It is no secret to any regular reader of the comments on these pages that I am bitterly disappointed by the decision that the Liberal Democrats will not be standing against David Davis in the upcoming by-election in Haltemprice & Howden. Often in the heat of debate points get lost and come out half-formed and therefore I think it is worth taking the time to step-back a little.

Whatever we may think of the decision Davis took and its motivations some fundamental points need to be made against the position put forward by the leadership. Simon Hughes says in his explanation of the decision that Davis will “fight specifically on the basis of his opposition to the 42 day detention proposal.” This is true, but it is not the whole truth and everybody knows it. It is important to remember that Davis is not a single-issue candidate; he is not Martin Bell, and he is not the Kidderminster hospital campaigners. He is a Conservative candidate fighting to return to Parliament as Conservative MP. He might make 42-days his campaign theme but this does not make it the only issue on which he is standing. So a comparison with Tatton does not stand up to a moment’s examination.

His stated platform is no different to the stated view of the Conservative Party; if it remains Party policy then his platform will be that of all the Conservative candidates at the next election. Are we expected to stand aside for them too? ‘No, of course not,’ Simon would no doubt say. But he will probably add that the circumstances mean that the issue will be on the spotlight. Maybe it will (and maybe it won’t - because it looks like the big story will be the press scenting a return to ‘Tory Wars’): but where will the Liberal Democrats be? They certainly will not be in the spotlight because their will be no candidate to speak for us and our members might well be too busy tramping the streets on the behalf of a Conservative candidate.

People who imagine that somehow Davis winning will ’soften people up’ for our civil liberties case are ignoring two facts:

a) We will be mute during this campaign, and;

b) Our vision of civil liberties is fundamentally different to that of Davis.

Let’s deal with a) simply: how many people imagine journalists rushing to call Nick Clegg during this campaign? Seriously, we struggle to get a mention when we are standing if it is in a seat where we are are a distant third; to imagine that when we are not standing at all we will be flavour of the month is mind-bending to say the least. Conversely, if we had been standing we would have received a lot of attention because we were in a position to win the seat.

B) is a serious point because it makes our backing of Davis’s candidature fundamentally unprincipled. Our vision of civil liberties is part of a broader vision which includes respect of human rights. The ‘Davis Defence’ is based upon a wish to preserve the rule of law (hence, for him, there is no fundamental contradiction between supporting the death penalty and being against 42-days). Our failure to present the voters of Haltemprice & Howden with this vision is a breach of faith with the electorate and our principles.

Finally, let me ask this question. Are we going to accept that when it comes to these issues then the Conservative Party is the one that people should turn to? Are we going to meekly stand by and let them steal the debate and woo people with their vision? The answer the leadership has given is yes; my answer is no.

If you agree with me please sign this petition.

* Darrell Goodliffe blogs at Moments of Clarity.

Editor’s note: the LDV poll asking whether readers think the Lib Dem leadership was right or wrong not to stand a candidate against David Davis is still open: look in the right-hand column. At the moment, Nick Clegg’s decision is backed by a roughly 2:1 majority of readers.

Figures carried on the Liberal Democrat’s national website reveal some quite shocking statistics. Over 70,000 young people have been admitted to hospital for self-harm related injuries in the last four years, an increase of 35%; 4,000 have been admitted for eating disorders, which represents an increase of 10%.

Defining self-harm can be problematic. I have seen websites which define it broadly enough to include smoking and the use of narcotics. A broad definition is not helpful because there are clear differences.

For example, a smoker or a drug addict will become chemically addicted to their particular vice (although they may be psychologically addicted too), whereas a ‘cutter’ is purely psychologically addicted. Nicotine and narcotics induce a bio-chemical response from the introduction of another chemical (and it is pleasurable, not intentionally painful - pain is an unintentional consequence) whereas cutting induces a neurological response from the act of inflicting pain.

Although a smoker or drug user is generally aware of the potential side-effects, they are not seeking to harm themselves directly. They do what they do despite the risks, not to actively induce the conditions that may result from their habit.

We can be pretty sure these figures are very much the tip of the iceberg because they only show actual admission figures. Self-harmers are often very adept at concealing their habit, as are those with eating disorders, and rarely seek help unless they tip over some kind of crisis point. Often there is a huge social stigma around seeking help which is not made any easier by the fact that those that do risk being branded as attention seekers.

The attention seeking myth is perhaps the most pernicious. Self-harmers demonstrate completely opposite patterns of behaviour to attention seekers. In general, they do everything possible to draw attention away from their habit and are deeply ashamed of it and themselves for doing it; so the last thing they will do is seek the limelight.

Causes and reasons for doing it vary. In general they are particular to a specific individual which is something that of course makes the problem hard to tackle. It can also be a symptom of wider problems which need to be addressed before the cycle of self-abuse can be broken. Breaking that cycle is as hard as it is to break any other addiction, and it is something that requires a strong support network. However, realistically, there is little on offer from government provided services. A survey by the Liberal Democrats found that the average longest waiting time for treatment for eating disorders is 203 days, with some having to wait 720 days.

Similarly, self-harmers face a wait of months unless their condition happens to land them in hospital though either accidental or deliberate escalation. In the meantime, they are heavily reliant on the support of those close to them (who may not even know), or voluntary networks like The National Self Harm Network, which offer advice and forums where self-harmers can talk to volunteers or other people who self-harm.

Of course, this is reliant on them finding such services in the first place and offers us a classic example of governmental failure to address a serious problem which only escalates the longer it is left unattended.

Educational and health services have a vital role to play in addressing this problem which is too often sidelined due to already pressing demands on resources. Widespread awareness of the importance of dealing with emotional and mental health issues is not being translated into governmental action; nor is it translating into increased resources to services being improved for young people the stage at which this problem needs to be addressed.

It is likely to become more prevalent as those that have ‘slipped through the net’ manifest more serious problems in later life. It is not an issue that can be swept under the carpet.

Battlestar Gallactica, the cult science-fiction television show, starts its fourth and final season this week. Since 2004 it has won some critical acclaim and a cult following despite being confined to satellite TV.

Although reading too much into what remains a fictional show produced for entertainment is tricky, it’s hard to avoid the imprint made on the show by the ‘war on terror’. Other big issues are tackled but the underlying premise of the show is undoubtedly dealing with a post 9/11 world. The premise, of a civilisation on the brink and on the run is unquestionably one that dominates political dialogue day in and day out. Impending economic upheavals are only likely to deepen this feeling of drift and in some quarters of outright despair with the ’state we are in’.

BSG ‘ReImagined’ began back in 2004 with ‘humanities’ children’, the robotic Cylons, who can now take on human appearance launching a massive strike against the Twelve Colonies of Kobol. William Adama’s Battlestar Gallactica, a relic from the first Cylon war due to be pensioned off as a museum, is the only Battlestar left standing after the Colonies’ defence system is crippled. Nuclear holocaust ensues and the Colonies are set aflame. This is definitely how 9/11 felt to a lot of people - like it was the end of the world, the ‘end of everything’. Terrorism’s great power has always lain in it’s ability to inflict damage, but, more potently, also in the shadows it creates in people’s minds.

In reality, it was not the end of the world or anything even remotely like it but it was the end of a sense of security that ‘our’ way of doing things would be left permanently unchallenged having survived the Cold War.

50,000 survive, and the subsequent episodes follow those 50,000 in their quest to find a mythical 13th colony, Earth. Of course, with the Cylons being able to assume human form this causes a mass questioning of identity Here we have a discourse on the ‘war on terrors’ recruitment to the side of the terrorists of many people who ‘look like us’, or else share our nationality. The ‘enemy’ is not a foreign state - it is stateless - and this in and of itself is challenging us to think outside of the box.

The question of legitimate grievance is also raised. Some of the Cylons are religious zealots, hell-bent on imposing their ‘god’ on humanity (something that is emphasised in series 3 as the Cylons occupy New Caprica) while others harbor serious anger towards humanity for the enslavement and abasement of their race.

Values and established ways of doing things are constantly questioned as the fleet finds itself fighting not just the Cylon’s but it’s own demons; the savagery and baseness of the struggle to survive, the difficult choices that are faced it in that struggle.

We need to be asking ourselves those same questions.

Is it good enough for us to present an image of ourselves as a faultless enduring force for good? Or should we be honest about the times when our foreign policy has shown a callous disregard for the human consequences of our actions? Read more »

The Olympic torch has been dogged by protests this weekend as it has made its way through London and Paris. China’s government has responded predictably, saying that the protests were the work of a ‘few Tibetan separatists’ attempting to ’sabotage’ the event. Spokespeople for the International Olympic Committee have lined-up with the Chinese government and decried the ‘politicisation’ of sport.

Alex Gilady, a IOC coordination commission member, said:

The important message is to tell our athletes that some people are trying to use them and to ride on their backs for solutions that the world has to find in other places like the United Nations.”

However, a recently produced report by Amnesty International shows that the ones using the Games as a political weapon are the Chinese government. It claims that the Chinese government is launching a systematic campaign to imprison activists ahead of the Games. It cites in particular the cases of Hu Jia and Yang Chunlin. Hu Jia has just recently been jailed for three and a half years for spreading

malicious rumors, libel and instigation in an attempt to subvert the state’s political and socialist systems.”

Jia, co-founder of the the Beijing Aizhixing Institute of Health Education, has been a repeated critic of the Chinese government. In November 2007, he participated via web-cam in a European Union parliamentary hearing in Brussels in which he stated that China had failed to fulfill its promises to improve human rights in the run-up to the Olympics. His trial lasted four hours and his lawyers were given one week to prepare his case. Representatives of foreign governments wishing to attend the trial were, according to diplomatic sources:

told that all seats had been ‘allocated’ and there was no space. On 18 March 2008, the same morning of the trial, they were given the contradictory information that seats had been ‘allocated’ to those that had arrived earlier the same day.”

Yang Chunlin who was detained by police on 6 July 2007 launched a petition under the slogan ‘We want human rights, not the Olympics’. Reports have claimed that he was tortured:

For six days in early August and one day in September 2007, his arms and legs were reportedly stretched and chained to the four corners of an iron bed so that he could not move. He was forced to eat, drink and defecate in that position. He was also reportedly forced to watch other detainees being subjected to similar treatment and to clean up their defecation.”

Claims of torture and abuse of activists riddle the report. Some are arrested tried and convicted of subversion like Jia and others are arrested and charged on spurious grounds. This is true in the case of Chen Guangcheng who is currently serving a four-year-and-three month sentence for ‘damaging property and blocking the traffic’ in Linyi city. No penalty points or license shredding, over four years in jail and do not pass go. Guangcheng campaigned against the authorities in Linyi “forced abortions and sterilizations which affected thousands of local women.” Read more »

I am sure I speak for everybody reading this when I express disgust at the recent actions of the Chinese government in Tibet; however what to do in response is far from a given. Calls for an outright boycott of the 2008 games, hosted by Beijing, remain relatively few and far between at the present time with more serious consideration being given to a call for a boycott of opening ceremony are more wide-spread and have been given an airing by prominent politicians like Nancy Pelosi, speaker for the US House of Representatives.

Meanwhile European politicians are making noises in favour of boycotting the opening ceremony. The President of the European Parliament, Hans-Gert Pöttering, told Germany’s Bild am Sonntag that ‘boycott measures’ could be justified. French President Nicolas Sarkozy has hinted he may not attend the opening ceremony and it is a French organisation, Reporters Without Borders, that is at the forefront of the campaign for a ‘political boycott’ of the opening ceremony. It conducted a poll which found a clear majority (53%-42%) in favour of Sarkozy boycotting the opening and a large minority (41%) in favour of a total boycott by French athletes.

Olympic committees have however opposed the boycott; complaining variously that the athletes and Chinese people will be the ones to suffer or that such issues simply should not be allowed to interfere with sport. Russian and Australian ministers have joined the opposition camp; the Russian government said that it would like to;

underscore that efforts to politicize the holding of the 2008 Summer Olympic Games in China are unacceptable,”

and Australian Foreign Minister Stephen Smith added:

I very strongly believe that we should not in any way bring the Olympics or call the Olympics into question.”

Politics spilling over into sport is not, of course, without precedent – there are numerous instances of the Olympics themselves being involved in political brinkmanship. China itself put pressure on Canada to not allow the Taiwanese team to compete as the ‘Republic of China’ at the Montreal games in 1976. It is hard to avoid the impression that politicians opposed to the boycott are taking as much a political position as it’s proponents. Russian memories no doubt reach back to the 1980 Moscow games and Australia no doubt seeks to cause the minimum offence to a near-neighbour and trading partner; Beijing itself will no doubt use the games to promote not just China but also bolster the credibility of it’s regime. Therefore we can dismiss out of hand the facile arguments of the Olympic committees whose own athletes are uncomfortable and want the International Olympic Committee to make a stand.

If the IOC wished for a non-political games then it is hard to see why it chose China in the first place with it’s government that is rightly bitterly disliked by people who hold democratic ideals close to their heart. Read more »

Several issues have placed religion and it’s role in politics in the spotlight this week.

Labour has found itself in hot water over allowing a free vote on the bill that will allow the creation hybrid human-animal embryos. Meanwhile, across the pond, Barack Obama is assessing the damage done to his campaign by the comments of his pastor, Jeremiah Wright. The Pope’s baptised an Italian born Muslim convert as part of his Easter message in what was a somewhat ill-advised piece of showmanship. Here on Liberal Democrat Voice we have had quite a lively debate around faith schools.

First, let’s set some parameters for the debate.

Religious faith, or lack of it, is a matter of personal conviction - but the business of government is to govern an entire society comprised of different levels and types of individual belief. Modern, democratic states must be secular (not atheist) in nature. This is especially true in the age of the ‘war on terror’, when fundamentalist ideologues try and portray secularism as merely a covert tool of Christian domination.

Secularism is a cornerstone of moder democracy, it is a founding principle of democratic nations and direct and principled break from a past in which rulers claimed legitimacy from divine inheritance. It is more than just a fancy word, it must be at the heart of democracy because it is the principle of the predominance of the people’s will over patronage allegedly handed on down from the heavens.

It is not essential to have religious faith to share a set of moral values or indeed to ‘belong’; it is easier and far more healthy to unite around human centered values in beliefs, such as belief in the innate capacity of humanity to better itself. More often than not, religion does more to divide than unite, as we are seeing day-after-day in the world at large.

It coheres a specific ‘group identity’ but part of that process is unity against the other groups. Saying religion is a unifying force is a bit like saying a love of football unites a nation - try telling that to a room full of Tottenham and Arsenal or Manchester United and Manchester City fans. Read more »

Tomorrow mark’s the fifth anniversary of the beginning of the Iraq war; the invasion began on 20th March, 2003, and President George W Bush declared ‘victory’ on the 1st of May that year. Five long years later and British and American troops remain in Iraq and the war we were told was over is still being fought.

If you judge the war by the fate of it’s proponents then consider this… Tony Blair has left the leadership of his party, his legacy tainted; George Bush enjoys approval ratings somewhere in the region of 19%; and Hillary Clinton, who sided with the Bush administration in it’s decision to invade, is struggling to win the Democratic nomination for the Presidency.

However, there is little room for the anti-war movement to brag. Demonstrations held to mark the anniversary drew crowds of ‘thousands’ compared to the hundreds of thousands (even the police, whose estimates are usually on the conservative side, said 750,000) in the month before the invasion.

One of the bitterest legacies of the Iraq conflict is that it is not just Muslims who have been alienated from the political process, but also the majority of people who opposed the war and now feel totally unrepresented and disenfranchised. Simply, they were told their opinions were irrelevant and they have reacted as such; dropped out of politics and lost interest in the process. So nobody will be particularly relishing the ‘celebration’ of this anniversary – it will be one of those ‘parties’ where everybody is nervously examining their feet or fidgeting with their mobile phones, hoping to be saved by ANY text message.

Whether we like the fact that the invasion happened or not - and I most defiantly do not - the issue now is how, having made the mistake, we rectify it. Of course, troops need to be withdrawn, but how, and in what manner? Read more »

Lord Goldsmith would like schoolchildren to swear an oath of allegiance to better define our sense of Britishness. Poor unfortunate children are to be made to swear the oath to Queen and country (presumably); one wonders if the new ‘citizens’ will get a certificate or baseball cap to celebrate their inclusion. This is the worse example that could be possibly imagined of a bungled attempt to impose values of tolerance on people from above; the very result of which is the fostering of the intolerance and bigotry which the measures are supposed to stymie.

Firstly, many will object to swearing an oath of allegiance to the Queen or the institution of the monarchy. In a democratic society it is increasingly an anachronism and I think it should be noted that nations which have formed their identity in the process of democratic rebellions against monarchical rule (like the United States and France) already have days to celebrate citizenship such as the ones now being proposed. However, those days are a celebration of the achievements of the people. It is a worthwhile point that it seems a little unfair to ask a Catholic to swear allegiance to a throne that anybody sharing their religion would be prohibited from sitting on; the notion that the monarchy embodies ‘Britishness’ is to view it from the perspective of a visiting tourist. Read more »

Once again in the past week the headlines have been dominated by the cycle of violence in the Middle East. The same day as a gunman attacked the Merkaz Harav seminary a coalition of international groups released a report into the worsening conditions for ordinary Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. If nothing else this report should provide the clues necessary as to why some Palestinians were prepared to celebrate the brutal attack on the seminary.

“Man-made and completely avoidable”

The report opens with frank language saying that the situation in Gaza is “man-made, completely avoidable and with the necessary political will can be reversed”. Naturally, it stops short of directly attributing blame (although in response to the report, Israel was not so candid). However, it does say that the situation has worsened “exponentially” since Israel’s blockade against Gaza began.
Critics of the report will focus on the reports condemnation of the actions of the Israeli state but, in the interests of balance, it is only fair to note that the report acknowledges the blockade began in response to “indiscriminate” rocket attacks on Israel. It should go without saying that Israel’s current strategy has not stopped these attacks nor has it significantly improved it’s security status; one need only switch on any newscast on any given day to see that much.

However, it’s main focus is the desperate plight of Gazans. Among it’s main findings are;

* Economic collapse; 95% of Gaza’s industrial operations are suspended due to the blockade. Private enterprise has pretty much ceased to exist or function; “entire sectors including construction and agriculture have ground to a halt”. Starkly, the report says that it is no longer a question of Gaza’s economy “collapsing” but having already “collapsed”.
* Crippling poverty; the report cites rising prices of essential goods like wheat and flour coupled with an unemployment rate of 40% which is expected to rise to 50%. Household incomes are projected to fall by 22% so, even if a Gazan is employed, they are squeezed in a vice of rising prices and a rising inability to pay those prices.
* Collapse of basic service infrastructure; not only does the Israeli blockade restrict the flow and fuel and electricity into Gaza but it also prevents the “repair and maintenance of the electricity and water service infrastructure by prohibiting the import of spare parts”. The net result is hospitals which can’t function and “40-50 million tonnes of sewage” which “continues to pour into the sea daily”.
* Dependency; “In 2008, there are over 1.1 million people – some three-quarters of the population of Gaza – who are dependent on food aid”. This statistic speaks for itself, and coupled with the data above it is one that is unlikely to change in the near future.

New Strategy

It should be blindingly obvious that a population so ground under the heel is embittered as well as impoverished. Life would be hard enough without Israel’s regular military incursions into the Strip which add on top of the daily hardships the bitterness of seeing friends and loved ones caught in the crossfire as Hamas and Israel slug it out. Gazans have been deprived of that most crucial element of living, hope, and in that atmosphere it is unsurprising that Hamas’s bile-drenched message finds willing listeners. Read more »

Often in politics, as in life, we are faced with choices we simply don’t want to make; for whatever reason none of the options on offer seem to offer what we really want. Such a choice faced both the Liberal Democrat leaders and the eventual rebels in the recent vote on the question of whether there would be a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty. As we know, the vote resulted in the biggest Liberal Democrat rebellion in history and resignation of three front bench spokesmen.

Were the rebels right to defy the three-line whip and vote with the Conservatives? The answer has to be yes; it is not as if their vote was directly contradictory to party policy which is too seek a referendum on the whole question of EU membership. The litmus test of any strategy is ‘how much closer does it bring the party to achieving its stated policy aim?’; using that as the standard the leadership has to demonstrate how abstaining in the vote was anything but counterproductive.

Nick Clegg said that he was “absolutely convinced” that his line was “good for the European cause” and the “coherence of the argument”. Somewhat amazingly he also claimed it was “good for party unity” (The Guardian, March 6th). Claiming something to be so doesn’t make it actually be so.

How, for example, can causing the biggest parliamentary rebellion in your parties history be considered ‘good for party unity’? Saying it is rather suggests you are divorced from reality and strategically that is exactly what the leadership has been over this issue; consider the fate of the amendement proposed by Ian Davidson, dismissed as a ‘red herring’. A serious attempt to incorporate and recognise the Liberal Democrat position finds itself totally trashed.

It’s dismissal rather suggests that the leadership decided that it was going to adopt a ’scorched earth, oppose everything at all costs’ attitude. This isn’t good politics and it especially isn’t good politics when in opposition; had Davidson’s amendment been more successful it would have built momentum behind the call for a wide-ranging referendum which is supposedly pricisely what the leadership wants. If Parliament is ‘hung’ after the next election then how will the Lib Dems be serious power brokers if they adopt this kind of ’scorched earth’ posture?

Nothing that can be said reasonably justifies the leadership’s stance on this issue and that is exactly why the rebels were right to rebel. The leadership put itself in a position where it effectively left the rebels with no other choice than rebellion by refusing to countenance anything that wasn’t exactly what it wanted. Add onto this the feeling on the part of some of the rebels that they were only fufilling the election promises made in the Liberal Democrats own manifesto then it becomes easy to understand why they did exactly what they did.

Referendums are essential when the strucuture and form of the state and it’s relationships are changed. A representative state cannot be expected to in effect regulate itself and it’s own development; it is at this point that the sovereignity of the people must be restablished. It is also an essential part of drawing people further into controlling their own lives. If we are talking about establishing a ‘new system of politics’ then referendums, both of the consultative and binding nature, will be an intergral part of that new system.

Rebellions are a different form of participation and can play a constructive role in political life in so far as they represent a culture of critical thinking and a disciplined ‘holding to account’ of a leadership. We have seen this in the growth of direct action; it is a way of acting when traditional structures and methods fail and when they occur they often need to be noted and in some cases incorporated through change. Both of these things will be part of a ‘new politics’. The challenge is adapting to meet them and channel their energy in a way which furthers progressive goals.

* Darrell Goodliffe is an applicant Lib Dem member from Peterborough.

I recently applied to join the Liberal Democrats; something that represents something of a political full-circle for me. During the 1992 General Election my Primary School held a mock election and I was part of the team that led the Lib Dems to a resounding victory. After that my political activism drew me into the Labour Party (I was there on that night in ‘97) and then leftwards and, finally, after resigning from the Labour Party for a second time over the invasion of Iraq, out of active politics altogether.

Nick Clegg’s recent statement on Britain becoming a ‘Prozac nation’ is what drew me back to the Lib Dems; to me it showed willingness to tackle an issue that politicians rarely tackle, and, if they do, rarely with bold and innovative insight. Also, Barack Obama’s campaign for the Presidential nomination has revitalised my belief in progressive politics. His attempt to build a true progressive coalition between traditional core progressives and disaffected, ’small-c’ conservatives is something that I believe can be emulated in the United Kingdom, and it is something that I believe the Liberal Democrats are best placed to do. Read more »