ANTICIPATIONS

WHAT ISBR TAIN’SPLACE IN THEW RLD?

Winter 2007Volume 11 Issue 3

“Britain is a hub where money, ideas, people move in and out, where we can mix things up where we can develop new ways of doing things, along with our very long standing and traditional values and that’s why we’re unique in the world and that’s why we’ve got a unique contribution to make.”

- Liam Byrne MP, Minister of State for Borders and Immigration

“We are taking the lead internationally in tackling world poverty, we’re doing it by believing in the attack on world poverty and we’re doing it by putting the money where it needs to be and secondly we’re showing the world that one can have decent standards of healthcare in Britain on a public National Health Service such that everybody in Britain has access to decent medical treatment.”

- Lord Alf Dubbs

“I think Britain’s place in the world is as a vibrant multi cultural society that marries economic efficiency with social justice.”

- Oona King, former MP for Bethnal Green & Bow

“I think Britain is a beacon to the rest of the world in its love of fairness, rule of law and democracy.”

- Kevin Bonavia, Labour PPC for Rochford and Southend East

“Britain’s place in the world is to lead a new debate about how we’re going to tackle some of the issues that we have in order to have an equal society that goes across the world.”

- Seema Malhotra, Fabian Executive Committee

“Britain may no longer be the largest economy, but I firmly believe that the United Kingdom has an important and distinctive contribution to make in world affairs. We are hardheaded internationalists. Just as London has become a global hub linking commerce, ideas and people from all over the world, so too I believe that our enduring values and our unique net-work of alliances can help promote peace, liberty and justice around the world.”

- Rt. Hon. Gordon Brown MP, Prime Minister

What is Britain’s place in the world?

anticipations

CONTENTSWORD FROM THE EDITOR(S)Alex Baker and Emma Carr

WORD FROM THE CHAIRMark Rusling

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BEYOND NEO-ISOLATIONISMDenis MacShane MP8

WHY EUROPE?John Leahy10

IN VARIETATE CONCORDIAGisela Stuart MP11

SETTING STANDARDS FOR SOCIAL JUSTICESamuel Dent12STABILISING TERRORIST FORCESYousef Hamid13EDUCATING THE WORLDJohn Leahy14RIDING ON THE CREST OF A WAVEAlex Baker15

PUTTING THE WORLD TO RIGHTSKate Allen, Director of Amnesty International UK16

IN DEFENCE OF DEFENCEClark Vasey19THE UK IN A CHANGING CLIMATEAndrew Suggitt20

NEW YOUNG FABIAN EXECUTIVE PROFILES2007-824

Anticipations, like all publications of the Fabian Society, and the Young Fabians, represents not the collective view of the Society, but only the views of the individuals whose articles it comprises. The reposnsibility of the Society is limited to approving its publications as worthy of consideration within the Labour movement.

Published by The Fabian Society:11 Dartmouth Street, London, SW1H 9BNTelephone: 0207 227 4900 | Facsimile: 0207 976 7153

www.fabian-society.org.uk and www.youngfabians.org.uk

Printed by: Juma Printers44 Wellington Street, Sheffield, S1 4HD

The editor would like to thank: Denis MacShane MP, Gisela Stuart MP, and Kate Allen - Director of Amnesty International UK

BR TAIN’S PLACE IN THE W RLD

- Guest Contributors -

- Young Fabian Contributors -

BEATING THE BNPStephen Clark23

SUSTAINABLE ENVIRONMENTALISMAndrew Hanson22OTHER ARTICLES

WINTER 2007

FROM THE INCOMING EDITORAlex Baker

It appears that I’m a glutton for punishment; not content with merely assisting with this au-

gust publication, I’ve now ended up editing it.

Whilst the job involves a not inconsiderable amount of cajol-ing, chasing and - not to men-tion - coffee, it is nonetheless a rewarding role and one which I am honoured to be able to per-form.

Credit - and thanks - should of course go to my predecessor, Emma Carr, who has ably edited this publication for the last two years.

Under her editorship, the quality of content in Anticipa-tions has greatly improved.

Emma was always good at picking the topics of discussion in this journal - one of the cata-lysts for debate amongst mem-bers.

As a result, our input - as young members of the Fabian Society - into contemporary is-sues of relevance to the elector-ate, has also greatly improved.

Whilst I am tempted to quip that my persistence with An-ticipations is in spite and not be-cause of her unique personality,

it would be unfair not to mention a very special character trait of Emma’s that has served her well in the time I have known and worked with her: the ability to put up with me.

She will be a hard act to follow. Nevertheless, I will try my ut-most - to quote our current PM.

This issue is on the topic of ‘Britain’s Place in the World’. It is a subject with great breadth, and the range of submissions in this issue reflects that. It is my hope you find the articles stimulating, if not enjoyable.

Thanks to all of you who sub-mitted content for publication.

Particular thanks should go to our guest contributors - Denis MacShane MP, Gisela Stuart MP, and Kate Allen, Director of Am-nesty International UK.

Over the coming issues, it is my aim to improve our visibility amongst opinion formers, and invite more guest contributors to share their thoughts with our membership.

It will also allow you to have your own thoughts published alongside those who are already using politics to make a differ-ence to people’s lives.

If you feel strongly about any of the articles you read in this is-sue, and would like to respond, then drop us a line. I would be keen to publish any correspond-ence received in this way in fu-ture editions.

Talking of which, the next issue will be on the subject of equality.

What does it mean to you? How can it be reached? What ob-stacles lie in the way of achieving it? In what ways is it politically possible to improve it? Is equal-ity even desirable?

Send me an article of 800-900 words for a single page, and double for a double by Febru-ary 29th for inclusion. Or do not hesitate to get in touch to discuss an idea for an article.

I would also be interested to hear your thoughts on how we might be able to improve the publication further.

My email address is abaker@youngfabians.org.uk. Any Antic-ipations related missives should be dispatched to anticipations@youngfabians.org.uk in the first instance.

Finally, here’s wishing you all a very prosperous 2008.

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As the out-going editor I would first like to say how much I’ve enjoyed

the past two years as editor of Anticipations. It’s given me a wonderful opportunity to get to know Young Fabian members – both directly and through their writing and their reactions to other people’s writing.

Young Fabian members have a special place in the political world and are respected for their

intellectual debate and in-depth policy knowledge. Editing An-ticipations reinforced for me the justice of this reputation. Over the past two years we’ve had a wealth of policy analysis and po-litical commentary published in Anticipations.

And as editor I have been able to take the credit for all your work, which I would now like to pass on to you – I have been repeatedly approached my MPs,

Ministers and Peers and told how impressed they were with Anticipations and the high qual-ity of the analysis within it. And, as much as I’d like to say that’s all down to me, it isn’t. As I’ve said repeatedly, the magazine can only be as good as the arti-cles it contains, and that is down to you.

Now, that said, as with any-thing, nothing worth doing comes easy and that is certainly

FROM THE OUTGOING EDITOREmma Carr

”If you feel strongly about any of the articles you read in this issue, and would like to respond, then drop us a line. I would be keen to publish any correspondence received in this way in future editions.

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FROM THE INCOMING CHAIRMark Rusling

Hello everybody and a warm welcome from your new Executive. I

am very proud to have been elected Chair for 2007-2008 and hope to continue the Young Fabians’ reputation for inno-vative and informative events and publications in the coming year. We are looking to enhance our relationships with govern-ment and with the wider labour movement this year and will be forming Young Fabian groups to feed into Labour’s policy-making process. Our work with government will follow on from the events we have held in the last six months with all the MPs who stood, or tried to stand, for the Leadership and Deputy Leadership. Credit for these must go to the outgoing Chair, Conor McGinn. There is never a dull moment working with Conor and I very much enjoyed being his Vice-Chair. As they’d say in his native Newry, go n-éirí an t-ádh leat!

At our Labour Conference reception in Bournemouth, we launched a new pamphlet in conjunction with Unite the Un-ion - “Stopping the Far Right

– how progressive politics can tackle political extremism”. Ed-ited by myself and Fred Grin-drod, it issues a call to all Labour and trade union members to ac-tively join the fight against the BNP. All Fabian members will receive a copy with their next edition of Fabian Review and I would be very interested to hear what you think of it. We will be hosting a conference in the New Year to discuss the threat posed by the Far Right and to produce guidelines for CLPs facing this threat. Do get in touch if you have experience of fighting the BNP in your constituency or re-gion.

This edition of Anticipations - covering Britain’s role in the world - is very timely, coming soon after the Prime Minister’s foreign policy speech at the Lord Mayor’s Banquet. What will Brown’s ‘hard-headed inter-nationalism’ mean in practice? Many will interpret this as a welcome move away from Tony Blair’s liberal interventionism (and some will question wheth-er Blair’s interventions were indeed liberal). However, prob-lems such as Darfur, the North

Korean and Iranian nuclear programmes, African develop-ment and human rights abuses in Burma and many other coun-tries cannot be solved by states acting alone. They demand re-sponses from the international community and a Labour gov-ernment should be at the heart of those responses.

For that reason, we should all be heartened by Brown’s commitment to international-ism. Importantly, he is also con-vinced of the need to reform the institutions - such as the UN, World Bank and EU - that make international solutions possible. In an unfairly-criticised speech, the Prime Minister did indicate the outlines of a distinctively ‘Brownite’ foreign policy, rub-bishing notions that he is only interested in domestic issues. The contributions to this edi-tion of Anticipations show that Young Fabians are also not short of ideas in this area.

Do keep those ideas coming! Profiles of your new Executive appear in this magazine - feel free to contact any of us about our roles. I look forward to working with you this year. ”

I am very proud to have been elected Chair and hope to continue the Young Fabians’ reputation for innovative and informative events and publications.

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true for editing Anticipations. Without the support that I’ve had from the rest of the execu-tive and, most especially Alex Baker, I would have gone slowly insane over the past year (and it’s certainly arguable that I did anyway). So, thank you to Alex and the rest of the exec.

And now, luckily for me, I get to continue my role of com-municating with the Young Fa-bian members as Young Fabian

Secretary – so I guess there’s no escaping for any of you, you’ll be hearing from me every week through the Young Fabian up-dates. Sorry.

I’d also like to say a big thank you to the out-going Chair, Conor McGinn. The Young Fa-bians have had a really excep-tional year under his leadership and we know that he’ll keep that momentum going now he’s a member of the Fabian Society

Executive. And welcome to our new Chair, Mark Rusling, who’s already set the executive off run-ning with his imaginative and extensive ideas for the coming year.

As for Anticipations – it’s be-ing left in the capable hands of an excellent new editor, Alex Baker, so I know there’s going to be another great year for the magazine – as long as you all keep writing those articles.

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BRITAIN’S PLACE IN THE WORLDSince Labour came to power in 1997, Britain’s sense of purpose in the world it inhabits has constantly shifted: from the weak willed, isolationist legacy Labour inherited from the Major government; to an ethical foreign policy and a role as a strong partner to Europe, the US and the developing world; to a champion of environmental policy and aid; to an identity crises about our military responsibilities in foreign lands.

The articles contained within this issue offer insights and suggestions into how Britain can be a better world partner, as well as what Britain can achieve by exporting the very best characteristics and political thinking it exhibits: from social justice, to education policy and measures on climate change.

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Like you I’m very proud of being British; proud of British values; proud of what we contribute to the world. And like you I want to make sure that we consider today all that we can do to build an even stronger sense of national purpose which unifies us for the years to come.

- Rt. Hon. Gordon Brown MPFebruary 2007

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BEYOND NEO-ISOLATIONISMThe Conservatives remain in disarray over Europe. It is time Labour worked out their response, argues Denis MacShane MP

Clear blue water can now be seen between Labour and the Conservatives

on foreign policy. Very few MPs or political commentators take an active interest in the theory or philosophy of for-eign policy. Most have a sin-gle-issue approach to foreign policy.

Burma. George W Bush. Europe. Zimbabwe. Iraq. The Middle East. Hugo Chavez. We tend to look at foreign policy in terms of personalities and images on television with-out looking more deeply into causes and consequences.

There is general agreement for example that it is a bad thing for President Mushareff to stay in power in Pakistan. Yet the Commonwealth heads of government meet in Ugan-da where President Musaveni is now a de-facto president for life having been in power since 1986 – when Mushareff was an unknown army office. Is what is wrong for Pakistan right for Uganda?

Gordon Brown is seeking to shape a foreign policy which might be summed up as an EM Forster approach to inter-national relationships. In his novel, Howard’s End, For-ster’s characters live by the slogan ‘only connect’. But as they try to build relationships they endlessly confront obsta-cles that stop connections that make sense within a liberal set of values.

So Brown’s foreign policy is both globalist and continental-ist. It is located in an Enlighten-ment adherence to reason rath-er than emotion, the rationality of an Adam Smith seeking to make trade a connection for a better world rather than the romantic imperialism of a Dis-raeli.

But a Britain that connects with the US, with Europe, with Commonwealth states, and a Britain that wants stronger

international and multilateral bodies able to weave a new global rule of law often hits its own direct national interests.

Tony Blair was close to Pres-ident Bush. But he got no joy from Washington on Kyoto, the International Criminal Court, or even on stopping US protectionism which blocked British steel imports.

Similarly, Labour is pro-EU but baulks at sharing sover-eignty beyond the comfort zone of Whitehall and London media limits.

These dilemmas will be worked out. But at least they are recognised and Brown’s as-sertion of Britain as an interna-tional and a European player

at the Labour party conference remains in stark contrast to the increasing neo-isolationism of the Conservatives under David Cameron and William Hague.

Cameron once told me that he was ‘far more Eurosceptic than you imagine Denis.’ At the time he was a backbencher and I assumed when he be-came leader he would drop this visceral anti-Europeanism. But he has deepened it, helped by William Hague who seems almost pathologically hostile to the EU.

Remember how he warned

‘Britain would become a for-eign land’ if voters returned the pro-European Labour gov-ernment in 2001? Since then he has made unpleasant xeno-phobic jokes about the French and the Germans.

He has been the most shrill and strident on the need for a referendum on the new Treaty as even the Daily Telegraph and Sun admit that Gordon Brown has won his bet on in-sisting on parliamentary ratifi-cation in place of the plebescite Tony Blair was unwisely forced to concede in 2004.

One might have thought that Cameron and Hague would slowly wean themselves off outright Euroscepticism much as Labour painfully learnt to do by the early 1990s.

Instead, Cameron has in-sisted on reducing all party relationships with fellow con-servative parties in Europe, many of whom are in power including France, Germany, Poland and most Nordic EU member states.

Daniel Kawczynski, the MP for Shrewsbury who cares about Poland, wrote in the Dai-ly Telegraph after the change of government in Warsaw that this was a chance for the Tories to build an anti-Brussels alli-ance.

Did he not notice that the new Civic Platform govern-ment in Poland ousted the Euro-hostile Kaczynski regime and that the new Polish PM, Donald Tusk, is pro-European? Even the Czech conservative party Hague announced as a new partner for the Tories in their bid to create a Euroscep-tic federation of right-wing parties has decided that the new Treaty will be ratified in the Parliament in Prague.

In the Council of Europe, the Tory MPs are so hostile to cooperation with sister par-ties it had formed a block with the Kremlin controlled faction

Denis Macshane is MP for Rotherham and is a UK representative on the Council of Europe.

”This should be an opportunity for Labour to re-establish its confidence and authority as an international, clearly pro-European party.

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there and oen has the bizarre sight of Tories supporting Pu-tin’s political line against their own government and against the policies of mainstream cen-tre-right parties in Europe.

This might not matter were it not for William Hague’s passionate appeal for more European unity Afghanistan, on Zimbabwe, on sanctions to stop Iran getting nukes or reforming the EU and its CAP regime Who can disagree with the Tory Shadow Foreign Sec-retary?

But to achieve any of those desirable results the building of political alliances, partner-ship and friendship is re-quired. Cameron and Hague are doing a grave disservice to the national interest by iso-lating the Conservatives from their historic centre-right party allies in Europe.

But this seems to be part of an approach which might be called Cameron’s neo-isola-tionism. Last month in Berlin, the Tory leader made a speech which repudiated the idea of Britain intervening to promote humanitarian values or global rule of law.

Under the Cameron neo-iso-lationist doctrine Britain would have sulked in corner rather than intervene in Kosovo, Si-erra Leone, East Timor and even perhaps Afghanistan. We are back to the disastrous iso-lationist years of the Major-Rif-kind era when Milosovic was appeased, Britain did not lift a finger after Sbrebrenica, and Rwanda was a matter of hand-wringing not intervention.

Cameron got tough with the hapless Tory candidate, Ni-gel Hastilow, who mentioned Enoch Powell in a newspaper column. But he takes no ac-tion against a real-live MP, Philip Davis MP for Shipley, who leads a growing faction in amongst Tory MPs who want Britain to quit the EU.

Labour under Smith, Brown and Blair ruthlessly marginal-ised its anti-EU MPs. Hague and Cameron placate and stroke them hence Hague’s in-ability to offer any lead yester-day. Either the Tories believe in a post-ratification referendum, should say so and accept the consequences of looking even madder and more obsessed on Europe than they do today.

Or they should face down their Europe-outers and look like a party of government. As on the United States where Cameron and Hague have wanted to walk on both sides of the street being both criti-cal and supportive at the same time, or on Iran and Israel where the Conservative Mus-lim Forum make outrageous statements and do not face be-ing shut down, the Tories are weaker on foreign policy than at any time in the party’s his-tory.

This should be an opportu-nity for Labour to re-establish its confidence and authority as an international, clearly pro-European party.

And for ministers to move beyond the defensive rhetoric about red lines as if the men-tality of Monsieur Maginot was the one that should gov-ern the UK’s relationship with Europe.

There is a leadership vac-uum in Europe as President Sarkozy and Chancellor Mer-kel have more irritating divi-sions than the kind of common European vision of a Kohl and a Mitterrand, a Brandt and a Pompidou or even an Adenaur and a de Gaulle.

Once the ratification battle in the Commons is won can Brit-ain win its own war on Europe and show both citizens here and partners in Europe a real vision? The Tories are divided and in a mess on Europe and on international policy. What is Labour’s response?

In the Council of Europe, the Tory MPs are so hostile to cooperation with sister parties it had formed a block with the Kremlin controlled faction there and oen has the bizarre sight of Tories supporting Putin’s political line against their own government and against the poli-cies of mainstream centre-right parties in Europe.

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WHY EUROPE?Labour must be both positive and honest about our EU membership, suggests John Leahy

The current public debate on the EU Treaty has led us to a potentially disas-

trous re-evaluation of our rela-tionship with Europe.

The Tories have promised a referendum on the treaty if they are elected. A ‘NO’ vote could very likely lead to a complete withdrawal. The president of the EU Commis-sion, José Manuel Barroso, re-cently questioned how the UK could be so open to the rest of the world yet so closed to Eu-rope. How indeed has it come to this? Why are we question-ing our involvement in some-thing so vital to our interests?

Over the last ten years the Labour Government has failed to properly make the case for our membership, preferring instead not to mention the EU for fear of drawing attention to the fact that some of our laws and policies do indeed have their roots in Brussels.

This has meant the public debate has been shaped by euro-sceptics and left the Gov-ernment fighting an often limp rearguard action. Everyone knows the bad aspects of the EU: the Common Agricultural Policy; Brussels bureaucrats; (made up) regulations on the bendiness of bananas etc. The negative vision of the EU is fixed in the public conscious.

Why then are we part of this unwieldy beast that spends our money and gives our jobs to Eastern Europeans?

The first point, rarely men-tioned but one I believe should never be forgotten is how and why the EU was born: in the wake of World War II, an at-tempt to tie the warlike Eu-ropean continent together in such a way war would seem unthinkable.

Europe’s history is one of war punctuated by periods of peace: the EU is a proactive, positive effort to ensure peace, prosperity, democracy and human rights and this should

never be forgotten.Taking a more conventional

look at the EU the common market and universal trade policies mean companies and individuals (be they English, Scottish, Polish or Greek) op-erate in a largely transparent and standardised economic environment facilitating trade and investment.

Membership costs us £4.2bn a year or £70 per person per year – an insignificant amount when compared to UK per cap-ita public spending of around £9000 per year.

The benefits are the foster-ing of a dynamic, highly com-petitive economy and an ex-tra £25bn a year in trade and investment. The Government should be shouting this from the rooftops, you can quibble over figures but can you really question we gain from mem-bership?

The social legislation which is part of the modern EU is reg-ularly criticised but is vital to healthy economic competition. Free and fair competition re-quires some social framework - for example the concept of a ‘dignity wage’ prevents mem-bers unfairly driving down labour costs to gain a competi-tive advantage.

On a wider, and very impor-tant, point social constraints ensure economic growth re-mains coupled to the ultimate goal of improving the stand-ards of living of the entire population.

Issues like global pollution, climate change, illegal immi-gration, and drug trafficking amongst many others cannot be solved by nations acting alone and the EU provides the perfect forum for both discus-sion and action.

Many international bodies and organisations do not have the coherent interactions of the EU and, crucially, lack the ability to act when necessary. Quite frankly when it comes

to a great many transnational problems, if the EU did not ex-ist it would have to be invent-ed. The EU represents 31% of the global economy, such size and wealth gives us incredible power which, if wielded ef-fectively, can be used to push a progressive social and eco-nomic agenda on the global stage.

Does the UK give up any sovereignty to be party to the myriad of benefits listed above?

Of course. We are members of a very exclusive and privi-leged club and that member-ship comes at a price. We should be much more honest about the transfer of decision making to Brussels and who is making the decisions. Com-mon policies must be con-structed centrally to be viable and it is not faceless bureau-crats making policy decisions but elected Presidents, Prime Ministers and Ministers from across Europe.

There should be a constant effort by the pro-Europeans among us, and the Govern-ment especially, to advocate the benefits and honestly ex-plain the nature and power of the EU institutions.

What are they and what do they do? Why have we handed them legislative powers?

The benefits must be spelled out and so must the price. We are currently stuck in a situa-tion where our top politicians pretend the EU has no influ-ence and the Euro-sceptics pre-tend it has great power which it uses to undermine Britain. Is it any wonder people are con-fused about the merits if they are never told what they are.

There should be a deter-mined effort to move onto the front foot and fill the public de-bate with the positives rather than trying to negate the bar-rage of, often fictitious or exag-gerated, negatives emanating from the anti-EU camp.

John Leahy is a member of the Young Fabians

”There should be a constant effort by Government to advocate the benefits and honestly explain the nature and power of the EU institutions.

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At the last general election there was one thing all three main political par-

ties agreed on. They said that the British

people should have the final say on what was then called the European Constitution. Some wanted to campaign for a YES vote, others for a NO vote – not unlike a general election when some want to vote for the gov-ernment and others against it. The basic principle is the same – there will be a government but the people have the final say on what kind of govern-ment.

Three years later heads of 27 European governments have signed up to something called the Treaty of Lisbon. This is in essence the same as the Constitution. I should know; I was one of the small group of people who spent almost two years drafting the original Constitution. And the verdict of the chief author Valery Gis-card d’Estaing is even clearer when he says “All the earlier proposals will be in the new text, but will be hidden and disguised in some way”.

We have been a member of the Union since 1973 and in 1975 our membership was affirmed by a referendum. Much has changed in the last thirty years, but at every stage more power to make laws has moved from Westminster to Brussels. The European Parlia-ment together with the Council and the Commission makes an ever increasing number of de-cisions with directly affect our lives. The process by which decisions are made is lengthy and complicated and very few really understand it.

The Treaty of Lisbon is sup-posed to make things easier. It is a new rule book for the Eu-ropean Union and much more. It gives the Union the right to enter international agreements by conferring what’s called legal personality. Many more

decisions will be reached by Qualified Majority Voting, that means individual countries can not assert their rights if they disagree. A new President of the European Council is cre-ated and the person who in ef-fect fulfils the role of a foreign minister will get a diplomatic service. Whilst more informa-tion will be sent to national parliaments, this does not amount to power to change decisions.

All in all the Treaty repre-sents a culmination of signifi-cant changes to the way the European Union operates and the way we are governed.

To begin with the British gov-ernment, as well as a number of others such as the French, the Dutch, the Spanish and the Irish promised a referendum.

However, when the people of France and Holland said NO to the proposals, the poli-ticians did not go back to the drawing board to take account of the rejection.

They simply changed the name, rearranged they way the various chapters and articles were presented and removed references to symbols such as the flag and the 12 yellow stars and the anthem. They made it even harder to read let alone understand the text and they were united in their determi-nation to avoid further refer-endums at any cost.

I regret that our Labour gov-ernment claims the Treaty is so different from the Constitution that the promised referendum can be ditched. The LibDems too have resiled and now talk about a referendum on our continued membership.

This is nonsense; these are two different questions. It’s a bit like saying, lets have a gen-eral election but rather than asking which Party do you want to form the government, we ask them whether they want a government at all. The Tories just seem to want to say

no, whatever the question. We deserve better than this. The referendum on the Treaty is about what kind of European Union we want.

Having made the original promise it is now a matter of trust.

It’s a perfectly honourable position to be a committed pro-European and decide that the Treaty of Lisbon is not the best way forward for the EU.

It’s patronising to say that the treaty is too complicated to ask the people about it. The treaty is difficult to read because the politicians have deliberately made it so. But the voters have a pretty good idea of what it is all about. Party manifestos in general elections are not an easy read – but no one would dare to suggest they are too complicated to be put to the people.

It’s wrong to claim that peo-ple don’t vote on the question they are being asked in refer-endums.

The Conservatives were wrong not to hold a referen-dum on the Single European Act and the Maastricht Trea-ty; the fact that they didn’t strengthens rather than weak-ens the case for a referendum now.

Our vote in European elec-tions only partially legitimis-es the EU. Westminster does not effectively explaining or control the decisions made in Brussels. We have the right to is to be asked to approve the basic rules of governance.

Or as the constitutionalist A V Dicey put it: “The referen-dum is the people’s vote; the nation is sovereign and may well decree that the constitu-tion shall not be changed with-out the direct sanction of the nation”

We were promised a referen-dum by all three main political parties – and it is now a matter of fundamental trust that we should have that referendum.

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IN VARIETATE CONCORDIA?Britain should not sign up to the European Reform Treaty without first

holding a referendum, argues Gisela Stuart MP

Gisela Stuart is MP for Birmingham Edgbaston and a member of the Foreign Affairs Select Committee

”Our vote in European elections only partially legitimises the EU. We have the right to is to be asked to approve the basic rules of governance.

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SETTING STANDARDS FOR SOCIAL JUSTICEBritain’s model of social justice is a world-leader, argues Samuel Dent

Since the decline of the Brit-ish Empire in 1945 many have severely underesti-

mated the effects of Britain on the World. Accused by Charles DeGaulle of being ‘insular and maritime’, many cast off the concept of Britain being a world leader as arcane.

Yet under the Atlee Gov-ernment Labour set the stage to develop a socially just and successful Britain. Despite the problems of post war finances, and in later decades the effects of Thatcherite tax cuts, the past ten years have finally allowed Britain to assert itself as a world leader in creating social justice, and a strong and stable econo-my, while maintaining its sta-tus as a liberal representative democracy.

Today, Britain stands as a successful example of social justice in action. We disprove the myths that such a system is only achieved at the expense of extreme taxation of the in-dividual, or by curtailing their freedoms.

The past 10 years have even seen a period of stable econom-ic growth in Britain - one of the effects of which has been an in-crease in individuals’ levels of disposable income.

Britain has also managed to dramatically increase the stand-ards of its welfare state, expand-ing into parameters unparal-leled in the US, for instance. For example, access to both Further and Higher Education has dra-matically increased in the UK under mechanisms such as EMA, student loans and grants. These systems allow students, regardless of background, to thrive and develop.

By way of contrast, the US the student loans system is vir-tually privatised. It administers little social justice, and buryies students in unmanageable amounts of debt, from which the individualist mentality of the US expects students to re-deem themselves.

And in health, the US medi-cal system - again virtually privatised - offers a standard of care which some medics would suggest infringes the Hippocratic Oath. The Ameri-can system of privatised health insurance, which many can’t afford, has seen greater mortal-ity rates, and places too great an emphasis on an individual’s ability to pay.

Meanwhile, Britain has man-aged to maintain the original principle of a system of health care free at the point of use, and therefore accessible to all.

The past ten years have seen great improvement in the qual-ity of NHS hospitals. Bed crises - like those of the Major years - are now a rarity. Hospital waiting lists have dramatically reduced. And increased invest-ment has seen the introduction of new and improved methods, machines and medicines.

At this point, critics of our welfare state may interject, citing examples such as the French model to argue that the UK’s welfare model is not world-class, especially on the platform of health care.

And whilst France occupies the top spot in a recent World Health Organisation ranking, with the UK only 18th1, this can be largely explained by the cul-tural differences towards taxa-tion.

In France, their healthcare system depends on a dramati-cally higher level of taxation, placed on every social demo-graphic. When countries are ranked by the level of taxation in the economy, France again appears significantly higher on the list than the UK.2

However, this is a position many in the UK would not wish to see us match, especially when we can be so proud of the healthcare provision we al-ready have at lower tax rates.

This cultural difference be-tween the UK and continental Europe is why the policy of

most political parties in Britain is to keep levels of tax as low as possible.

It is also important to recog-nise that the decision to foster welfare state systems in the UK has been made on a platform which is far more democratic, and representative that most countries, and has proven to be far more successful.

Although there is still a great deal of progress yet to be achieved, such as increasing gender equality within Par-liament, we still out perform many other countries in terms gender balance in our legisla-ture. For Example, in the UK women make up nearly 20% of the House of Commons, but in the US women make up merely 14% of both the House and the Senate.3

It is also important to note that historically, the parties who have wished to deliver true so-cial justice are often those who are more representative.

To prove this all one has to do is look to at the current op-position frontbench, to see that it cannot match the widespread diversity of Labour’s MPs.

This encapsulates an im-portant concept of progres-sive government, and explains Labour’s success: how can an unrepresentative party govern for such a diverse population as the UK?

Michael Moore’s latest film, Sicko, which cites the NHS as example of a truly decent healthcare model, underlines the deficit in social justice in the US.

Any such deficit is smaller if not absent in the UK.

So it seems that finally, after over 50 years, we can see that the world is acknowledging the excellence of the examples of social justice that Britain has produced.References:1) WHO Healthcare Provision Ranking2)http://uk.mercer.com/pressrelease/details.jhtml/dynamic/idContent/1287670;jsessionid=STLBO0UYNYWM4CTGOUFCIIQKMZ0QUJLW3) US and Comparative Government and Politics.

Samuel Dent is a member of the Young Fabians

”Today, Britain stands as a successful example of social justice in action. We disprove the myths that such a system is only achieved at the expense of extreme taxation.

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Perhaps it is the nostalgia of the British rule in the old India and the lasting

ties with British families rooted within the East? Perhaps it is the shame of our role in the hu-manitarian catastrophe of par-tition? Or perhaps it is the mil-lion Pakistanis residing in the UK? Whatever the reason, it is clear that Pakistan and the UK are irrevocably bound together.

It is this dynamic relation-ship that makes us more than a mere spectator watching the immensely fragile institutions of government collapse as the nation implodes. In the post 9/11 world the importance of Pakistan has increased ten-fold; no nation can be as important when attempting to combat in-ternational terrorism.

General Musharaf’s tight grip on power had been weak-ening for over a year when he took the final, desperate act of emergency rule.

When the President sacked the chief justice for failing to further legitimise Musharaf’s dictatorial reign as head of both the army and nation, he could not have anticipated the riots that would ensue. And why would he? For he had manoeu-vred into rule and had received endorsement from the unlikeli-est of allies.

As Islamist fundamentalists and the United States talked up the General’s reign, it was pal-atably clear that the man who had caused a revolt in the army and survived three assassina-tion attempts was here to stay.

However, when Chaudry, the chief justice of Pakistan hinted that he would not continue to give legislative credibility to Musharaf’s reign he was in-stantly sacked citing corruption as the grounds. When lawyers throughout the country started to protest, the military estab-lishment did what they spent seven years promising they would never do: use violence on peaceful demonstrations.

With public opinion evident-ly on the side of an independ-ent judiciary, Musharaf was compelled to reinstate Chaudry and started negotiating with former PM Benazir Bhutto in an attempt to cling on to power.

But with his refusal to take off his military clothes sustain-ing, this was always bound to failure.

With no explicit deal and with the General’s vast unpopularity it was clear that in the lead up to December he would either have to contest a fair election and gracefully cede defeat or attempt one last extraordinary desperate throw of the dice. Emergency rule was once again imposed on Pakistan.

The entire supreme court re-fused to partake in the sham and as a result were instantly sacked with pro-establishment figures placed in their posi-tions, Bhutto was placed under temporary oppositions and all democrats voicing opposition were locked up.

The defence for this state was that it was necessary to keep Pakistan secure from the on-go-ing threat of terrorism and this cannot be understated.

Since 9/11 the anti-American feeling in the rural heartlands has substantially increased, contributing to Musharaf’s lack of popularity for sticking too closely with Bush.

The unique brand of mili-tant Wahaabism is spread-ing through the rural villages where the spiritual peace of Sunni Islam is being confronted head on. Wahaabism preached the caliph state ruling the globe according to what they describe as Islamic law, regarding their unique interpretation of the Quran as a constitution.

Fuelled by the depravity of poverty and a growing resent-ment over perceived injustices in Iraq and ongoing frustration over the Arab-Israeli conflict, Saudi Wahaabis are preaching their doctrine of revolution and

the Islamic state through vio-lent Jihad on these angry young minds.

It is now widely accepted that Taliban fighters train and hide within the north-west mountain regions.

If terrorism is to be defeated practically then funding will be needed to tackle the vast regions of no-go areas in the north, and if the battles of ideas are to be tackled it is the rural villages which must be regen-erated.

The ‘battle for hearts and minds’ is already going, but the problem being that only the extremists are currently partici-pating.

The lack of empowerment through the unstable economic institutions caused by military rule, and the tarnishing of any basic democratic freedoms has led to many turning to the only forces offering stability and a positive dream for themselves: the fundamentalists.

Pakistan’s raison d’être is sta-bility for the millions of Mus-lims living within the old India and as a result faith will always have a crucial role in shaping civil society. However, political institutions must be stable and offer the basic values of liberty and freedom if discussions of the intersection of faith and politics are to work.

David Miliband talked of “Democracy and the rule of law to be allies of development and security in Pakistan” and that must surely be the way forward.

Benazir Bhutto, who is far from the ideal woman to lead Pakistan forward, has become the personification of the uto-pian vision that Jinnah first mapped out for a vibrant stable economically dynamic liberal Muslim state.

Britain must support fair and free elections in Pakistan and hope they succeed. The fate of much more than either of our nations may depend on it.

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STABILISING TERRORIST FORCESBritain has much to gain from supporting the

rehabilitation of Pakistan, believes Yousef Hamid

Yousef Hamid is a member of the Young Fabians

”Britain must support fair and free elections in Pakistan and hope they succeed. The fate of much more than either of our nations may depend on it.

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EDUCATING THE WORLDBritain should use its world-class higher education system to exploit growth opportunities in countries such as China and India, believes David Chaplin

In his speech to the Mansion House on 12th November Gordon Brown spoke about

our unique place in a new world order.

He hit all the right buttons - praising our relationship with the EU and the US and preach-ing that while we are “no longer the mightiest militarily, or the largest economically, the United Kingdom has an impor-tant contribution to make.”

He’s right of course – our political leaders have always agonised about Britain’s role in the modern world, our place in the pecking order of nations and our ability to influence the international mood music.

Brown went onto say “The old distinction between ‘over there’ and ‘over here’ does not make sense in this interdepend-ent world”. Again, he’s right - the new world he describes relies upon networked coun-tries like the UK with strong cultural, political and econom-ic ties with our neighbours and competitors around the globe – and on this point Britain has a unique strength, its universi-ties.

Our higher education insti-tutions are seen as gold-plated by many would-be employers around the world. The high standards, strong research base and sustained investment from this Government as well as the private sector mean Brit-ish universities are closing the gap with their US competitors this year. With Cambridge, Oxford, Imperial and UCL all in the top ten universities in the world, Britain is now more than ever firmly established as the world’s leading educational centre outside the US.

This situation is not a fluke. It has come about for a number of reasons one of which is un-doubtedly the importance that Labour has placed on higher education since 1997. There has been record investment in the HE sector and the recent

Comprehensive Spending Re-view confirmed that the Gov-ernment will increase spending on higher education to nearly £16.5 billion in 2010-11.

This funding increase has been matched by the number of students taking a first-time higher education qualification - up 44,000 since 1997 to 283,000 this year.

Gordon Brown will be well aware that this investment and growth in capacity presents a huge opportunity to Labour in Government over the next ten years, but that if we don’t seize it, others will.

The international higher education market is more com-petitive now than ever before. Universities in the US, China, India, Australia and Europe are vying for a slice of the cake.

More students taking more courses at world class institu-tions in your country brings huge financial and educational benefits, and its no wonder that Government’s around the world are seriously waking up to this reality.

The opportunities for Britain are two-fold here. Firstly, we have a chance to strengthen our domestic record as an in-ternational HE hub, building on Government investment and drawing in private sector funds from abroad.

By doing so we would con-firm Britain’s status as one of the best places in the world to study and to set up a business. At the moment we have a policy which encourages the recruit-ment of international students and this is recognised by policy makers and politicians.

With the introduction of the points based immigration sys-tem early next year we are now approaching crunch time. The Government must be pragmat-ic in its approach; promoting the values of an open and in-clusive immigration system for those from abroad who want to study at British universities.

Secondly, our universities now have a chance to capital-ise on Britain’s reputation as a high quality provider of educa-tion. Many of our universities are already setting up shop in education growth areas such as China and India, and in those countries governments and universities alike are actively looking for credible partners.

In particular, China’s extraor-dinary economic growth has been matched by a dramatic expansion in higher education, with nearly 20 million domes-tic students now enrolled in Chinese institutions.

UK universities such as Ox-ford, Liverpool, Nottingham, Cambridge and Sussex are expanding their existing joint campuses with Chinese part-ners and these projects are set to continue. The danger here is that if we do not move fast Ger-many and the US who both al-ready provide significant input could outpace us.

So, the next few years offer a key window of opportunity to Gordon Brown and John Den-ham, his new Secretary of State Universities and Skills.

The new Brown Government should move further and faster to provide major new funding initiatives to encourage more UK students to study flexibly in growth areas such as China and India, where the rapid expansion of university pro-grammes in English is desper-ately needed.

Gordon Brown should also be bold and consider new lan-guage schemes to equip UK students to study and work more effectively abroad, this will help address the 8 to 1 im-balance between UK students going to China and Chinese students coming here.

The Prime Minister knows that he could do worse with his time in office than prove Brit-ain has a real place in the world with a strong and dynamic higher education sector.

David Chaplin is Policy & Communications Officer of the Young Fabians

”Our universities now have a chance to capitalise on Britain’s reputation as a high quality provider of education in growth areas such as China and India.

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When was the last time you sent an MMS message? Or logged

on to the internet wirelessly at a cafe? Or enjoyed the touch-line camera shots from football matches or athletics events?

Whether we like it or not (and we appear to be loving it) our lives are increasingly con-trolled by electronic devices ca-pable of sending and receiving data seemingly anywhere on the planet.

The technology behind these devices and attendent applica-tions rely on the electromag-netic spectrum to operate.

Yet what many people don’t realise is this input – upon which these devices rely – is under threat.

At present, Ofcom – the Comunications Regulator – de-cides Britain’s spectrum policy. And there are good economic reasons as to why the Govern-ment (or Government agen-cies) should be in the business of licensing spectrum usage.

Foremost is the fact that spec-trum is a scarce resource: if too many applications try and use the same spectrum frequencies in the same geographic area, then interference occurs. It is therefore necessary, in order to ensure the viability of any use, that access to spectrum is rationed.

Historically, spectrum has been gifted to organisations, or awarded by ‘beauty contest’. In each case, licencees have often paid a fraction of the value of the spectrum to their business model in licence fees.

This was a perfectly accepta-ble method of awarding licenc-es whilst demand for spectrum was low, but the boom in wire-less technologies, and more advanced mobile telephony, means that demand for spec-trum is increasing.

Standard economic theory suggests that as soon as there is excess demand for a scarce resource, and a ‘social plan-

ner’ continues to decide which agents have access to that re-source, the ‘market’ for the resource will be distorted. In otherwords: in a position of excess demand, the govern-ment might cause inefficiency in use.

Furthermore, the old model of low licence fees didn’t truly reflect their value to the econ-omy. Ofcom calculate that use of spectrum contributes almost £3bn to GDP.

So it unsurprising that Of-com, in 2005, set out a frame-work through which they in-tended to liberalise spectrum access, and ensure that licen-cees faced the true cost of their spectrum use.

Core to this process of spec-trum liberalistion is the use of spectrum auctions - a method of assigning licences developed by the US Federal Communica-tions Commission in the 1990s.

Spectrum auctions, in com-parison to the alternative methods of awarding licences, allows for efficient use of spec-trum, as well as being an eq-uitable means of allocation (in the sense that the mechanism ensures equity of access, if not equity of outcome).

Many frequency bands will be auctioned off in the months and years to come - not least a significant amount that will become available post digital switch-over.

To take one example - Ofcom have decided that in the forth-coming auction of spectrum in the 2GHz band, licences will be technology neutral (so as to promote efficiency by not favouring one technology or another).

Yet the European body which oversees spectrum planning – CEPT – has devised a ‘band-plan’ for the the type of tech-nological standards that can be deployed in this band, and how they sit together. Despite this plan having been adopted by most, if not all other conti-

nental European countries, Of-com has decided not to follow it.

And so at times Ofcom seems to take a dogmatic approach to spectrum management, plac-ing complete faith in the di-vine wisdom of Adam Smith’s invisible hand to determine the development of consumer electronic goods.

Yet it is in neither the inter-ests of the consumer nor of business for the UK to diverge from international spectrum planning, where that amounts to an isolationist policy.

Not only does it increase the costs of production for equip-ment manufacturers, but it also slows down the speed with which new technologies can be introduced to the UK.

Perhaps crucially, it also pos-es an obstacle to the free move-ment of such devices across international borders: devices engineered to operate in one frequency band are often un-able to operate in others.

It would be quite useless if next generation mobile tech-nology worked in the UK but not abroad, or vice versa.

Ofcom are not wrong to de-sire an efficient allocation of spectrum resource. But they should not be blind to the con-sequences of acting outside of an international coordination framework.

Indeed, we should be an ac-tive participant in global nego-tiations on band-planning, and provide an appropriate level of dissent where needed. Howev-er, we shouldn’t take a contrar-ian stance merely to prove our laissez-faire credentials.

Consumers may not be vocal about the inputs to new and exciting mobile technologies. Yet it is evident they more than appreciate the outputs. The Government therefore has a re-sponsibility to ensure adoption of these technological advanc-es are not hampered by dogma, instead of common sense.

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RIDING ON THE CREST OF A WAVEBritain will hamper the adoption of next generation technology if it gets

its policy towards spectrum liberalisation wrong, argues Alex Baker

Alex Baker is editor of Anticipations

”Consumers may not be vocal about the inputs to new and exciting mobile technologies. Yet it is evident they more than appreciate the outputs.

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BR TAIN’S PLACE IN THE W RLD

PUTTING THE WORLD TO RIGHTSKate Allen tells us why human rights must be at the heart of UK policies if Britain is to help steer the world in a progressive direction

The politics of fear are in-creasingly taking hold in the modern world: fears

of international terrorism, im-migration, nuclear prolifera-tion, the rise of new powers such as China and Russia, poverty, and of course climate change.

In response, some will reach straight for the tools of op-pression, marginalising those who would seek equality, vio-lating fundamental human rights in the name of security and operating on the basis of national imperatives and self-interest.

But governments have a choice in how they respond. They can seek to redress in-equality. They can respect and strengthen the rule of law and universal human rights standards. And they can sup-port and enable multilateral approaches to creating glo-bal security. This is what we equate with a truly “progres-sive” foreign policy.

The direction that the UK Government takes in this sit-uation is of great importance. What the UK Government is seen to do around the world matters. Its image has been tarnished by the invasion of Iraq and by its adherence to some of the very undesirable counter terrorism practises of the US led ‘war on terror’.

I believe there are three key areas that the UK Gov-ernment needs to address to meet the challenges and fears of our world, without sowing the seeds for future unrest. These are - putting human rights at the heart of policy, reinvigorating multilateral-ism and promoting the rule of law. These may not be new solutions, but their imple-mentation would certainly be a step that was both new and very welcome.Putting human rights at the heart of foreign policy: It is now ten years since Robin

Cook launched the Foreign and Commeonwealth Office Human Rights report and the notion of ‘mainstream-ing’ human rights across the Foreign Office. Much of the good work that has and con-tinues to be done by some at the Foreign Office has been massively undermined by Iraq and counter terrorism policies. Human rights have once again been cast into the shadows, subsumed under the strategic priority of sus-tainable development at the FCO.

The UK Government must realise that promoting human rights is in our own best inter-

ests and must assert human rights as a core part of their foreign policy framework. At a time when the govern-ment is searching for how to win the battle of ‘hearts and minds’ the fundamental, glo-bal values set down in the Universal Declaration of Hu-man Rights could not be more valuable.

Our recommendations for the full integration of human rights in UK foreign policy are many and varied but in-clude the incorporation of hu-man rights strategic priorities

into not just the FCO agenda, but also those agendas of the Home Office, Ministry of Justice, Cabinet Office, and Department for International Development. We also call for human rights to be a pri-ority in the UK’s relationship with key strategic partners. Russia, China and Saudi Ara-bia are all countries where it is imperative that a trade dialogue does not completely overshadow a discussion of the human rights violations practiced by these govern-ments. The Beijing Olympics next year will put a spotlight on China as never before and it is imperative that the UK and its EU partners use this opportunity to press hard for reforms at this time.

UK Embassies and consu-lates too, can play a significant role in supporting civil socie-ty and human rights defend-ers around the world, people who are often at the forefront of bringing democracy, and a progressive approach to their own countries.

In Russia for instance the new NGO laws require all domestic and foreign NGOs to undertake a lengthy and opaque registration process, which in effect allows the authorities to curtail genuine human rights and journalistic work.

I met two such grassroots human rights defenders at Amnesty’s Media Awards back in 2006, when we pre-sented Stanislav Dmitrievskiy and Oksana Chelysheva with the Special Award for Hu-man Rights Journalism Un-der Threat. Both journalists are members of the Russia-Chechen Friendship Society, a local human rights organi-sation. Both received death threats because of their work; Stanislav was convicted of “extremist activity” and given a two-year suspended sentence for publishing arti-

Kate Allen is the Director of Amnesty International UK

For further information on the issues raised in this article visit: www.amnesty.org.uk

”What the UK Government is seen to do around the world matters. Its image has been tarnished by the invasion of Iraq.

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cles by Chechen leaders call-ing for a peaceful resolution to the conflict. The agency has also been subjected to in-timidatory checks by the tax authorities and the Ministry of Justice - a common tactic of state harassment in Russia and former Soviet countries.

Recently we have seen wor-rying developments as NGOs refused registration by the Russian Government are now being refused registration by bodies such as the OSCE. Yet their work is absolutely es-sential.

The UK and other EU gov-ernments should uphold their own standards of freedom of expression and offer support to those denied a voice in their own countries. Reinvigorating multilater-alism: Foreign policy today must be more than just in the national interest - in fact, it must recognise that the whole notion of “national interest” has to be questioned in our interdependent world. As such it is imperative that the UK works to reinvigorate multilateralism.

In order to restore faith in multilateralism the UK Gov-ernment must lead efforts to reform the current infra-structure. It must support the newly established UN Human Rights Council, and the development of the EU as a regional champion of hu-man rights, which has under-performed despite its ability to promote reform through membership of the Union.

And for too long women have been absent from re-gional, national and interna-tional decision making bod-ies despite the success they have achieved as brokers of peace in many of the world’s conflicts such as in the Great Lakes regions of Africa. En-hancing their role in peace and security, by finding ways to implement UN resolution

1325, could also give impetus to reforming multilateral de-cision making.

Reinvigorating multilater-alism must also mean a will-ingness to take multilateral action to intervene in the face of gross violations of human rights. Our foreign policy should and will be shaped by lessons learned in Iraq – but this should not serve to jus-tify an isolationist approach in the future.

In September 2005 the UN World Summit agreed the “responsibility to protect” - arguing that sovereignty entailed the responsibil-ity to protect peoples from genocide, crimes against hu-manity and humanitarian catastrophes such as famine. Situations such as the horrific killing in Darfur are a litmus test for the international com-munity to show its resolve in this respect.

Multilateralism action can also be taken to prevent con-flict. The development of a global agreement such as the Arms Trade Treaty works to control the flow of conven-tional weapons and can make a significant impact to the

scale of conflicts. We have seen just how positive a role the UK can play on the global stage, sponsoring and advo-cating for this vital piece of international law, which has now received the support of 80 per cent of UN members.Promoting the rule of law: Human rights should not be sacrificed in the name of se-curity. On the contrary they must be protected to ensure that states have effective in-ternational and national laws to meet the challenges of glo-bal insecurity.

In its counter-terrorism strategies the UK Govern-ment must reject the security approach based on fear and anchor its policies firmly in the rule of law, based on jus-tice and due process – with all that this entails in terms of evidence and proof.

The government should stop trying to deport people to countries that have a known record of torture. In seeking diplomatic assurances with states that use torture, the UK undermines the global ban on this vile practice. The gov-ernment should focus instead on stamping out torture right

across the world, through in-ternational ratification and respect for the Convention against Torture.

It is not only with respect to torture that UK domes-tic policies have global re-percussions. We at Amnesty continually have to counter assertions that human rights have become a luxury in this time of heightened security, with human rights law used as a scapegoat in populist ap-peals. And every time the UK waters-down human rights protections at home, it limits its efficacy as a global advo-cate for human rights.

FCO criticism of other governments for detaining suspects without charge for long periods or flouting fair trial standards will only be met with scathing critiques of UK counter-terrorism laws. Lowering our own standards gives others the green light to follow suit.

International law applies to all states. In relation to the US, our government should investigate fully all allega-tions of rendition, (or the kid-napping and transfer of terror suspects) should make clear

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BR TAIN’S PLACE IN THE W RLD

”

and public its opposition to secret detention and should work hard for the closure of Guantanamo Bay, which will have been in existence for six years this January. There is still no word as to how and when the remaining UK resi-dents in Guantanamo will be brought back to the UK.

A foreign policy that pro-motes the rule of law also requires the government to champion and seek to devel-op justice internationally.

We call on the UK Govern-ment to continue to support the International Criminal Court and to resist any pres-sure for the UN Security Council to defer prosecutions and investigations. This would constitute a clear act of political interference with the ICC prosecutor.

The UK Government should also work to help strengthen the international legal framework for econom-ic, social and cultural rights. For too long rights have been mainly seen as civil and polit-ical. Next year we celebrate

the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Hu-man Rights. ‘Progressives’ must assess what it will take to realise these rights for all. An Optional Protocol to the UN International Covenant of Economic, Social and Cul-tural Rights would provide an international remedy for victims of violations of these rights, who are denied a rem-edy in their own country. This would be a mechanism available to those suffering some of the worst aspects of global inequality.

Finally on the issue of the rule of law I want to mention the effect of multinational corporations. Many of these are more powerful than gov-ernments and have long re-sisted binding international standards.

The Government must rec-ognise that all-powerful ac-tors on the international stage should be subject to standards and accountability, including economic actors. Specifically we are calling for the regula-tion of private military and

security companies, whose actions in Iraq have been the subject of recent criticism, and more active engagement in Internet governance activi-ties – ensuring the internet is not a tool for repression.

The politics of fear throws up a host of challenges to all governments. But we can-not counter these challenges without a foreign policy that seeks to address inequality, combat insecurity and recog-nise our interdependence.

A foreign policy based on fear, isolationism, narrow na-tional interest and the degra-dation of international norms can never deliver a better world. In contrast, progres-sion requires a foreign policy that will champion human rights, international law and multilateralism.

The UK Government needs to make the choice to follow this progressive direction in its foreign policy. It needs to do this loudly and leave its international partners in no doubt of its position.

A foreign policy with hu-man rights at its heart is not just possible – it is essential to increase stability in a world where the fortunes of one country so closely follow the fortunes of another.

All images are courtesy of Am-nesty International UK1) Families in an IDP camp in Chad - the conflict in neighbour-ing Darfur is a litmus test for multilateralism 2) Amnesty, Oxfam and IANSA launched the Control Arms cam-paign for an international Arms Trade Treaty in 2003. Three years later, over 150 governments vot-ed at the UN to start work on a treaty that will prevent arms sales which fuel conflict, poverty and human rights violations.3) Amnesty supporters demon-strate outside the US embassy for the closure of Guantanamo Bay

A foreign policy that promotes the rule of law also requires the government to champion and seek to develop justice internationally.

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19

The politics of fear are in-creasingly taking hold in the modern world: fears

of international terrorism, im-migration, nuclear proliferation, the rise of new powers such as China and Russia, poverty, and of course climate change. In re-sponse, some will reach straight for the tools of oppression, mar-ginalising those who would seek equality, violating fundamental human rights in the name of se-curity and operating on the basis of national imperatives and self-interest.

On the 24 March 1999, Toma-hawk missiles launched for the first time from HMS Splendid, destined for targets in Kos-ovo and Serbia. These British weapons formed part of the 78 day NATO bombing campaign designed to bring about an end to the ethnic cleansing of the Al-banian population at the hands of Slobodan Milosevic’s forces. The NATO operation brought about an end to the ethnic cleans-ing and prevented the Kosovo tragedy reaching the scale of the Bosnia troubles fewer than four years previously.

While opinion has always been divided as to whether it was right to intervene in Iraq, few doubt that it was necessary to intervene militarily in the Bal-kans - first in Bosnia in 1995 and then in Kosovo in 1999. Learn-ing the lessons of indecision in Bosnia, the then Prime Minister Tony Blair acted decisively in Kosovo to put a stop to ethnic cleansing and that action stands out as one of the great victories of liberal internationalism.

It also demonstrates the value of deploying military power to achieve our international ob-jectives. This strand of liberal internationalism should be the resounding element of Tony Blair’s legacy.

It is worth remembering that Britain was only able to act to end the suffering in the Balkans through the equipment deliv-ered by the defence industry.

Yet much opinion on the left is hostile to the defence industry and what is often described as the ‘arms trade’. Readers will be familiar with the Campaign Against Arms Trade (CAAT) and popular campaigns by Saf-erworld, Amnesty, Oxfam and the comedian Mark Thomas which seek to curb the defence industry in the UK.

Far from condemning the UK defence industry - which is the most responsible and tightly regulated in the world – the pro-gressive left should embrace that which provides the tools for the British military to make a differ-ence.

Iraq, of course, will be remem-bered as the most significant international intervention of the Blair years and will cause many to lose sight of the difference that effective military intervention can make to human rights.

The difficulties faced in post-war Iraq have caused many on the left to favour the use of ‘soft power’. Many would promote peacekeeping over military in-tervention as a general rule. But ‘soft power’ is not an alternative to ‘hard power’. It is the flip side of the same coin. Both are tools to be deployed as the situation dictates.

Soft power is important if a country scarred by conflict - be it Iraq, Bosnia or Kosovo - is to make the transition to civil socie-ty. While questions remain over the long term future of Kosovo and Bosnia, no one could doubt that they have come along way since the 1990s. The develop-ment of healthy economies and national infrastructure will be the key to their long term suc-cess. As the current Prime Minis-ter has observed with regards to the ongoing troubles in the Mid-dle East, people are much less inclined to kill their neighbour if they rely upon them for their livelihood. But without the use of ‘hard power’ in Bosnia or Ko-sovo, the impact of ‘soft power’ would have been lost.

The West stopped short of in-tervening militarily for years in Bosnia, deploying peacekeepers through the UN and concentrat-ing its efforts on aid and nego-tiations. Indeed, the Srebrenica massacre of 1995, the worst sin-gle event of the Bosnian conflict, took place as Dutch peacekeep-ers stood idly by, with the back-drop of a UN Chapter 7 mandate to protect the Muslim enclave from its Serb aggressors. In a conflict like those in the Balkans, ‘soft power’ is of limited use if one or more of the parties is in-tent on continuing the conflict.

In his 2007 Mansion House speech, Gordon Brown, sought to place ‘soft power’ more firmly at the heart of British foreign policy making. The signs are that he will be less quick to intervene militarily than his predecessor. That said, his use of the phrase “hard headed internationalism” made it clear that he understands that sometimes there is no alter-native to ‘hard power’.

We have to be realistic. When dealing with conflict fomented by tyrannical and maleficent individuals, there is sometimes no alternative but to resort to military action. Rebuilding economies and infrastructure is a priority, but without ‘hard power’ to enforce security, such programmes may be stifled be-fore they have a chance to get off the ground.

The right is traditionally per-ceived as being more comfort-able when it comes to support for defence and, in particular, the defence industry. But the left should feel equally comfortable in its support of military power and with the delivery of military capability.

We should not seek or support the use of force for its own ends, but we must accept its necessity as an tool of diplomacy. No-one could pretend that the interven-tion in Iraq has gone entirely to plan, but it must not blinker us to our responsibilities as a progres-sive force for good in the world.

IN DEFENCE OF DEFENCEClark Vasey on the importance of Britain’s defence

industry in liberal internationalism

Clark Vasey is a member of the Young Fabians and senior consultant for Bell

Pottinger Public Affairs

”We should not seek or support the use of force for its own ends, but we must accept its necessity as an tool of diplomacy.

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BR TAIN’S PLACE IN THE W RLD

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THE UK IN A CHANGING CLIMATEAndrew Suggitt on what’s next for Brown and a successor to Kyoto

On the 19th November 2007, Prime Minis-ter Gordon Brown

launched his new raft of policy actions on climate change, to a mixed reaction from the public and NGOs alike. Fresh policy measures were thin on the ground: A new ‘Green Homes’ scheme, in which the public can phone a hotline for advice on how to reduce their energy use, was announced, together with an initiative to work with retailers to phase out plastic bags.

The majority of his speech, however, was dedicated to ends rather than means. Brown would like to see the world’s energy economy transformed by a ‘fourth technological rev-olution’, in which we move to-wards a low carbon economy. This new look economy would employ 25 million people worldwide, he claimed, with 1 million of those jobs being in the UK.

The overall aim: To limit global average temperature in-creases to 2°C or less. He fur-ther added that the Bali agree-ment should include ‘binding emissions caps’ after 2012 for all developed countries. How-ever, a Bali agreement will have to go a lot further than that if it is truly to cap tem-perature rises at 2°C. And the means in which it must do so are politically combustible, to say the least. However before the world can decide where to go next, it must first learn the lessons from the Kyoto post mortem.

Where Kyoto fails, and hence where any new climate treaty might succeed, is on two counts: Participation and com-pliance. Compliance, together with enforcement, has occu-pied a significant proportion of the discussions at the annual Conference of Parties (COP) to Kyoto since its inception, and to coin an old cliché, ‘There ain’t no smoke without fire’.

Kyoto trusts countries failing to meet their emissions targets to punish themselves, provid-ing those countries (indeed all countries) with no incentive to comply. Compliance clauses were not written into Kyoto at its inception, leaving the treaty paralysed from the beginning. They were supposedly left out to encourage greater participa-tion.

However, the Kyoto treaty in itself actually does very lit-tle to encourage this participa-tion. The proof here is in the pudding: The U.S. and Aus-tralia signed the treaty, but did not ratify; Canada, Japan and Russia only ratified af-ter considerable concessions were negotiated; and most EU states signed as their costs of abatement were low. Non-participants, such as China and India, have reaped the benefits of non-participation, as the economic advantage of carbon intensive industry has fallen on them. Arguably, this has left the atmosphere no bet-ter off, as market demand from participants (such as the UK) has driven a rapid increase in manufacturing and indus-trial emissions to meet that de-mand; a phenomenon known as ‘leakage’.

Any potential Kyoto suc-cessor will therefore need to change the incentives, ensur-ing that it is beneficial for all the key players to participate, both in the present and in the longer term. In that way, the treaty would become self-enforcing, and compliance would no longer be an issue. Of course, the big question is: ‘How is this achieved?’. And to answer that, we must ask what ends, or ultimate scenario, we are looking for.

As touched on earlier, with respect to climate policy, Brown is big on the end re-sult: A ‘low carbon’ economy; 1 million environmental jobs created; an ‘immense chal-

lenge’ but an ‘even bigger opportunity’. But since the Earth Summit at Rio in 1992, where the UK and many other world nations signed the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, investment in research and development into low carbon technologies has declined in most industr-ialised countries. By not foster-ing investment in technology, Kyoto has missed a key piece of the mitigation puzzle. Some sort of global R&D collabora-tion programme will clearly be necessary to mitigate the risk of investing in this area. Again this would have to be self-enforcing, possibly by in-creasing relative contributions to the fund as participation in-creases.

With respect to technology, the UK has actually been the driving force behind several key developments in carbon abatement technologies, such as the set up of a carbon cap-ture and storage demonstra-tion plant in China, and also the reclassification of carbon dioxide as a non-waste under the London Convention for the prevention of dumping waste at sea. Hence, the UK’s recent world leading experience in these fields would put her in a strong position to lead any new international initiative on low-carbon technology. This successful experience should provide strings to the UK’s bow when Brown sits down in Bali in December.

A key concern with devel-oping technological solutions to climate change mitigation is ensuring that those tech-nologies are solutions that will achieve the necessary reduc-tions, and that the technolo-gies developed are also those which market forces demand. Therefore, some sort of scheme to standardise this technology will likely be necessary; much to the initial scorn of believers in the market. However, the

Andrew Suggitt is a member of the Young Fabians

Any potential Kyoto successor will need to change the incentives, ensuring that it is beneficial for all the key players to participate.

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standards sceptics would be wise to learn the lessons of his-tory in this regard: The market does not necessarily select the solution of largest net benefit to society if the problem is an environmental one. Indeed, it has taken standardisation in areas such as CFCs (via the Montreal Protocol) and the washing out of oil tanks in shipping polluting the sea (via the MARPOL agreement) to achieve satisfactory solutions in many cases.

Of course, technology stand-ardisation comes with its share of problems: It would require some sort of oversight com-mittee to ‘play God’ in setting and adjusting the standards, which will be complicated on the global markets. Standards may also lock in technologies, rather than foster continuous development, if they are not set and adjusted correctly through time. Also, they are not always the cost effective solution for emissions reduction.

However, a key plus of the technology standards approach is that actually has ‘bite’. And bite in terms of international treaties means trade restric-tions, which standardisation effectively achieves by the back door. It is also entirely le-gal in the eyes of the WTO, as opposed to other attempts to block carbon intensive forms of production now ubiquitous across China and India.

Ultimately, any global envi-ronmental agreement depends upon the major parties in-volved believing that mitigat-ing their emissions is prefera-ble to not doing so, taking into account the subsequent conse-quences from both courses of action. In that regard, China, India and the U.S. could easily scupper negotiations by get-ting cold feet, as the success of any global treaty is contingent on the participation of the key players.

On a sideline, it is worth-

while noting that U.S. partici-pation in any agreement is not conditional on the Republi-cans losing the White House in January 2009. Although Presi-dent Clinton did sign Kyoto in November 1998, he never attempted to ratify the treaty, as he knew he could never get it through the senate. Dif-ficulties like this only serve to highlight how inventive a new treaty will need to be, as U.S. participation is vital.

Any treaty attempting to tackle such a broad ranging and all encompassing problem as global climate change was never likely to succeed at first attempt. But we must learn from the lessons of Kyoto, and learn fast: we are fast ap-proaching the point at which stringent, significant cuts in greenhouse gas emissions need to bite, if we are to avoid dangerous climate change. We now know that we are commit-ted to a likely temperature rise of 1.8 - 4°C over this century; hence, we will need to ensure that agreement on co-opera-tive adaptation to the impacts of climate change is reached, with particular regard to de-veloping countries, who will be hardest hit by (and most vulnerable to) its effects.

In terms of mitigating emis-sions, the UK needs to advance an agenda of securing multi-lateral agreement on collabo-rative technological R&D at Bali if we are to see the solu-tions to the climate problem materialise. We will also need to ensure that business and na-tions themselves are protected from the inherent risk of de-veloping new low carbon ap-proaches by standardising this technology as part of a global agreement.

Brown clearly has ideas about where we want to end up after acting on climate change: What we now need to see are his ideas on how we get there.

In terms of mitigating emissions, the UK needs to advance an agenda of securing multilateral agreement on collaborative technological R&D at Bali if we are to see the solutions to the climate problem materialise.

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BR TAIN’S PLACE IN THE W RLD

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SUSTAINABLE ENVIRONMENTALISMThe government’s aspirations on climate change are world-leading; the reality is somewhat different, writes Andrew Hanson

The politics of fear are in-creasingly taking hold in the modern world: fears

of international terrorism, im-migration, nuclear prolifera-tion, the rise of new powers such as China and Russia, poverty, and of course climate change.

In response, some will reach straight for the tools of op-pression, marginalising those who would seek equality, vio-lating fundamental human rights in the name of security and operating on the basis of national imperatives and self-interest.

The United Kingdom gov-ernment may have shown enormous leadership in help-ing to secure the Kyoto pro-tocol and raise the profile of climate change from an issue of scientific concern to one of international public aware-ness. Yet if the UK’s role in the world is to offer a sustain-able way of living that will leave future generations with a chance of the same quality of life that this generation has enjoyed, then the gap between rhetoric and action must be closed, and closed quickly.

The Climate Change Bill being put before Parliament will be an international first in placing binding targets on carbon emissions into law.

The long term target is a 60% cut in emissions by 2050, and the government will be refer-ring the question of whether this target is adequate to the independent Climate Change Commission for considera-tion. Yet carbon emissions have risen by around 4.5% under Labour, and it is hard

to see, given current govern-ment policy, where the cuts are going to come from.

The government’s aviation plans call for an enormous expansion in airport capacity, despite dubious evidence as to whether this is economically necessary or even desired by a majority of the population. David Milliband was a keen supporter of personal carbon quotas during his term at DE-FRA; recently government enthusiasm has been less evident. If we are going to achieve our targets, we have to start reducing carbon emis-sions now, yet emissions from transport look set to rise.

A quarter of all emissions come from housing. The gov-ernment has issued a Code for Sustainable Homes, which sets a sustainability star rating for new housing, but this is only voluntary, though it may become compulsory for new builds after April next year. Yet the urgency of the task is such that persuasion by star ratings is simply inadequate. More ambitiously, the govern-ment wants all new housing to become “zero carbon” by 2016. This looks like great leadership, until you realise there is precious little in terms of a route to get the building industry to adapt. Moreover, how many of the three mil-lion new homes much talked about recently will have been

constructed by then? The Low Carbon Buildings Fund, designed in part to assist peo-ple in reducing the carbon footprint of existing homes, has paid out less than half a million pounds since it was re-organised in April. Is this really going to transform our urban environment?

If one were to doubt the government’s appetite for taking the decisions needed to meet our targets, the most glaring example is those tar-gets relating to renewable en-ergy. There is little evidence that the UK stands any chance of producing 10% of its ener-gy from renewables by 2010, let alone the EU wide target of 20% by 2020. This is not be-cause of technology failures; it is a failure of policy.

In Germany, price support for electricity from clean tech-nologies has been immensely successful. The mechanism known as “feed in tariffs”, be-cause the generator is paid a guaranteed price for electric-ity fed into the grid, has led to Germany having 10 times the wind power capacity of the UK, despite having infe-rior wind geography. The UK produces just 0.5% of its en-ergy from wind; Denmark 15 to 20%.

Recent leaks suggest the UK is considering abandoning its renewable energy targets. Doing so will undermine the country’s international credi-bility at the negotiating table.

Is our place in the world to set an example by our actions, or merely to gain attention by setting targets we make little serious attempt to meet?

Will we make a major con-tribution to carbon reduction, or just gain short term kudos whilst allowing carbon inten-sive ways of living to become more and more entrenched?

This government must act now if it is to avoid the latter fate.

Andrew Hanson is a member of the Young Fabians

Is our place in the world to set an example by our actions, or merely to gain attention by setting targets we make little serious attempt to meet? Will we make a major contribution to carbon reduction, or just gain short term kudos whilst allowing carbon intensive ways of living to become more and more entrenched?

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BR TAIN’S PLACE IN THE W RLD

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While terrorism is re-garded as one of the most dangerous

threats to our democracy, there is another threat which is even more dangerous and has the ability to divide and destroy Britain’s society; the resurgent right wing.

In 2007’s local elections, the BNP became the second larg-est party on the Barking & Dagenham local council and seeks to divide the area based on racial lines and the same campaign is being replicated by the BNP to gain members on the London Assembly and the European Parliament.

Hopefully efforts by anti-fascist campaigners will de-rail this attempt, but the fact that we are even discussing the idea that they might gain seats is worrying enough.

Something should be done to prevent the BNP from mak-ing any further gains, as if we don’t we face a worrying fu-ture wracked with race riots and violence as the country tears itself apart.

In order to tackle the BNP, we have to understand where they are gaining their support and why they have had this amount of success so far.

In essence, it boils down to provision of public services, in particular housing, health and education.

The public feels that these services are all under enor-mous pressure and feel that they aren’t coping with this pressure and this is where the BNP gains its support; it misleads people into thinking that what causes this pres-sure is mass migration to the UK and that the answer is to expel and reduce migrants of all kinds to help the “British” people.

While the Labour Party could concern itself with re-futing these claims and un-dermining the evidence the BNP presents (makes up is a

legitimate alternative), there are far more effective meas-ures to defeat the BNP and break British fascism.

The best way is to tackle these issues head on and lead a revolution in these sectors, ones which overturn the an-tiquated systems which have caused the problems and introduce a fairer, more ef-fective system: Tackling the causes, not the symptoms.

The health system, as an example, is still founded on a 19th Century idea of large, centralised hospitals as the main providers of healthcare with a system of smaller clin-ics with limited services lo-cally. While this system had an overhaul by Bevan, it still suffers from the same prob-lems; rapid spread of diseas-es, overcrowding, and medi-cal staff incapable of seeing patients due to schedules.

The solution to these prob-lems is simple, and the Prime Minister is already on the path to acting on it with Sir Ara Darzi’s polyclinic sys-tem which has already gained praise from patients for offer-ing such a high calibre serv-ice.

There will be resistance, mainly from change hating reactionaries on the Opposi-tion’s benches, but the Prime Minister must not be reluctant and help change the system for the good of the people.

This more local and ef-fective system would help reduce support for the BNP and the right-wing, helping to provide the service that the British public need, deserve and want.

He faces a similar challenge with housing, as the Thames Gateway project has the po-tential to solve the housing issue that forces the low-in-come workers to the BNP over council housing provi-sion, but he must be willing to challenge and defy his critics

and be willing to go further. The treasure of the Con-

servatives, the “Right to Buy” legislation, will have to be overridden and defeated, otherwise the houses that are meant to help the poorest in society will end up being bought by the wealthier ten-ants and the problem will re-merge once more.

A challenging task and problem, but one which is necessary if we want to pre-vent further growth of fas-cism and avoid repeats of Cable Street, the Brixton riots and the Leeds race riots.

The solutions are there to tackling the issues which drive people to the right wing; they are achievable and appear to be effective.

Implementing them and getting them through parlia-ment will be harder, but if Gordon Brown is determined and resolute, then he can bring about the end to the BNP and achieve what he has been coveting in his speeches; a united Britain and a fairer, better Britain through social-ism.

If he doesn’t challenge these issues, if he doesn’t lead a revolution and continues the laissez-faire approach of Tony Blair to these issues then he will be partially responsible for the turmoil which ensues.

A lot rests on Gordon Brown’s performance in 2008 and 2009: I hope he has the courage that he admires in Aung San Suu Kyi.

BEATING THE BNPThe Government can and should do more to address the underlying causes of BNP support, argues Stephen Clark

Stephen Clark is a member of the Young Fabians

”Something should be done to prevent the BNP from making any further gains, as if we don’t we face a worrying future wracked with race riots and violence as the country tears itself apart. In order to tackle the BNP, we have to understand where they are gaining their support and why they have had this amount of success so far.

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OTHER DEBATE

YOUNG FABIAN EXECUTIVE 2007-8A new team took charge of the Young Fabians in early November. Here they introduce themselves, and say what they hope to achieve over the next twelve months

Mark Rusling, Chairmrusling@youngfabians.co.uk

As Chair, Mark would like to enhance the Young Fabians’ contacts with government and with all sec-tions of the labour movement. We will be organising Young Fabian policy groups to feed into Labour’s policy-making process and will be continuing to arrange policy, campaigning, embassy and social events throughout the year. This is his fourth year on the Executive and during daylight hours he is the Cam-paigns and Education Officer for the United Nations Association of the UK.

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Kate Groucutt, Vice-Chairkgroucutt@youngfabians.org.uk

Kate is Vice Chair of the Young Fabians. This year she will support the Chair and deputise in his absence, and is also planning to organise several events, including one on private equity. She is also conducting the first ever survey of Young Fabian members and will use the findings to improve the way we interact with members. Kate is on the committee of the Fabian Women’s Network and recently set up its Female Fu-tures Programme which aims to inspire and motivate Fabian women by linking them with senior women in public life. Kate works as Policy & Public Affairs Officer at the charity Carers UK and has previously worked at the CBI and the Social Market Foundation.

Emma Carr, Secretaryecarr@youngfabians.org.uk

As secretary, Emma hopes to build on her two years’ experience as Anticipations editor, as well as on the work of secretaries before her, by further developing the ways that the Young Fabian executive com-municates with the members. Emma will maintain regular contact with the Young Fabian membership, keeping them informed of all the events, publications and socials that the Young Fabians are holding as well as passing on details of events by other relevant organisations. Emma also wants to use her time as secretary to help more Young Fabian members to develop their own ideas for the Young Fabians and become more involved with the society.

Rebecca Rennison, Treasurerrrennison@youngfabians.org.uk

This is Rebecca’s third year as a member of the Young Fabian Exec. In her first year she organised the socials, including the annual boat party, and last year served as Treasurer and organised the boat party again. Lacking such imagination, she’s Treasurer again this year and plans to organise yet another boat party. However in a bid for variety she also hopes to reinstate the Young Fabians summer school.

Patrick Woodman, Partnerships Development Officerpwoodman@youngfabians.org.uk

Patrick is responsible for strengthening the Young Fabians’ links with other political and campaigning organisations. He’ll be arranging a number of joint events throughout the year and, among other things, will commission articles from relevant partners for the Young Fabians’ magazine, Anticipations. If you’re interested in discussing possible joint activities, please get in touch with Patrick.

Patrick is now in his fourth year on the Young Fabian Exec. He has previously been Parliamentary Officer and Media Officer, organising events on a diverse range of topics.

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David Chaplin, Policy & Communications Officerdchaplin@youngfabians.org.uk

David is 24, he is the Policy & Communications Officer on the Young Fabian executive. David works in Parliament for Gordon Marsden MP.

As Policy & Communications Officer David will be establishing the Young Fabians relationship with the Labour Party’s policy process, manifesto groups and special advisors - establishing six policy groups to discuss new and innovative policy proposals to feed into to government.

Brian Tomlinson, Trade Union Liaison Officerbtomlinson@youngfabians.org.uk

Brian is an active member of Battersea Labour Party and was selected in November 2007 as the PPC for Twickenham. He works in the City as a Lawyer and has been a member of the Young Fabians for a number years. As Labour Party and TU Liaison Officer he will continue to build strong and meaningful links between the Fabians and the labour movement. To retain a Labour government, the different ele-ments of the progressive left must debate, share ideas and campaign on issues which resonate with the wider public. Brian hopes to bring people together to help with this process.

Dan Whittle, International & Embassies Officerdwhittle@youngfabians.org.uk

Dan work’s for a Labour MP and am Chair of the Parliamentary Staff Branch of Unite (T&G Section), He was social sec last year and hope you enjoyed the events. This year he has the task of organising four events in embassies and developing links with our european sister parties, building on existing links in Sweden, France and Spain. Dan would like his work this year to help the Young Fabians make lasting friendships with socialist societies across the world. He knows there are many Young Fabians with an in-terest in foreign policy and with their help the Young Fabians can make a real contribution to the debate.

Tom Miller, Memberships Officertmiller@youngfabians.org.uk

Tom Miller is the new membership officer for this year, having been co-opted as regions officer half way through the last. During his time Tom wishes to see membership expanded further across key constituen-cies such as among parliamentary researchers. He wants to work with other progressive organisations to further expand membership, and get to work on a way of contacting and staying in touch with alumni.

Alex Baker, Editor of Anticipationsabaker@youngfabians.org.uk, anticipations@youngfabians.org.uk

This is Alex’s second year on the Young Fabian Executive. He was co-opted late last year having helped Emma Carr with the Anticipations redesign. As Editor of Anticipations, he would like to build on Em-ma’s hard work by helping to further improve the way that the Young Fabians communicate with each other and with the wider political community, particularly through the Society’s new media offering.

Writing for Anticipations couldn’t be easier. To find out more, please email Alex on either of the email addresses listed above.

Richard Messingham, Parliamentary Officerrmessingham@youngfabians.org.uk

Richard is an active party member in South London, and has previously been a workplace representative for both UNISON and Amicus/Unite. He has worked for Labour MPs in Parliament and a number of campaigning charities. He likes quizzes, cycling, British Politics, and Alan Partridge, and is very pleased to be back on the Young Fabian executive this year. This year he will be organising a series of events in Westminster to help members engage with leading public figures on current political issues

Cara Brown, Regions & Universities Officercbrown@youngfabians.org.uk

Cara has joined the Young Fabian’s Exec for the first time this year in the co-opted position of Regions & Universities officer. She is keen to help Young Fabians in the regions and Universities to meet and set up their own YF branches, and to create a better dialogue between both YFs across the country, and with those in London. Please feel free to drop her an email with any suggestions you have on this or if you want guidance on setting up a club. All ideas are welcome!

Tom Flynn, Policy & Publications Officertflynn@youngfabians.org.uk

Currently Policy & Publications Officer, Tom has been a member of the Young Fabians Executive for the past four years. His focus for events and publications this year is on new media and youth participation in the trade union movement.

James Green, Schools Project Officerjgreen@youngfabians.org.uk

As someone who has been involved in youth work for the past ten years James has a keen interest in rais-ing political awareness and activity among young people. As Schools Project Officer James will support Young Fabians as they help teachers in various schools deliver citizenship education.

Adrian Prandle, Officer Without Portfolioaprandle@youngfabians.org.uk

Adrian, 25, is a Northerner born and bred who works as an adviser to Liam Byrne MP in the House of Commons. He has been co-opted to the Young Fabian Executive for 2007/08 as Officer Without Portfolio and is focussing on encouraging MPs’ staff in parliament to become more involved in the Young Fabians. Adrian is also planning a trip to the U.S. next year to participate in the Democrats’ efforts in the presi-dential elections and wants to take as many Young Fabians as possible. He also enjoys campaigning in the UK and is a member of Dulwich and West Norwood CLP and the Transport and General Workers’ Union.

Sam Strudwick, Website Officersstrudwick@youngfabians.org.uk

As website officer Sam hopes to help the Young Fabians make full use of the tools of the web. Over the next year Sam, with his passing interest in technology, has plans to set up a Young Fabian blog, build new links with other blogging politicians, activists and organisations, begin podcasting interviews and debates and video blogging Young Fabian events. Sam also wants to redesign the website so it better represents who the Young Fabians are and what they do. In his first year on the executive Sam is look-ing forward to helping the other officers make the best use of the web in their events, publications and projects so that it becomes a part of everything the Young Fabians do.

Claire Leigh, Policy & Careers Officercleigh@youngfabians.org.uk

Claire originally hails from Tunbridge Wells in Kent, and has just completed an MPhil in International Relations at Oxford University. She now works as a policy analyst in the Prime Minister’s Strategy Unit, working on the Life Chances agenda and social justice issues. Claire hopes to spend the next year build-ing a better relationship between the Young Fabians and practitioners in the world of policy. She plans to initiate a monthly newsletter summary of policy developments, and to create a network of current practi-tioners to draw on for advice and guidance as a resource for those hoping to start a career in policy.

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Co-opted Committee Members

the issue of

In the next anticipations:

email your idea/article to anticipations@youngfabians.org.uk by Feb 29

EQUALITY

> Women’s Rights> Executive Pay> Child Poverty> Globalisation> Life Chances> Gay Marriage

> Immigration> Health Provision

> Democratic Representation

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