Thoughts on Charles Clarke's speech.

[chickenfeet2003]

Charles Clarke's contribution to today's Guardian is very interesting. On the one hand it's an uncommonly open presentation of the the "New Authoritarianism", on the other it's a series of very obvious and clumsy rhetorical devices

Comments

[gillo]

It seems to me that in Britain at least any government with a huge majority has tended to assume de facto Divine Right. Blair's government might be accused of "going emeritus", to steal Pratchett's wonderfully evocative phrase, except that these aithoritarian trends were discernable from the start, in Blunkett's time at Education, for example. A top-down model of organisation of education, law and order, health, justice etc suits those at the top, and the Sir Humphreys of the world are no more going to argue against it than they did against very similar instincts during Maggie's reign. We will all love Big Brother once we recognise he has our best interests at heart.

[chickenfeet2003]

I agree the seeds have been there a long time. Britain is a very authoritarian country by instinct. What was new in Clarke's spiel, I think, was his attempt to define (or at least claim) a "new" class of human rights and somehow, in a Fukayamaesque way to link that to the "Triumph of Democracy". The rhetoric is really quite odd.

[gillo]

Charles Clarke is really quite odd. A Blunkett wannabe without quite the same brutality.

The tragic thing is that none of this bunch actually comprehend why ordinary, decent people are worried by their plans. Or even that they do. They are fixed into the mindset than anyone who opposes them must have evil motives.

Conviction politics. Yech.

[chickenfeet2003]

I think they have constructed an idea of what an "ordinary person" and then persuaded themselves that "ordinary people" agree with them. The irony is that this is a Cabinet most of the members of which are as far removed from ordinary people and their experiences as Lord Salisbury. The difference is he knew that. I shake my head when I hear someone with a household income of 500,000/year claiming to empathise with the plight of people on sink estates.

[rhythmaning]

Thanks for the post. There's a lot there...

My first reaction is how did he not think that the question of "The right to go to work safely on the tube" would not be questioned in the light of the killing of Jean de Menezes?

I also have real issues with the idea that the UK justice system (notwithstanding differences between England & Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland) cannot cope with "someone who has served his time". That Clarke is proposing the dangers remaining in society after serving sentences suggest that there is something really wrong with those sentences. If prison cannot rehabilitate, we should search for something that can - not become ever more draconian.

And then trying to pin all the blame on the media. Indeed, Clarke's article makes me sincerely scared of our leaders.

[chickenfeet2003]

My first reaction is how did he not think that the question of "The right to go to work safely on the tube" would not be questioned in the light of the killing of Jean de Menezes?

Yes, that was fairly inept.

And then trying to pin all the blame on the media

Every authoritarian regime needs a whipping boy. The unions are a bit passé, Charles Clarke would have a tricky time blaming the Communists given his past associations and most other identifiable groups would cost Labour votes.

[a_d_medievalist]

Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr

[chickenfeet2003]

I'm trying hard to suppress my basic "grrr" response. I have a visceral dislike of authoritarian politics coupled to a deep sense of betrayal that "my" party is perpetrating this stuff but I also realise when I try to finger just what it is about Blunkettblairclarkethought that I really object to, the exercise becomes quite difficult. There is a "theory" that is being articulated here and it's different from any I've come across before, and, in many ways, harder to refute. This isn't a blatant class-based power grab of the Thatcherite smash-the-unions, bring back the birch, Tory conference type. In a sense it's rooted in ideas of "community" that many on the left have been drawn to because the individual-state nexus mediated by 15 second sound bites and a flawed electoral system is so obviously unsatisfactory as Habermas has pointed out. What we seem to be getting though in "New Authoritarianism" is a technocratic rather than democratic version of Habermas' public sphere. "Community standards" are to be enforced not through

[a_d_medievalist]

You do realize that it's exactly everything that modern liberals are accused of by conservatives (and libertarians in the US), while separating from every classical liberal principle. Or so it seems to me. Maybe the name for the feeling is "Betrayal"?

[violetsaunders]

This article by Charles Clarke is a half-baked and lazy piece of writing at best. Your careful response overestimates the intellectual coherence or depth it contains, I think. The first part - about the media's use of simpilistic and exagerrated language - I have some sympathy with. A lot of popular media rhetoric IS simiplistic, exaggerated and lacking in subtlety. This has very little to do with the second part where Clarke claims that we need a new 'modern' understanding of human rights which embraces comparatively trivial nuisances (such as noisy neighbours). I think this tendency in modern government to legislate for and police everyday aspects of living has long roots. (1)The perceptible tendency over long historical periods for central governments to use new technology to control everyday domestic life in ever greater detail (in place of the family - book sized thesis there!). (2) The development and influence of symbolic interactionism in social theory which argues essentially that society is infinitely dynamic and composed

[chickenfeet2003]

It makes sense. See also my reply to a_d_medievalist which suggests that there is a sort of technocratic hijacking of Habermas going on here.

[rhythmaning]

Given Clarke's current troubles (according BBC.co.uk, he offered to resign yesterday), I just wonder what we would get as a replacement. Since each new Home Secretary seems to move to the right (and I thought Jack Straw was bad enough - but then Blunkett, and now Clarke) - well, it doesn't bear consideration where they would try to take us!

[chickenfeet2003]

Well I doubt it would be John Prescott! Ruth Kelly perhaps? Compulsory morning flagellation and burning for heretics?