour Party's determination to set itself apart from the opposition is so far obvious only in words. On the surface, the difference between conservative and Labour positions appears as if it will be a contest over who can better administer the status quo, and subtle shifts in tax taken either from the wealthy, or from the poor.

Meanwhile, the Liberal Democrats have also set their stall out in an effort to distance themselves from the others. They want to give a tax cut to 29 million, increasing the pre-tax allowance to £11,000, a policy that has been copied across the board. However the Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg has stressed that this will be paid for by focussing tax increases on the richest, as part of an effort to 'rebalance' tax increases and cuts (Lansdale, 2014) - highlighting the need to find new ways to rebalance state finances without more cuts.

Their pitch is that the Lib Dems would borrow less than Labour and cut less than the right-wing parties. They are trying to set out their own position, and get back to the basics of liberal policy. But that comes with an attachment to the free market that ultimately chains them, and has led them to sacrifice other policies, like the abolition of tuition fees, that were more important to voters (Wheeler, 2014). It also prevents them from being a complete alternative to the Conservatives, UKIP and Labour.

A group that has not been afraid to criticise the market orthodoxies are the Green Party. The Greens present voters with a progressive alternative that sets them very much apart from the other parties.

They want levies on wealth and large rises in the minimum wage, along with the introduction of a basic income - also known as a citizen's income - and to renationalise the railways (Mason, 2014). Further, they aim to do this within a new framework, a new political settlement, to be drawn up with the participation of the whole country.

The Greens represent a quietly growing progressive movement, with organised political parties across Europe, who are beginning to find support for a renewal of trust and engagement in politics, one coupled to a new approach to economics.

Yet that quiet movement is struggling to make the catchy headlines needed to get public attention away from stunts and controversy, like the Conservative Party tearing itself in two over the European Union, and splitting apart into new factions like UKIP.

Those controversies will ultimately prove the making or breaking of this next UK general election. With so much populist and hyped-up focus on extreme factions, and the main parties squabbling over who to trust on certain issues, it will be hard to see the real information through the cloud of noise.

And that is a problem, because to make the right decisions, when election time comes around, all of the best information is needed. The noise and popularity contests will mean people having to remain vigilant to find it, and see through the propaganda to what each party is really trying to achieve.

==========
References:
==========
+ James Ball's 'Cameron’s tax cuts benefit middle and higher earners, not the poorest'; in The Guardian; 2 October 2014.

+ BBC's 'UKIP conference: Income tax cuts plan unveiled'; 26 September 2014.

+ Ben Wright's 'Cameron frames election choice with tax cuts pledge'; on the BBC; 1 October 2014.

+ BBC's 'David Cameron pledges tax cuts 'for 30m people''; 1 October 2014.

+ Nick Robinson's 'Cameron: Talk of 'better times' rather than austerity'; on the BBC; 1 October 2014.

+ BBC's 'Ed Balls sets out priorities for 'first Labour Budget''; 22 September 2014.

+ Robert Peston's 'Can Balls be just austere enough?'; on the BBC; 22 September 2014.

+ James Lansdale's 'Lib Dems seek centre 'gap' as Tories and Labour shift'; on the BBC; 5 October 2014.

+ Brian Wheeler's 'Lib Dems should have died in a ditch over tuition fees - Farron'; on the BBC; 6 October 2014.

+ BBC's 'Nick Clegg pledges 'tax cut for 29 million people' in 2016'; 7 October 2014.

+ Chris Mason's 'Can the Greens' economic ideas grab the attention of voters?'; on the BBC; 5 September 2014.

+ BBC's 'Green Party calls for £10 hourly minimum wage by 2020'; 5 September 2014.

+ BBC's 'Green Party says membership up to 26,000 across Britain'; 6 October 2014.

+ BBC's 'Green Party seeks 'radical' new political settlement'; 19 September 2014.

Four years, two hundred articles, and there are still reasons for hope

This is the two hundredth weekly post on this blog. Over the last four years we have covered everything from the Scottish independence referendum, to the Hacking Scandal, to the Chilean Winter student protests and the first free elections in Tunisia since 1956.

The purpose of this blog, from the beginning, has been to observe politics, society and authority; to scrutinise them and attempt to find moderate solutions to our contemporary anxieties. This has meant searching out the motivations behind political and social movements, identifying ideological themes, exposing them and analysing them.

At times that has been a gruesome task. The past year, in particular, has seen the world take a significant turn for the darker. War has broken out once more in some parts of the world, like Iraq, where the West had believed that peace had been achieved.

In other places, war has broken a long peace. Ukraine has been pulled apart by war after protests against the government led to a severe split in the country, between the pro-European and the pro-Russian elements.

Furthermore, the world has yet to break out of the economic crisis that began in 2008, and continues to be affected by how governments have responded - especially the, Conservative ideology influenced, economic orthodoxy of public sector cuts.

The cutbacks and the hard times associated with them are not unconnected to the rise of far right populism in Europe, having often being the breeding ground for it in the past. Right wing groups have made a significant impact, gaining political representation in a number of countries, including the UK and France, and it has caused concern to many.

But in amongst these depressing events, over the past four years there have been reasons for hope.

Even while voting turnouts have dropped, public engagement with politics has been high. Progressive protesters of all kinds have taken to the streets to campaign for everything from the right to education, to the protection of vital public services like healthcare, pensions and welfare from ideologically driven public sector cuts, to the occupy protests that demanded a more equal society, free from exploitation.

The long struggle for equality of civil rights also continues. Awareness of feminism is at a new high. Rape culture and everyday sexism are all now well known issues, and people are standing up against them. The rights of gay people to civil equality is being taken seriously around the world, and beginning to bear fruit - the first steps of which has been gay marriage.

Rising awareness and greater possibilities of being better informed and better connected than ever before promise us that a new era of radical reformism is only just around the corner. Hypocrisies, contradictions and corruption are being exposed. People are speaking out, openly, about the need to pursue civil liberties, social justice and a sustainable society, and they are getting together to go out and campaign for them.

After four years, and two hundred weekly articles - posted every Monday - of sifting through corruption, hidden agendas and political double-speak, I can still see hope. There are lights sparking everywhere that, just maybe, can illumine the way forward. Thank you for your support, and we hope to see you back here again next Monday.

Independence doesn't have to be about negativity and closing doors

Independence, devolution and autonomy are ideas starting to appear regularly in the public eye. In Scotland, there are citizens campaigning for independence (Wishart, 2014). In Catalonia too (BBC, 2014). In Italy, Prime Minister Matteo Renzi is being upstaged in his wishes to devolve greater powers to the cities by the cities themselves (Adams et al, 2014).

As the opposing factions in Scotland debate tonight, the same main issue will circle the debate, as has circled the campaign thus far. From Scotland to Catalonia, the debate has come around and round again to the economic consequences (Hunter, 2014). Will it be disastrous? Can the provinces survive without the power of central government? Can central government survive without taxes being levied from the provinces?

As important as the impact of financial decisions will be, it only goes to reinforce one of the primary factors driving people away from politics in disgust. Economics drives the policy decisions, rather than policy setting the economic direction (Cave & Rowell, 2014).

Yet regional, provincial or city self-government can be about so much more than the money. Regionalism can be about bringing power back closer to the people (Gruen, 2014). There is room to give people a say in the running of the places they live, as individuals rather than always as part of some broader identity group. As such, it does not need to be about nationalism either. It can be about representation, rather than narrowing and retreating. At the moment, nation-states seem to be entirely too guilty of that themselves to be pointing fingers at the provinces (Seth-Smith, 2013).

Nation-states are scrambling to keep their grip. The political factions invested in them, and entrenched within their identities, are desperate to prop up systems that are no longer inspiring the confidence they once did (Orr, 2014). Nationalism once toppled imperialism and the politics of dynasties, all in the name of liberty - freedom for the people.

But somewhere along the way it has just morphed into yet another tool of the establishment for maintaining the status quo. Now we find central governments trying to wrestle with, or woo, globalised corporations and have stand-offs with multi-national political entities, while also telling local authorities what funding they can and cannot spend.

While central government hoards power it is either too small or too large to wield, autonomy is being lost. Open borders and globalised trade mean that progressive regionalism, bringing power back closer to individuals for the decision-making that affects their own lives, doesn't need to stymie their financial wellbeing.

That will be an important matter tonight. Alistair Darling, the former UK Chancellor on behalf of Better Together, and Alex Salmond, the Scottish First Minister on behalf of the pro-independence Yes Scotland, will debate Scotland's future on BBC Two at 20:30 (and BBC One Scotland), and the biggest issue will be whether autonomy or union will be better for each country and the individuals composing them, financially.

But the people of Scotland, and not just of Scotland, should not have to choose between the right to self-governing autonomy and co-operating with other people of other nations, in other countries or provinces. They can co-exist. If nation-states continue to force their provinces to make a choice between the two, it is likely Scotland's independence referendum will not be the last.

==========
References:
==========
+ Ruth Wishart's 'Scottish independence debate – time for the second TV ding-dong'; in The Guardian; 24 August 2014.

+ The BBC's 'Spanish parliament rejects Catalan independence vote'; 9 April 2014.

+ Eddy Adams, Raffaele Barbato & Francesco Carollo's 'Devolution, Italian-style – the cities forging their own futures'; in The Guardian; 30 July 2014.

+ Teresa Hunter's 'The true costs of Scottish independence: How it will affect your money'; in The Telegraph; 27 February 2014.

+ Tamasin Cave & Andy Rowell's 'The truth about lobbying: 10 ways big business controls government'; in The Guardian; 12 March 2014.

+ Peter Gruen's 'Leeds city council's radical step to give more power to the people'; on The Northerner Blog; in The Guardian; 30 June 2014.

+ Niki Seth-Smith's 'UKIP and the rise of English nationalism'; on opendemocracy.net; 17 July 2013.

+ Deborah Orr's 'There is a lot more to British democracy than Westminster – or there should be'; in The Guardian; 14 March 2014.

Where are the Radicals? A short history of radicalism

At a time when protests are rife and the established progressive parties are disappointing, it is astonishing that no parties pushing a more radically progressive agenda have emerged to fill the obvious gap. Even existing progressive groups, such as the Green Party, are struggling to pick up more votes and seats (Sinclair, 2014).

The Left in Britain is fragmented, split between Greens, Trade Unionists, Co-operativists, Socialists, Liberals, Social Democrats and Democrats. That situation has been replicated in other countries as well. Globalism goes on apace, the state is whittled away by ideological cuts, and the nominally main party of the British Left, the Labour Party, are failing at being radical because they don't understand it (Behr, 2014).

Labour has, over the long years, become a centralised mainstream party, shaped by the system of majority voting. It has resigned itself to certain orthodoxies, and accepted conservative economic beliefs as definite outlines of a reality to which it has to conform - not necessarily because the party believes in it, but because that narrative has become so well publicised that it has been necessary to adhere to it in order to appeal to the majority.

That situation has driven radicals out to the fringes, away from electoral power and away from policy decisions. But it didn't get this way overnight.

A Short History of Radicalism

So why aren't there any radical parties?

Radicals first sprang up as a political and electoral force around Europe during the 19th century at the time of the liberal revolutions. The term came to refer to liberals who were not satisfied with gradual reform or small concessions gained from the old monarchic order, or with the limited 'free institutions' - elected parliament, protections of the freedoms of belief and speech, and protections of property -  that mainstream moderate liberals aimed to achieve and settled for (Collins, 1971).

While democrats pursued greater political power to place in the hands of the people, and socialists sought to represent and enshrine that idea in a dictatorship over the state institutions, the radicals pursued, ever persistently, each new social reform after the other: extending voting rights for men and women, worker's rights, pensions and more.

Radicals could be found across the political divides between democrats and liberals, between socialists, anarchists, and trade unionists. They found support for worthy progressive campaigns across the left, across party partisan divides. In the UK, suffragists like Fawcett and trade unionists worked with the Liberal Party in the late 19th and early 20th century to secure women's and workers' rights. The Poor Reports of Rowntree in York, and of Booth, Potter and Collet in London, produced rational assessments of society that informed and shaped Liberal and Labour policy throughout the 1900s.

Radicalism in Western Europe

The story in Spain, Germany and Italy largely followed similar scripts to one another. When the liberal revolts of the mid-1800s failed to take hold, and the mainstream liberals settled down within their 'free institutions', the radicals found themselves largely pushed to the fringes.

In Germany the failure of the 1848 revolutions was followed by a long and intense period of conservatism. By the time free institutions re-emerged after the Second World War, it was into a Germany with modern, and organised, mainstream parties. Spain's long period under the far-right Franco regime, after the divisions and civil war of the Republican period, served only to frighten the majority of the Left into the shelter of whichever was the largest and most stable opposition group. That same affect compounded the modernisation and centralisation of Germany's political groups.

Fear of the threat posed to liberty by the Far-Right has forced the Left to centralise.

In Italy, though, the various groups on the left, with their partisan fighters - who had joined the Republican side of the War in Spain and then fought against Mussolini's Fascists in their own country during the Second World War - came out of The War with their own wide spread support. Each of the parties of the left had their own backers and their own anti-fascist records with which to maintain their separate identities for a time.

Radicals by name found themselves at home in many groups, among social democrats and socialists, or with the Republican Liberal Socialists of the Partito d'Azione. That party even saw itself, however briefly, at the head of a post-war coalition government. But infighting and an unwillingness to co-operate with those opposed to progress, or who had associated with fascists, proved their undoing. Fear of the Far-Right struck once more, forcing the Left to huddle together under one conforming banner.

Only in France did radicals manage to achieve a persistent presence in the political mainstream. However, despite the Parti republicain, radical et radical-socialiste being a major player in governments across the first half of the 20th century, being in the mainstream led to the same problems as those faced by radical progressives in Britain and elsewhere. The demands of gathering support and retaining power hindered the drive for ever more reform.

Fear and Conformity

The same fear of the far-right had long affected Britain also, where the labour movement had fought long and hard to get a foothold within the institutions of government. To make sure that conservatives and those on the far-right could not undo their long work, Labour drew all the left and centre about themselves. But the demands of holding onto those supporters, and balancing and trading off their ideas against each other, and making sure not to alienate other potential voters, stifled any spirit of radical progress.

The political system has not helped. The same safeguards that protect a country from Far-Right usurpation and dominance, within modern western states, also makes sure that progress is difficult to achieve. This, it seems, is to be the crowning glory of the political capitalist model. Progress finds itself bundled in with extremism, and is restricted and restrained in the name of perpetuating a status quo.

Fear and hunger for power have bred conformity. Power coalesces around the most widely socially acceptable faction, regardless of reason. It is brought out into the mainstream, leaving the radicals behind in the shadows, marginalised. Today, these kinds of radical campaigners, thinkers and groups continue to exist. But they are scattered across a fragmented political left and our present, majoritarian, electoral systems assures that they remains so.

This had led to a rather distorted perspective within politics. Arguments and reasoning become financial rather social. We count the cost rather than the value of new ideas, regardless their social worth. The NHS continues to be privatised, despite the fact that polls suggest that most would pay more in tax in order to maintain its independent and comprehensive social spirit (Grice, 2014). The government even continues to pursue its heavily criticised welfare policies (The Guardian, 2014), even though there are radical policy options out there, such as Basic Income, designed to eliminate poverty and social insecurity altogether (Elliott, 2014).

When big ideas are not pursued, not looked into or tested, at the behest of fear - the fear of upsetting the status quo and ushering in change - we have really lost our way. If our present systems are not designed to let us improve our world, then we need to start arguing for something better. We need to argue for a system that protects us from ignorance and domination, by encouraging reason and progress, not settle for a system that stifles all change in the name of an imperfect, uneven and thoroughly poor compromise.

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References:
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+ Ian Sinclair's 'Why does the left ignore the true progressive party – the Greens?'; in The Guardian; 6 January 2014.

+ Rafael Behr's 'Labour doesn't know what radicalism looks like'; in The Guardian; 2 July 2014.

+ Irene Collins' 'Liberalism in Nineteenth-Century Europe'; The Historical Association; 1971. [Buy Now]

+ Andrew Grice's 'Britain prepared to pay more tax to support the NHS, poll finds'; in The Independent; 30 June 2014.

+ The Guardian's 'Iain Duncan Smith to signal more reform of 'dysfunctional' welfare system'; 11 August 2014.

+ Larry Elliott's 'Would a citizen’s income be better than our benefits system?'; in The Guardian; 11 August 2014.