I'm not going to sign that petition, and thought I'd write down three reasons why. First, to deliver criminal sanctions through our welfare system would weaken our criminal justice system. We want judges to award, and criminals to suffer, just punishments. However the petitioned sanctions undermine this ideal. If a judge awarded a just punishment, the addition of the sanctions would make the punishment suffered excessive (unjust). That is, for justice to be done, we'd have to ask judges to treat rioters who claim benefits leniently: not quite what the petition intends.
Second, the petitioned sanctions victimise poorer people. I don't choose the comparative out of delicacy: the poorer you are, the worse you're to be punished. If I stole a pair of trainers in the riots, but earn a living wage so that the only welfare payment I regularly claim is child benefit, my punishment diverges wildly from that of my unemployed neighbour, who committed the same crime but regularly claims housing benefit and jobseeker's allowance. (To be clear: he is reduced to a homeless beggar.) Why? Is this enlightenment? Is this justice?
My neighbour's fate suggests a third, practical reason. After punishment, another general goal of criminal sanctions is the deterrence of future crime, but those petitioned seem in effect to promote it. We should remember they're meant to apply to rioters who aren't sent to prison, who remain at liberty. This must be so or the petition would be pointless: prisoners obviously can't claim many benefits (jobseeker's allowance, housing benefit, cold weather payments and so on).
And the petition certainly has people like my neighbour in mind: its sanctions apply to 'those who have ... shown a disregard for the country that provides for them.' This is a rhetorical way of talking about people who depend on welfare. To get to the point: if a rioter who depends on benefits has them withdrawn, he has to get the things he needs to live in ways other than paying for them. A few obvious ones apart from begging are theft, robbery, and burglary.
I feel like a lot could be said about the mindset that, confronted with last week's appalling riots, conceives this petition as a relevant answer. (I don't mean all the signatories too. It's an angry, urgent time.) But this won't be the place.
I'll just add that I'm not going to sign the other petition either. As a political move, I think it harms its cause. Never mind that it starts off like a landlord's notice ('Tenants MUST keep a DEAD BADGER in the sink at all times').*
* Notice borrowed from Alexei Sayle.
Showing posts with label politics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label politics. Show all posts
Thursday, 18 August 2011
Friday, 22 July 2011
Professionalism
In an earlier post here, I said that I wanted to think about the relation between professionalism and a political commitment. Having since read two essays that deal with the matter and express ideas basically similar to each other, I thought I should at least go into more detail.
John Pilger's essay 'Brainwashing the Polite, Professional and British Way', printed by the New Statesman and the Morning Star, is inspired by Jeff Schmidt's book Disciplined Minds. 'Schmidt argues,' says Pilger, 'that what makes the modern professional is not technical knowledge but "ideological discipline" ... "Taking sides" is anathema; and yet the modern professional knows never to challenge the "built-in ideology of the status quo".' Barclays Bank, the Labour Party, and the BBC ('Listen to a senior BBC person sincerely describe the nirvana of neutrality to which he or she has risen') are Pilger's cautionary examples.
The essay by J. H. Prynne, possibly titled 'On the Current Conjuncture' and published on the web by the students of Cambridge Defend Education, is firstly a response to the higher education White Paper and only deals with professionalism in passing. Still, it mentions 'the noble restlessness of spirit shut up in a cage of professionalism'; the diversion of 'intellectual freedom ("enlightenment") ... into professional careerism, hedged in by caution and hesitation and loneliness'; and, the 'professionalism that immobilises the drive to understand and to act on the consequences of understanding'.
Somewhere, I'd myself formed the idea that an aspect of professionalism was political neutrality: of course I don't mean as between different coloured rosettes, but neutrality as to our social arrangements, neutrality in the struggles over them. I must have formed it by the time I saw a newspaper photograph of Pakistani lawyers in the street, throwing stones with their suit jackets still on, after President Musharraf had suspended the constitution in 2007. The contrast with my ideas of British professional culture left a lasting impression.
This sort of neutrality would seem a bit like the liberal principle of 'neutrality as to the good', and maybe that would fit. There are other intersections: liberalism, too, separates work from a private life in the first place; in liberalism as in the professions, merit is the desired principle of distribution (meritocracy); the ethic of service that motivates many professionals, in the public and private sectors, is recognisably liberal. (Raymond Williams memorably challenges that ethic in the conclusion of Culture and Society. John Berger's book A Fortunate Man, his study of a country doctor, is another approach.)
In Britain, liberalism is the national philosophy, corresponding to the dominance of the higher-educated middle class; the same class, in Britain and worldwide, is home to the professionals. (Professionalism must be one of the most frank class virtues.) But in Pakistan liberalism is fighting for survival, and the country's professionals join that fight. Is it that professional neutrality holds while satisfactory liberal institutions are secure? Would our lawyers, say, have observed 'ideological discipline' if Tony Blair had managed to introduce ninety-day detention without trial? I don't think it's certain that they would.
If my suggestion's right then professional neutrality wouldn't be a function of brainwashing or careerism, but a principled position for liberals (and professionalism a kind of ideal). They'd insist that political expression uses the channels their forerunners opened in private life. So professionalism seems to fit neatly with a commitment to liberalism. What about—what I first had in mind—a commitment against it?
John Pilger's essay 'Brainwashing the Polite, Professional and British Way', printed by the New Statesman and the Morning Star, is inspired by Jeff Schmidt's book Disciplined Minds. 'Schmidt argues,' says Pilger, 'that what makes the modern professional is not technical knowledge but "ideological discipline" ... "Taking sides" is anathema; and yet the modern professional knows never to challenge the "built-in ideology of the status quo".' Barclays Bank, the Labour Party, and the BBC ('Listen to a senior BBC person sincerely describe the nirvana of neutrality to which he or she has risen') are Pilger's cautionary examples.
The essay by J. H. Prynne, possibly titled 'On the Current Conjuncture' and published on the web by the students of Cambridge Defend Education, is firstly a response to the higher education White Paper and only deals with professionalism in passing. Still, it mentions 'the noble restlessness of spirit shut up in a cage of professionalism'; the diversion of 'intellectual freedom ("enlightenment") ... into professional careerism, hedged in by caution and hesitation and loneliness'; and, the 'professionalism that immobilises the drive to understand and to act on the consequences of understanding'.
Somewhere, I'd myself formed the idea that an aspect of professionalism was political neutrality: of course I don't mean as between different coloured rosettes, but neutrality as to our social arrangements, neutrality in the struggles over them. I must have formed it by the time I saw a newspaper photograph of Pakistani lawyers in the street, throwing stones with their suit jackets still on, after President Musharraf had suspended the constitution in 2007. The contrast with my ideas of British professional culture left a lasting impression.
This sort of neutrality would seem a bit like the liberal principle of 'neutrality as to the good', and maybe that would fit. There are other intersections: liberalism, too, separates work from a private life in the first place; in liberalism as in the professions, merit is the desired principle of distribution (meritocracy); the ethic of service that motivates many professionals, in the public and private sectors, is recognisably liberal. (Raymond Williams memorably challenges that ethic in the conclusion of Culture and Society. John Berger's book A Fortunate Man, his study of a country doctor, is another approach.)
In Britain, liberalism is the national philosophy, corresponding to the dominance of the higher-educated middle class; the same class, in Britain and worldwide, is home to the professionals. (Professionalism must be one of the most frank class virtues.) But in Pakistan liberalism is fighting for survival, and the country's professionals join that fight. Is it that professional neutrality holds while satisfactory liberal institutions are secure? Would our lawyers, say, have observed 'ideological discipline' if Tony Blair had managed to introduce ninety-day detention without trial? I don't think it's certain that they would.
If my suggestion's right then professional neutrality wouldn't be a function of brainwashing or careerism, but a principled position for liberals (and professionalism a kind of ideal). They'd insist that political expression uses the channels their forerunners opened in private life. So professionalism seems to fit neatly with a commitment to liberalism. What about—what I first had in mind—a commitment against it?
Friday, 8 July 2011
My first screenshot
![]()
Birds do it,
To-ries do it,
And just occasionally G-Ps do it:
Don't do it!
Don't— [That's enough. Margot.]
Original photograph by Rhisiart Hincks
Birds do it,
To-ries do it,
And just occasionally G-Ps do it:
Don't do it!
Don't— [That's enough. Margot.]
Tuesday, 21 June 2011
30 June strikes
Some good speeches at the public meeting in the Guildhall last night, called to build support for the joint strikes on 30 June. There was a speaker from each union involved: ATL, NUT (school teachers), PCS (civil servants), and UCU (university and college staff: members in post-'92 universities will strike).
The government's line on pensions is that public sector workers need to retire later, pay more, and get less because 'we're living longer'. What—since 2006? All the speakers last night reminded us that we sorted this one out, in reforms in 2006 (for teachers) and 2007 (civil servants). The myth of the gold-plated pension was also hounded through the evening.
The ATL and NUT speakers, Martin Johnson and Kevin Courtney, complained about the government's negotiating incompetence (on public display last week, with Danny Alexander's clumsy intervention). Kevin, Jill Eastland from UCU, and Mike Black from PCS, were all keen—as I am—to put the pensions raid in the context of the wider attack on workers and public services. ATL's position is different, with its concerns narrower.
Platform and floor, we all deplored the government and rightwing media's attempt to set private and public sector workers against each other; most memorably an NUJ member, whose union had to fight to defend journalists' pensions last year.
I'll be sure to join the lunchtime strike rally on Parker's Piece on 30 June.
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