Constitutional Reform

Rapid Response Team Replies to Peter Tatchell and Fellow Travellers

Martyn Richard Jones — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 13:39:00 GMT

The Righwing Rapid Response Team Replies to Peter Tatchell and His Fellow Travellers

You just couldn't make it up! The following is a statement issued by The Righwing Rapid Response Team in response to an alarming and malicious article published by known leftwing green guardianista Peter Tatchell, who goes by the name of "Peter Tatchell", and which was published today (or yesterday) in The Guardian. And which has been supported by a number of treasonous and traitorous Britain hating, minority supporting, LGBT loving, race denying, feminazi gits!

Today, we call upon every upstanding British white male and not male to join us in condemning this "political correctness", which has gone from mad to stark raving bonkers on the Political Wrister scale! We are sure that you, like us, will appreciate all too well the urgency of our call, and the need for action (bank account details to be supplied later).

1.a : Fair votes, fair votes is it? So, you want to hang on to Old Mother Brown, that Sugar Honey Honey and your Not Now Darling … you want to have them re-elected without an election. You are taking away our historic rights! This is not British justice! This is Scotch Corner! We want Cameroon for PM now! No! No Welshman or woman is going to tell me what to do. We, the great Britons, we, together, don't want a foreign clown as PM, we want our own. Our own!

1.b : Representative parliament – you lot of socialist layabouts just want your Labour to be in power, forever. Just like the Stalinists, and your Mao and your Fidel. Why do you hate our freedoms, why do you betray your jeans? You want to be able to hand pick MPs? We don't want your New Labour rubbish! Just say no to Ali G, Mark Steel, Mark Thomas and Georgina Galloway. Just say NO to RESPECT! "No room for respect", that's our battle cry.

1.c : Scottish electoral system – Ah! Bloody marvellous isn't it. Here we go again! The Celtic Mafia! As our great Professor Snodpod Smith - who rests in The Scrubs - said "You'll want to force the pasty faced, blue haired, and fair eyed British indigenous male to wear plaid skirts, as the ultimate, last and final act of the humiliating humiliation of a once proud nation of ethnically and genetically and similarly indigenous equivalence".

2.a : A written constitution – you want to complicate things, so you can steal our native British rights, and give them to ethnic minorities. Look sunshines, we've got a constitution, and a Margot Charter, rewritten by your great Henry the Eighth - I am, I am, and nurtured with care, and handed down from blue-blooded generation to blue-blooded generation, and now to this very day, where it resides in the careful hands of your majesty, the Queen. God bless her! Anyway, if we had a constitution that was written down, on paper that is, your bloody Prescott would probably use it as toilet paper, and put it on expenses.

2.b : Bill of rights – Named after your liberal President who couldn't keep his privates under control. This is just to allow the illegal government to issue even more taxing and spending rights – to mosques and 7th day Advertists. And we, the white oppressed, pick up the tab, we pay for Gay Pride marches, just because you don't want to offend LGBT rights and feminists. Bollocks to that! More rights for the scuffers, less rights for the liberal-socialist scroungers and their rubbish causes!

3. Replace the monarchy – How dare you! How dare them! They want to outlaw the memory of the old Queen Mom, her elegant hats on Ascot day, the Royal tipple – it's a bloody outrage! - their evil people who want to kill The Queen of Hearts – again! Smash up her wonderful fountain, yes, that's right, the fountain that flows with the tragic romantic river of sobbing children's tears! … Then, for President of the UK, they'll want Branson Pickle, Mother BlIar, Obarak bin Laden or Alexei Sayle. You're all fookin mad!

4. An elected second chamber – No! The Lords is the only thing what works! We know why, don't we? We know what's behind all this elected lords nonsense, don't we? People only want second chamber election bollocks because the House of Lords, with all that is fine and righteous in British pomp, circumstance and empire, might upset the Pakistanis and the filthy Paediatricians. We educated and civilised the world, taught the French to cook, the Germans to think and the Italians to make cars, and THIS is the THANKS we get? Have you ever stopped to wonder why Nicked Griff is so poplar? NO! Anyway, people are daft. You can't replace the Lords, it's a job that's passed down, from father to son, in the blood.

5. The right to recall MPs – you want to pick on the BNP even before they are elected, just because they are honest to goodness British racists and homophobes, not your foreign decadent, same sex marriage, "Oh! My vicar is a lesbian" … "would you like another vol au vent", rubbish.

6. Abolition of the royal prerogative – you want to surrender the country to foreign terrorists, give up the commonwealth and give all our money to lost causes. And ban Her Majesty … the Queen! So, who is going to run the country then, Mister and Misses Funny Clogs? Where will the knowledge and experience come from, if you take away the Royal Prerogative? Eh?

7.a Strengthen the powers of select committees – that's just an invitation for more select jobs for the select boys. Why do we have to have gay and other privileges rammed down our throats, championed on our streets and up our alleyways? We don't want selection we want inheritance, and maybe an election. When do we want it? NOW! Or, whenever it is convenient for Her Majesty.

7.b It would also involve sufficient staff to service the committees – Oh yes, "room service", Typical liberal-left scroungers, Hanging around in bed all day, being waited on hand, foot and finger. You just want bigger government and multiculturalism and the EU banning our conkers and beef and bangers and bananas and taking away our right to the great traditional cooked - COOKED - English breakfast.

8. Abolition of unelected QUANGOs – Here we bloody go again! If it doesn't pour it pisses down! Removing our last connections to the commonwealth. What did Australia ever do to you??? You just want to ban smoking and drinking and Christmas, because it upsets the Jews, Muslims and Baptists. Eat your greens and shut up! Haha! haha!

9. Creation of a federal Britain – you just want to make the country weak and divided, and give money to economic migrants, and their seven kids per household – all paid by us, yes us, the great British taxpayer!

10. Greater powers for backbench MPs – You don't fool us! You just want to make sure that New Labour carries on as the worst dictatorship since Stalin, Mao and Paul Pot created the axis of evil and declared war on our values. If you want to live in that type of society, then you can jolly well go and live in Cuba, or Cardiff!

For Cod, Queens, Club and Country!

Signed on behalf of the Rapid Response Team:

Dick Headley, Chairman
Major Pratt, retired-Army
Ben Dover, MD
Jenna Tolls MP
Ura Hogg, QC
Chief Inspector Hugh Jass
Teflonda Slick, JP

Revisiting The Euston Manifesto

Martyn Richard Jones — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 23:41:00 GMT

Why?

I never really wanted to comment on the pro-imperialist twaddle known as The Euston Manifesto. It's not that my comments would ever serve to legitimise a document that I considered a pretty duff manifesto, supported as it was, by some pretty duff names, and some even worse arguments, it was just that it was so obviously a piece of turgid propaganda.

The Euston Manifesto was a contribution of mendacious and mischievous cant in favour of empire and hegemony, and against all forms of rebellion. It replaced the outdated notion of "aid as imperialism" with "democracy as imperialism", a cynical attempt to justify the unjustifiable by arguing, not that the anti-imperialists, anti-globalisation and anti-western movements are wrong, but that they are not democratic, and they that do not share "our values" or our political or philosophical heritage.

Moreover, in order to legitimate their pro-imperialist position, they deliberately went out of their way to try and redefine the left, in their terms, to delegitimize a plural left, to exclude those on the left who genuinely and honestly seek reasons to explain why the world is screwed up; politically, economically and socially.

What they say it is

Well, the Euston web site seems to have been hacked in February 2009, and they don't seem to have wanted to reinstate the "About" page. I can't say that I'm really surprised. This kind of sucking up to the former Bush-Administration is probably as welcome these days as a fart in a spacesuit.

This is what Wikipedia has to say about it:

The Euston Manifesto is a 2006 declaration of principles by a group of academics, journalists, and activists based in the United Kingdom. The statement is a reaction to what are asserted to be widespread violations of leftist principles by others who are commonly associated with the political Left. The manifesto states that "the reconfiguration of progressive opinion that we aim for involves drawing a line between forces on the Left that remain true to its authentic values, and currents that have lately shown themselves rather too flexible about these values.

What is it?

The Euston Manifesto is presented as a statement of principles, a statement of principles that seems awkwardly uncomfortable with the principles in and of themselves, often finding the need to qualify the doctrine with relation to particular people, communities and movements.

Simply stated, The Euston Manifesto is a thin libertarian veneer on reactionary neo-liberal dead-ended shallowness.

Devil in the Details

As a manifesto, the Euston Manifesto is rubbish, but a lot of the devilishly cunning deviousness can be found in the detail.

If I am in favour of the principle that everyone's vote in an election should count, do I need to qualify that by stating who I would like to be favoured by such an equitable electoral system, and more importantly, whom I would like to see disadvantaged by such a system?

My argument would be that an equitable electoral system, including an equitable way of making votes count by counting all of the votes cast, rather than by weighing votes, is a principle, a principle that doesn't require qualification for cases that we don't particular like.

The same goes for the principles of the UN Charter and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. We cannot be for these principles just when it suits us, or against them when the principles are an inconvenience to us and the achievement of our aspirations, fulfilment of reasonable needs and the attainment of legitimate goals.

The oddly titled principle "No apology for tyranny" (#2), is yet more selectively principled relativism from the Euston lot. What they fail to understand is that we do live in a globalised world, where Kennedy's interdependence of nations, is a real and evident presence. In Iraq and Afghanistan, we have removed oppressive regimes, to replace them with less repressive and arguably more corrupt regimes. As my grandmother used to say, if you are going to do something, then do it well, or don't bother. What is also odd about this principle is that it violates other principles, principally the Charter of the United Nations and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

3 - In principle #3, Human rights for all, they argue for fundamental human rights, but then take to task people who are more concerned about lesser human rights abuses closer to home, rather than more important human rights abuses further afield. This is a variation on the Bush theme of "don't look at Iraq, look at Mars", or the more commonly used ruse of "don't look at Gaza, look at Darfur". What they fail to understand is that, in Human Rights terms, some people can actually chew gum, walk and fart, have a conversation with their partner, whilst using their mobile phone to message a bloke half way around the world, all at the very same time.

6 - Principle number six deals with something that they describe as anti-Americanism. The Euston bunch seem to feel that there is no relationship between cause and effect, that anti-Americanism is some sort of phenomenon that just happened, because of errant left-wing ideology. A lot of people around the globe have suffered from the consequences of empire and imperial hubris, and they still do. Anti-Americanism is as much a consequence of hegemony, as dislike of western values is the product of a completely unfair notion of globalisation, which favours the developed countries, at the expense of the weak. The Euston bunch made a principle out of anti-Americanism, but failed to identify and condemn the anti-Europeanism of the Bush era. Actually, its isn't a question of anti-Americanism or anti-Europeanism, but a respect for people, irregardless of the political and cultural orientation of the countries they come from or live in. However, of course, principle six is not a political principle at all, but more of a "suck up to power" point.

This is a sample of what Nick Cohen had to say about anti-Americanism (Why it is right to be anti-American, New Statesman, 14 January 2002):

"Anti-Americanism" is a transparent slur that libels and subverts the best of American freedom. It's a propaganda insult that is as contaminated as "terrorist". Right-wingers in London and Washington use it shamelessly to suggest that those who are not happy with their abysmal status quo are the moral equivalents of blood-drenched murderers.

7 - The inclusion of a reference to the two-state solution in relation to Israel/Palestine, as a principle (#7), is incomprehensible. What principle does this article actually embody? Alternatively, is it, as I suspect, just a meagre political sop to certain political interest groups?

9 - Principle 9, United against terror, simply fails to address the phenomenon of state terror, and therefore is not valid either as a principle or a balanced political perspective. It focuses on terrorism as inspired by "Islamist theology" but completely ignores the terrorism of "capitalist expediency".

10 - A new internationalism. This is just an unprincipled case for armed intervention in the life of nation states. It is a crudely pornographic form of Lady Bountiful jingoism, wrapped in a neo-liberal brown-paper bag.

12 - Historical truth. It is perhaps telling that "Political honesty and straightforwardness" don't seem to be the primary obligation of a number of the Euston Manifestos supporters.

Conclusions

Call me an old-fashioned bourgeois liberal, but I find the absence of any mention of the "right to life" in the Euston Manifesto a reason in itself to suspect its purpose.

In addition, notable by its absence is any explicit reference for the need of a democratic society to go hand-in-hand with a secular society, it is coy about the meaning if the separation of religion and state, whereas it is expansive about more peripheral crap.

A manifesto of principles that mentions anti-Americanism and Muslims by name, yet fails explicitly to mention the universal "right to life" - that's real living people's lives, not the abortion issue - and "secularism". That is neither a statement of principles nor a manifesto that is really worth wanting. A manifesto that is so clearly a suck-up to the status quo of the Bush Administration era, and so obviously Anglo-centric, was never a universal and egalitarian manifesto that one could be trusted or taken seriously.

In my opinion, The Euston Manifesto pretends to impose a hidden hand of rigid and uniform interpretation of historical developments and their consequences as manifested in present day reality. They fail to draw the distinction between approval and understanding, and fail to draw the distinction between support and concurrence. If we are for the right to life, if we are for the United Nations Charter, then this is the case, no matter who coincides with our views.

The definers of Euston Manifesto have been rightly criticised for their blatant support of the USA lead invasion and occupation of Iraq, their conflation of opposition to government policies and actions with racism, and as a covert attempt to subvert the liberal-left politics and to rally a pro-war response from people on the left.

It is perhaps also telling that the writers of the Euston declaration do not mention capitalism even once in their manifesto, nor do they mention empire, and the only time they mention imperialism is to rail against "a blanket and simplistic" anti-imperialism.

Simply stated, as a public declaration of principles and intentions, the Euston Manifesto is a particularly suspect, reactionary, inconsistent and rubbish attempt at a new declaration of human rights principles for the liberal-left.

Vote for Change

Martyn Richard Jones — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 10:36:00 GMT

The following is from the home web page of VOTE FOR A CHANGE

http://www.voteforachange.co.uk/

The expense crisis reveals a nation governed by a political elite that has stopped listening and who are accountable to no one but their party machines. Too many MPs seem more interested in changing their homes than changing the world.

Our society faces real problems - mass unemployment and growing poverty, the threat of climate chaos and an erosion of our civil liberties to name but three. These all require effective government working on behalf of the popular will.

Yet our whole political system is close to collapse. Just when the system needed to be strong it has been brought to its knees. Only the British people can put this right. We demand a new electoral system that makes everyone’s vote count.

Alongside the next general election there should be a binding referendum on whether to change to a new more proportional electoral system. This should be drawn up by a large jury of randomly selected citizens, given the time and information to deliberate on what voting system and other changes would make parliament more accountable to citizens.

Politics is now too important to be left to the politicians. We demand the right to be able to vote for a change:

Helena Kennedy, QC
Philip Pullman, author
Damon Albarn, musician
Stephen Fry, broadcaster
John Sauven, Greenpeace
Martin Bell
Polly Toynbee, journalist
Matthew Taylor*, RSA
Susie Orbach, author and psychologist
Jonathan Pryce, actor
Caroline Lucas, Leader Green Party
Brian Eno,musician
Neal Lawson, Compass
Colin Hines, Green New Deal
Ken Ritchie, Electoral Reform Society
Hari Kunzru, author
Mark Thomas, comedian
Oona King, ex Labour MP
Michael Brown, journalist and ex Tory MP
Pam Giddy, Power Inquiry
Salma Yaqoob, Leader Respect
Wes Streeting, NUS
Gordon Roddick
Lisa Appignanesi, Chair of PEN
Prof James Forrester
Peter Facey, Unlock Democracy
Vivienne Westwood, Designer

What needs to be done.

Martyn Richard Jones — Tue, 26 May 2009 15:35:00 GMT

What Needs To Be Done - 2.0

1 - A modern, secular, egalitarian and fundamentally democratic constitution for a civil society, to include all aspects of the UN Declaration of Human Rights, Children's Rights, and a Bill of Rights, incorporated as the highest law of the land.

2 - A republican federation of regional autonomies – with a UK parliament and president. Wales, Scotland, Regions of England all with autonomy and regional parliament, president and legislative powers. Maybe a combination of the best aspects of the German and Spanish models.

3 - An elected Senate and an elected Congress, members of both houses being directly elected, members of the Senate representing regions/counties, members of the Senate representing UK wide party lists.

4 - Proportional representation – there is a tendency to prefer STV. A system based on the d'Hondt method would be very robust as well as highly representative.

5 - Right of voters to recall and to replace MPs. For example, on a quarterly cycle. Every three months (or so) a constituency has the right to vote to recall it's representative MP – maybe this should be limited to twice in any calendar year. e.g.The right to recall MPs: this would enable electors to force a recall election at any time, if sufficient numbers of registered voters (say 25%) are dissatisfied with their MP's performance and sign a recall petition.

6 - A presidential system, preferably based on the Irish model .. not a monarchy

7 - A revamped Judiciary that reflects the constitutional rights and defends the implicit liberties and freedoms of individuals and groups.

8 - A separate and empowered Constitutional Court, removed from the Judiciary, the Legislature and Government.

9 - A permanent war crimes tribunal.

10 - A permanent ban on all professional corporate lobbying. Transparent, traceable and accountable interaction between elected officials, civil servants and special interest groups.

11 - Elections for all Public offices - no appointments on the nod.

12 - A new Central Bank, a new banking regulatory body with teeth, not a banker´s club. Membership of the Euosystem .. i.e. a new CB and a new currency .. the EUR .. to replace the BoE and the GBP.

13 - Partition of executive, legislative and judicial branches.

14 - A rigorous restriction on all electoral expenditure.

15 - A legal requirement for all parties to be allowed and required to select and elect candidates democratically, and not on the nod. Right of party constituencies to reject candidates proposed by the party hierarchy. Right of party constituencies to propose and select their own candidates without central interference.

16 - Fixed terms for party leaders. For example, in Finland the party leader isn't elected until they are opposed, they are elected for a fixed term. So for example Blair would have had to stand for re-election as Labour Party leader every four years. This would allow parties to replace their leaders in much the same way we replace governments/MPs, by regular elections.

17 - The primary duty and responsibility of the armed forces must be to uphold the constitution and the secularity of the federation, to safeguard its institutions and to uphold the rights and competencies of the individual communities of a federal UK.

18 - Abolition of the royal prerogative, which gives the prime minister sweeping powers similar to an absolute monarch. These powers, such the power to declare war, should be transferred to MPs and require parliamentary approval.

19 - Strengthen the powers of select committees to enable backbench MPs to hold the government in check. This would include the right of MPs to elect the members and chairs of select committees, with every MP being guaranteed a place on a select committee so they all have specific areas of legislative work. It would also involve sufficient staff to service the committees to make them more effective, and require all government appointments to be subject to confirmation hearings by the relevant select committee.

20 - Abolition of unelected quangos (invariably appointed by political patronage) and the transfer of their powers to democratically elected and accountable local or regional government bodies.

21 - Greater powers for backbench MPs to introduce legislation and to determine the parliamentary business programme.

22 - Etc. etc, etc.

Some Useful Links

- Make My Vote Count - Make Votes Count is the coalition that campaigns for referendum on a more representative voting system. It has brought together all the organisations campaigning for reform, these are: Christian Socialist Movement, Conservative Action for Electoral Reform, Electoral Reform Society, Fawcett Society, Green Party, Labour Campaign for Electoral Reform, the Liberal Democrats, Plaid Cymru, Unlock Democracy (incorporating Charter88) and X-Change. Make Votes Count also has over ten thousand individual supporters.

- Unlock Democracy - Unlock Democracy (incorporating Charter 88) is the UK’s leading campaign for democracy, rights and freedoms. A grassroots movement, owned and run by their members. In particular, they campaign for:

Fair, Open and Honest Elections

Rights, Freedoms and a Written Constitution

Stronger Parliament and Accountable Government

Bringing Power Closer to the People

A Culture of Informed Political Interest and Responsibility

- Electoral Reform Society - Arguments in favour of STV http://www.electoral-reform.org.uk/article.php?id=103

Now, a fundamental principle of constitutionalism posits that the exercise of legislative power is only in agreement with previously established principles of superior law. In modern democracies, that agreement is entered among the sovereign people – not by parliament. In this way, the day-by-day exercise of civic power is, at least in theory, limited by democratically established first principles of superior law. Those principles would invariably define the structure of government, the ceding of power to it, and the imposition of limitations on the exercise of its power.

Of course, the amendment of a constitution should be permissible, and there are mechanisms that a country may codify and incorporate in the constitution and in organic law, that would permit this to happen.

Some might argue that the sovereignty of parliament over the sovereignty of the people, although an established practice in the UK, also serves to undermine principles of democracy. Nevertheless, whilst the concept of the sovereignty of the people may offend constitutional traditionalists, it is not a substantive reason for leaving things as they are.

Of course, the type of modern constitution that I am alluding to is not the traditional legal document full of rules that very few can understand. My idea of a constitution is of a shared manifesto, a statement of ideals, embodying collective aspirations, freedoms, rights and obligations, expressed in plain language and codified in meta-rules.

A constitution could easily embody many aspects of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, as codified meta-rules, that would serve to constrain and control the will of the executive when it runs counter to the will of the people.

For example, article 5 of the UNDHR, which simply states:

No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.

How difficult would it be for professional lawyers to turn this article into a set of constitutional meta-rules and guiding principles?

The constitution, as mentioned elsewhere, would provide the framework

Therefore, I still take that view that the argument for a written constitution, one that also embodies the UNDHR, is feasible, viable and doable. It would provide a valuable framework for the reinvention and restructuring of the political and legal system in the UK.

Of course, those who would be gaining least from it are the most likely to overlook such a nascent proposal. Whilst it would serve to impose the sovereignty of the people, the political ruling class might imagine that they would have a lot to lose, if such an idea were to become reality.

So, just how difficult would it be to embody the 30 articles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights into a written constitution, as narrative and meta-rules?