Posted in Civil Liberties

Taxation – challenging everyday libertarianism

TaxingBooksIn his Left Futures article on the 7th April, Intense Relaxation, David Osland took John McTernan to task for advocating tax avoidance as a ‘basic British freedom’ and for making reference to the political theorist Robert Nozick and his argument for freedom from taxation in Anarchy, State and Power (Basic Books, 1974).

The ideological libertarianism of theorists such as Nozick is rejected by those on that wide spectrum of political thought we know as social democracy, whether left or right leaning. However the discourse and principles of such an approach are much more commonplace and pervasive in wider society, an ‘everyday libertarianism’. This everyday libertarianism overshadows our political debate on tax and needs to be addressed by Labour politicians and progressive campaigners if we are to win support for a more redistributive tax system and for a Government with enough resources to support those in need and to rebuild our economy after the financial crash of 2008 and Tory ‘austerity’. Continue reading →

Labour MPs abstain on snoopers’ charter. Straight talking, honest politics?

big-brother-1984Yesterday in the vote on the second reading of the Investigatory Powers Bill (aka the snoopers charter), there were just two Labour votes against. All credit to Dennis Skinner and David Winnick who were amongst the 15 votes against (plus two tellers) comprising Lib Dem, Plaid, Green and SDLP MPs and a solitary SNP rebel. No doubt this caused much discomfort to Corbynistas in the PLP who felt obliged to abide by collective responsibility. New times.

Andy Burnham had justified Labour’s (i.e. essentially his) decision to abstain on the bill by claiming that to describe the bill as a snooper’s charter was “insulting” to the police and intelligence services:

To call this a ‘Snooper’s Charter‘ I think is to be insulting to people who work in the police and security services. It implies they do the jobs they do because they like spying on people. Actually they do the jobs they do to keep people safe. I don’t think the issue is that people will generally just poke around (in your email or web browsing history).”

Continue reading →

Rahman wins right for judicial review on “undue spiritual influence”

lutfur-rahmanBack in August 2014, the Times ran a screaming headline saying Muslims told to ‘vote for mayor or be damned’. The quote marks in the headline might have led a reader to assume that the Times were referring to someone who had actually said this, but sadly journalistic standards at the Thunderer are not what they were.

Earlier this week, Lutfur Rahman, the former mayor of Tower Hamlets twice elected by the voters, but judicially removed last year, failed on appeal to get his exclusion from public office overturned. But significantly, Rahman did gain permission for a judicial review of the ruling that there had been undue “spiritual influence” due to a recommendation by a number of Muslim clerics to vote for him. Regretably, this update to the story did not make it into the Times. Continue reading →

NATO’s disastrous legacy in Libya

Map_Libya_BBC_1There is almost an air of desperation in the recent unanimous adoption of UN Security Council Resolution 2259 that seeks to bring together a critical mass of Libyan factions and actors  to support a new unity government of national accord that will oversee a peace process.

Libya’s new Presidency Council will form a government within 30 days of the UN resolution, and the resolution stipulates that this government will be the only authority recognized as sovereign by other states, but with no consequences for states that ignore that stipulation. Currently, in addition to the myriad militias and warlord factions in Libya, there are two rival “governments” in Libya, the House of Representatives based in Tobruk, and the General National Congress (GNC) in Tripoli. Continue reading →

Labour Party will boycott G4S security services over repression of Palestinians

G4S_bloody_logo

It has emerged that the Labour Party decided at its national executive meeting on Tuesday to boycott the private security company, G4S, that has provided its conference security in recent years because it helps Israel run prisons at which Palestinian political prisoners are held without trial and subjected to torture. Protests have taken place both outside Labour’s conferences in recent years about the issue.

G4S provides equipment and services to Israeli prisons at which political prisoners are held without trial and subjected to torture. In October alone, Israel arrested over 1,000 Palestinians as a means to stifle Palestinian popular resistance. Many of these people will be held in Israeli prisons that G4S is helping to run. By helping Israel to run such prisons and “interrogation centres”, G4S is participating in Israel’s use of torture and mass incarceration of more than 6,000 Palestinians as a way to discourage any action to resist its occupation. Continue reading →