Why the human rights lawyers are the ‘true anti-liberals’.

The European Convention on Human Rights is a unique hypocrisy amongst
Instruments claiming to protect liberty. For all the supposed liberties it grants (which reflect select values of a few lawyers and civil servants and not the people of Europe that its title grandiosely seems to claim), it allows the state to define circumstances in which to take them away. But it is more than this, in classic ‘anti-liberal’ spirit, the Convention also defines the limits of the right through the exercise of the provisos upon which it can be used.

The nature of rights is to have an unlimited number of claims against the state. That it is the duty of the state to provide for them, irrespective of the merit of the individual bringing forward the claim. One sees in its most primitive political form as the bogus: ‘all men are equal’ doctrine. For the claimants it is conveniently forgotten that the state is really the public personified. The human rights brigade forget that with every claim there is a burden and a cost. The only way these claims are to be met is by increasing the size of the state to meet those demands. This reduces the choice of what those that do not want rights in the machinery of Government. For example, the right to housing is a burden of tax. The right to privacy will encumber some other legitimate claim to information, and so on. This is the inherent ‘anti-liberalism’ of the claim.

In the true John Stuart Mill sense of liberalism, a right cannot legitimately exist if it is a burden to others. Otherwise one is simply claiming the right to swing one’s fist despite punching others on the nose. Secondly, Mills tells us that a right cannot be espoused in the spirit of liberty unless it can manifest through legitimate state action that prevents its exercise interfering with others. The one proviso is ‘harm’. As far as the European Convention is concerned it is for the Government in question to define harm. However, this cannot be a liberal reading of the concept of a right. The liberal reading must be that the right exists 'unrestrictedly unless it is exercised harmfully'. Otherwise state action could define the limits to exercising the right, before the right is exercised. This is exactly what, however, the growing European Human Rights law does.

Now to demonstrate how the claims machine works in practice, look no further than the tragic case of Gita Saghal. Gita was sacked by Amnesty international for criticizing its pro-terrorist approach to rights claims. But of course she was, this sits in with the ‘anti-liberal’ approach: rights must be for all irrespective of duty, conduct and demonstrable vindication of obligation to one’s fellow man. Worryingly of all for the state is the more subtle espousal of immoral greed of human action without responsibility that this conceptualisation of rights espouses. Taken to its extreme it leads not only to anarchy in practice when these claims remain unfulfilled, but anarchy in theory when the state is seen as secondary to any individual interest. Therein lies its potential to destroy the equilibrium of society, through its imbalance of the economy of public policy. To echo the words of Thomas Paine, it is better to have no rights and a state, rather than the other way around, as in the latter there is no rule of law.

Lawyers and Governments that seek vindication of these political choices through the legal system, do so at the cost of politicizing the judiciary and weakening it through allowing it to infringe the separation of powers. This reduces the legitimacy of the judiciary in the eyes of the public, undermining the rule of law.

Another spurious logic fostered by the human rights vigilantes is the overall benefit doctrine. E.g. Signing up to rights can be likened to telling a taxi driver that he is better off being restricted in his trade through licencing, as the safety that licencing brings increases the trade. Unfortunately it does not, as once the cost burden outweighs the incentive to trade, there is, well simply: no trade. In this way one persons unrestricted right can cause harm to others (e.g. my right to cross-roads safely, against the number of drops a cab can make). The problem arises when one argues polar opposites of this example, the subtle balancing act that is needed to preserve liberty, is lost as the proverbial baby with the bath water.

Abhijit PG Pandya
Copyright Birkenhead Society.

Climate Change- The Beginning of decline and fall, and the end of the Enlightenment in British Parliamentary Politics.

Waugh’s quintessential novel depicts the down-ward spiral of the life of Mr. Pennyfeather who, having left behind common-sense at University, is marred with the frustrations of tutoring at a minor Public School. Though the novel principally flagellated and marred the minor Public School into the English psyche, its plot is a tempting metaphor for the effects of the current debates on climate change upon British politics.

Climate change is fascinating and disturbing for one clear reason: it reflects the fantastical, fanatical and dangerous truth that bottom-up politics still exists. That the media are the true purveyors of the public’s opinions and that their vintage liquor can not only immediately affect political discourse, but also vehemently soak through the agenda of policy. Take a step back from the rows over whether a particular approach or empirical outcome is veracious and deliberate over the overall methodology used to promote the debate. The first overreaching of reason is the following logic, expressed in general terms: That there does not need certain proof of a matter for it to take up Government time, and resource. Secondly, that it is now possible to contend that the greater the supposed harm of an issue, the more the requirement certainty of empirical proof can be over-reached. Taken to its logical conclusion, we enter into a new primitive approach to political agenda setting- namely that the more ‘hue and cry’ and ‘hyperventilation’ over an issue to which there is a supposed general, undefined harm, the greater the priority that issue should take. The fundamental risk this leaves us with is to undermine the very requirement of political agenda setting, and to falsely prioritise one or more issues over others, leaving important matters of Parliamentary consideration at the bottom of the heap. The Victorians tried very hard to iron this ‘shout and leap’ approach out of Parliamentary debates; though, one would concede, with mixed success. Note this following reflective passage in Anthony Trollope's 'The Prime Minister' concerning the debates regarding Irish home rule: 'Had some inscrutable decree of fate ordained and made it certain,- with a certainty not to be disturbed, that- no candidate could be returned to Parliament who would not assert the earth to be triangular, there would rise immediately a clamorous assertion of triangularity amongst political aspirants. The test would be an innocent one- candidates have swallowed and do swallow many a worse one'. A persistent Westminster problem that had to be overcome was that the more emotion an issue caused the more time it would take up in the house. This is where acute reason, one that does not seek harmony or concord on an issue to further expediency over legitimacy, is needed. I for one, (and this maybe an immense failing of mine) cannot recall a debate over legitimacy of this issue with respect to overall policy agenda. If this has occurred, then it is surprising to me that those who see questioning the validity of the issue do not raise this in counter-argument.

That man has an impact on his climate is by no means clear. Further, that man has ‘detrimental’ impact is no means clear, particularly as the word ‘detrimental’ here is primarily anthrocentric- yes life on this planet would not necessarily continue with respect to man, it not being implausible that some obscure aquatic specie might not benefit from supposed man made climatic changes. Then there are general arguments, sociological, not scientific that are ignored- society as it stands would have to change. It is not as if this would not happen anyway, but there is a strangely Delphic presumption that this would be harmful. What is and is not ‘harmful’ is not necessarily important to qualify, mere change to common behaviour and contemporaneous societal customs is enough. One could go one with the various oversimplifications and assumptions that lie in the heart of presuming the issue once the debate moves beyond science. Another key one that has been overlooked is the weakness of scientific methodology itself. That statistics fuelled scientific research is by its nature empirically questionable, that when one demonstrates a trend one has to, importantly, demonstrate the non-existence of a counter-trend. This latter issue is not placed at the heart of the debate, because it has not had to be as the agenda is set and the legitimacy of the issue is assumed. Thus the approach of presumption makes it harder, not easier, to vindicate any truth in the argument in the long-run. One obvious solution might be is to have a separate Parliamentary committee or body where the skeptics can put their own papers forward. Perhaps, only such an approach is fair and democratic.


APG Pandya
Copyright Birkenhead Society.

Revival of old Economic Theory to match these uncertain times is needed:

Labour has fluncked Britain’s economy, as much as Britain’s economy has flunked itself. The Government of course is only to blame if the huge rise in public spending, is related to the lack of credit in the markets. The link would have been clear to even the most disgruntled, asinine of economists twenty years ago: multiple raising of taxation, to slowly and surely dry the credit swamp. And credit swamp it was. When rebranded old-Labour first came into power in 1997 the economy was in a period of growth and there was a steady increase in working capital in the country to allow for a slow expansion of the market.

The problem today resulted from an acute ideological short-coming in the New Labour propoundment of the mythology of a socialist brand of commerce. In simple terms: that whilst Blair was pretending to show he loved business, his Party had never truly signed up to free-market ideology. It forgot about the premise of low taxation and more importantly that this premise should run through all areas of policy making and Government function. Au contraire, Labour’s post 1997 strategy was in tight fitting with much of its traditional socialist economic position: (i) tax and spend and (ii) oppose the free-market with increased cost associated regulation. The Tories, however, doing well in the polls are missing a trick here. Whilst current Shadow Treasury focus is to emphasise the deficit, and thus lay the ground for an agenda of cuts (which both mainstream parties have now conceded), they are not taking the opportunity to bring back free-market ideologues into the current economic discourse. It should be made clear to the City that Friedman style approaches to fiscal policy that resulted in an overall paradigm of growth in the 80s and 90s, shall once more become the mainstream- and there shall be a gradual claw-back of taxation on all fronts. Basic macro-economics will show a relationship between taxing the end of any line of consumption and the primary producer of credit: thus cutting tax on all fronts for a member of the public or corporations, will assist the lenders and the market as a whole. Excessive critiques of bankers should also be curtailed: the modern economy is credit based, and in large parts credit driven. Bankers are thus one of the cornerstone and first foundation stones of our economy. They turn its first wheel. We could do more than reflect on whether the fault lies with them or, more truly, with New Labour. As long as we have our modern economy and society, we will need them and their revival will be, in both short and medium term, the path to our economic recovery.


APG Pandya
Copyright Birkenhead Society.

Effective Border Controls Could Protect our culture:

Since Labour came into power in 1997 immigration has reached unprecedented levels, incomparable to any figure in recent centuries. The Times recently reported that Labour had deliberately told immigration officials to overlook borderline migrant cases (Minette Marrin 01/11/09). This insidious approach was also an abrogation of duty; there were several thousand unemployed in Britain that may have lost job opportunities or the resources to create businesses (such as credit). It is hardly surprising that so many of those struggling to get on the social ladder voted for the BNP in the European Elections this year.


However, Immigration Controls are not just there to prevent resources, but also to protect culture. To protect our culture rates of assimilation are relevant. The post Enlightenment rational approach to society, education and politick is not only uniquely Western, but is more uniquely British. Victorian liberal values of toleration, including not censoring speech that others might want to hear because of selfish sensitivities, took time to absorb and become main-stream social norms. The idea of free-discussion for national interest in politics that formed the key to Parliamentary democracy, was of course first developed in Britain as a result of post-reformation progress based on individual reason. British culture, which is intrinsically humanist, is not everyone’s cup of tea. It is a product of a rare formation of a myriad of factors that makes it difficult for any foreigner to digest. Few that arrive will pick up copies of Macaulay, Dryden or any abridged account of our culture. Often it is not just the comparative poor literacy amongst migrants that is the issue, but rather their cultural traditions, based often in superstition, that are incompatible with the intellectual rigor that British cultural integration requires. The indigenous common man does not have such a problem, as great British thinking is his through being filtered down socially. There is also the issue of will and motivation amongst some, though not all, newcomers. Once migrants are here, they often do not wish to jump several hundred years of history and assimilate. Thus immigration controls need to be in the hundreds, with rigorous testing designed to determine cultural assimilation, rather than the thousands or tens of thousand that politicians arbitrarily claim.

For those that are already here accepting freedom and individual responsibility in a liberal society is a tough choice, and scary. People need to come out of their foreign cultural shells and embrace British plurality. Language and lack of local knowledge are huge barriers. Assimilation can only effectively work through direct personal contact, when others have time to give to foreigners. Huge numbers of migrants will not make this possible. Huge numbers will alienate most people from indigenous folk who aware of important nuances of local history and society. Political correctness, and multi-culturalism do not help assimilation either. Developing states all aspire to market-liberalism and freedom of society, yet multi-culturalism denies all the important cultural aspects that go into allowing this, to migrants in the UK. It fetters assimilation, which has already been made so difficult by the huge swathes of foreign folk that now swamp the concrete social housing ghettoes of inner cities. Worst of all multi-culturalism was disguised as a moral approach, whereas in reality it was an abnegation of social and Governmental responsibility to assimilate migrants. When huge numbers of those with foreign culture (not race as the BNP have tried to flag the issue upon) are given votes, they can work to operate against the British cultural value of toleration. Without assimilation their primary affinity may also be with their state of provenance. This means that they may be willing to vote for measures or people who have interests other than Britain’s at heart. This may be particularly acute in the field of foreign policy as the 2005 electoral success of George Galloway showed.

Lack of willingness to compel assimilation is also a result of a maligned understanding of the global contribution of British culture. The Nehru’s and Gandhi’s of this world were created through the post-enlightenment British education method. Political activists for rights, such as Mandela, had found their values from their education in both Anglican Christianity and post-Enlightenment English Common Law. The victory over the closed autocracy of communism of the Soviets, was predominantly based on two key enlightenment philosophers: John Locke (who conceived the importance of protecting private property rights, which had a significant impact on ideologies that formed the market state) and Adam Smith (whose work placed effective resource usage into the process of Government). Many immigrants from Less Developed Countries, have little appreciation of the importance of upholding contracts and how a rule of law state operates. The difficulties of bringing the idea of individual responsibility and institutional accountability to the developing world, is something that those who work in the field of law and development are all too familiar with. All these problems are too quickly overlooked in Parliament. Time is pressing. The time is now here to put our culture back at the heart of our nation, and to ensure that immigration numbers are curbed significantly to protect it. Or else we are at risk of not losing who we are, but the essence of all we are.

APG Pandya
Copyright Birkenhead Society.

Soft-boiled Egg? Time and Cameron will prove otherwise.

It is interesting to note Charles Moore’s piece in this Saturday’s Telegraph (03/10/09) where he discusses David Cameron’s ‘pointlessness’. However much a soft-boiled egg Cameron may seem to some at the moment, there is no doubt that the fortitude of Cameron will show over the next decade. His biographers Francis Elliott and James Hanning noted a school contemporary of Cameron’s describing him ‘as the hardest of all’ in the class. This was not a reflection of outward demeanour or crass physical power, but an intimation of a rather more subtle strength. This is force of will and determination, coupled with self-belief. These are qualities so evidently lacking in our current Prime Minister, which the electorate can sense under Brown’s skin.

Whilst Brown let Blair and Mandelson trample all over him in the 1994 Labour Leadership bid, Cameron’s boldness took him to the top of his Party at the age of just 39 years. Politicians can be crudely divided into soft-boiled and hard-boiled eggs. Heath was inextricably the soft-boiled egg; self-involved, self-pitying and sybaritic. Another Conservative Politician of similar age, and perhaps greater standing, Enoch Powell was off the hard-boiled type. Powell’s resilience to Europe, brought visible the soft-egg characteristics of Heath. Whilst Powell espoused the laissez-faire economics of the future during the economic turbulence of the 1970s, Heath, for all his skills, locked himself in Downing Street drowning out the discontents with heavy chords from his piano. In the end the piano was far harder to remove from number 10, than the former Prime Minister himself.

Thatcher was different. She was a hard-boiled egg that got so hard that it turned from dairy product to product of metallurgy. She became the ultimate hard-boiled egg. She was more Churchillian than Churchill because she was less self-involved. There is no doubt that the lack of this characteristic makes one more of the hard-boiled specimen. The nature of politics dictates this. If one looks closely at Cameron and Brown, sybarticism is extra-ordinarily deficient in Cameron. In Brown it is on its face. Perhaps, this is what is giving Cameron the edge at present. Of course only time will tell what type of egg David Cameron really is, however Charles Moore is being rather quick to judge. He would not have done so with the dessert wine of Lord Pearson that he was imbuing during his discussion of ‘pointlessness’. Neither should he do so for David Cameron.

The advantages of being a so called member of the ‘political class’, as Moore puts Cameron, disproportionately outweigh the negatives. Some voters are even intuitively drawn towards political elites. It is this very gravity that some members of UKIP seek for from the election of Lord Pearson. Pearson carries weight because he is balanced and not drawn to unnecessary introspection. This much I have learnt from the short-period I have known him.

In the end ‘pointlessness’ will be seen for the incongruent adjective it is, when in front of the name of the Tory leader. This is not necessarily when the election is won, but at present when the majority of the country now seemingly are behind Cameron. Further, no politician, in a representative democracy, is truly pointless. At the very least they reflect an important choice of some voter.

Copyright APG Pandya
Copyright The Birkenhead Society

Al Megrahi-The Fallacy of Devolution

The Prime Minister has been rightfully shot at for the farce surrounding the deportation of Al-Megrahi, but little focus has been made thus far on the systemic failure that caused it. Devolution is the key reason that a convicted terrorist is now on the loose. To devolve national security matters to a regional electoral body with limited decision-making capacity is a error waiting to turn into catastrophe. Decisions such as this do not just affect everyone in the British Isles, the nature of threat of Islamic extremism is such that they affect everyone in the civilised world. This is why they require a full debate and discussion at Westminster so that our own territorial security is preserved.

Devolution was always a bad idea, there was nothing wrong with national representation as far as consensus in political decision-making was concerned. It was brought in by wishful Labour sentiment, that wanted to see further fragmentation of the British Isles and erosion of our extra-ordinary common history since the Act of Union in 1707. It was only a matter of time before blind regionalism of the SNP was seen for the fallacy that it is, and Alex Salmond’s ridiculously flawed political judgment surfaced. Once you fragment law and policy making power, territorial integrity weakens. The formation, for example, of England from the 9th to 11th Centuries from weak fiefdoms was done on the fundamental and important premise of territorial security; I.E. to protect us from invaders.

Complete individual representation in political process is always done at a trade-off for the security of larger consensus. It is inherent in this correct approach that regional and local needs are inevitably diluted. Because security is the primary reason for the state (I wont bother citing Hobbes here), it justifies a compulsory enervation into the ideal of absolute and perfect representation. Devolution, leading to the opposite concept, is thus inherently flawed. Thus supporters of extremism are not laughing just at the weakness shown to violent intimidation of this decision has demonstrated by us, but also the weakening of our Union. Once the foundations of the latter are weakened to a sufficient degree, the terrorists have won a far greater threat than just blowing up an airline.

APG Pandya
Copyright Birkenhead Society.

Churchill -a voice from the past.

I was called in my dreams,
by a nation asleep.
Whose times had gone hard, troubled
and bad.
Whose liberties and reasons, had
been stifled by quarrel and vice,
whose lands were at risk from
the storms of the night.

In my youth my vigour,
led to courage and endeavour.
To fights unexpected, I drew my breath
both in the house and abroad,
Later my soldiers and navy were glorious and
unbowed.

I defeated a dictator, liberated the world,
fought for Empire and your freedom.
My passion, my fervour gave rouse,
to feelings of greatness, in a nation cast down.
I did this for freedom inherent in our way of life,
for the victory of reason
over self-interest, complacency and apathy
to fight.

Do as I do, stay awake and fight; don't stand for the erosion
of freedom; and liberty
will be yours, a treasured right.

APG Pandya Copyright 2009
The Birkenhead Society Copyright 2009
No reproduction in part or whole without permission