The Honduran Catholic Church’s True Colours: Cardinal Óscar Andrés Rodríguez Maradiaga

Updated July 10, 2009

News emerging from Honduras suggest that the country’s leading Roman Catholic, Cardinal Óscar Andrés Rodríguez Maradiaga, opposes the return of President Manuel Zelaya, the victim of a coup by Honduras’ military. According to Spain’s El País, the new government instituted by the coup has had all of the Honduran TV channels carry a broadcast by Rodríguez Maradiaga. In it the cardinal told Zelaya  ‘I know that you love life…I know that you respect life, and until today not a single Honduran has died. But your return to the country at this point in time could lead to a blood bath. Please, meditate. Because afterwards it would be too late’ (1).

This is an extraordinary statement. On the one hand, even President Obama, whose administration was criticised for effectively condoning the coup, belatedly acknowledged that Zelaya is still the rightful president of Honduras.  Zelaya has every right to go back to his country and reclaim his constitutional mandate to lead Honduras as its democratically elected president. On the other hand, the nature of the discourse employed by Rodríguez Maradiaga is such that it blames Zelaya in advance for a bloodbath that could only be the result of the actions of the golpistas led by de facto leader Roberto Micheletti. In effect, Rodríguez Maradiaga is trying to prevent Zelaya from returning to Honduras by inverting the order of politics: Zelaya is the victim of Micheletti & Co’s actions, but in Rodríguez Maradiaga’s statement, Zelaya has been transformed into the would-be aggressor. Little wonder that the illegal Honduran government interrupted normal broadcasts to show Rodríguez’s intervention on television.

This raises the question: who is Óscar Rodríguez Maradiaga, and why has he allied himself with the Honduran oligarchy behind the coup?

Anyone who does superficial research on the cardinal’s background could be forgiven for coming away with the impression that Rodríguez Maradiaga is a progressive religious leader. If one goes, for example, by the first part of the Wikipedia entry on the cardinal, he certainly does seem to be a force for good: according to the Wiki, ‘His campaign for human rights and the poor have won widespread praise. Cardinal Rodríguez is further admired as a dynamic pastor who brokered peace accords with rebels and led rebuilding efforts after a natural disaster. He is an outspoken proponent of the cancellation of Third World debt’(2).

He also seems to have a formidable intellect: according to the same Wiki, the cardinal has a doctorate in philosophy, and, in addition to his native Spanish, speaks English, French, Italian, German and Portuguese. As if this weren’t impressive enough, Rodríguez has a diploma in clinical psychology and psychotherapy, has taught chemistry and physics, and has even trained in classical piano. He has, in effect, the kind of education that only the most privileged in Latin America could ever hope to obtain.

According to the media, Rodríguez Maradiaga was a key mediator during the stand-off between the democratically elected president Zelaya and the Honduran oligarchy. El País went so far as to say that ‘There is a man who has much influence in Honduras and who has, until now, remained in silence. This man went to all of the secret meetings that took place in the U.S. Embassy to try to avert the coup d’etat. In those meetings, Cardinal Óscar Rodríguez always remained in a position of exquisite equidistance’(3).

Alas, the good cardinal has now not only abandoned that ‘equidistance’, but as noted earlier, has effectively adopted a stance that renders him an accomplice of the Honduran coup leaders.

And an accomplice he certainly now is: a man with a doctorate in philosophy, and with a diploma in clinical psychology might have chosen any number of ways to continue his work of mediation. Instead he has chosen what is arguably the most Machiavellian way of trying to stop Zelaya from returning to Honduras: by making him responsible for any deaths resulting from his efforts to restore the duly-elected presidency. We must thus ask once again, who is Rodríguez Maradiaga, and why would he adopt such a stance?

Clues that Rodríguez Maradiaga is not quite as progressive as he seems to be may be found if one reads beyond the headline accounts of his apparent moderation.

First, the cardinal has taken an extraordinarily hard line when it comes to the trials in the U.S. of Catholic priest paedophiles. According to the Wiki cited earlier, in a May 2002 interview with the Italian-Catholic publication 30 Giorni, Rodríguez Maradiaga claimed that ‘Jews’ had influenced the media to exploit the current controversy regarding sexual abuse by Catholic priests in order to divert attention from the Israeli-Palestinian crisis. No doubt the Israeli state (as distinct from the category of ‘Jews’ in general) is capable of all kinds of deviousness. But for Rodríguez Maradiaga to try to blame ‘Jews’ for media reporting on the outrages of priestly paedophillia is simply ridiculous. It smacks of a devious and divisive effort to divert attention from the real issues.

Second, the French magazine Golias noted that when it came to AIDS and condoms, the supposedly progressive cardinal is ‘more papist than the pope’: ‘Archbishop Oscar Rodriguez Maradiaga said [in the monthly journal Comboni that] he was indeed convinced that condoms are not useful for combating the AIDS virus. “The fight AIDS should not focus on condoms (…) The use of condoms does not prevent all transmission of AIDS”‘(4). It may be that this last sentence is valid, when taken in isolation of the bigger issue. However, anyone who focusses on this detail does miss the bigger picture: that Benedict XVI, and apparently Rodríguez himself, have adopted an utterly ideological stance vis-a-vis the matter of condoms. It is a stance that may endear them to the men who prefer not to use condoms, but it is also one that will result in needless, some would say criminal deaths. Apparently Rodríguez is not particularly concerned about those deaths (as opposed to the ones that might be caused by Micheletti if Zelaya returns).

Third, after making what many interpreted as relatively liberal comments regarding communion with pro-choice politicians in Time Magazine, Rodríguez Maradiaga engaged in a remarkable volte face: as noted by the Catholic News Agency,

…in statements to Carlos Polo, reproduced exclusively by the Catholic News Agency, Cardinal Maradiaga [sic], who is in Aparecida participating in the V General Conference of the Latin American Bishops’ Council, said his comments to Time magazine should be reformulated “in light of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith teaches in its document, ‘Worthiness to Receive Communion’.”“A politician who publicly supports abortion, he excommunicates himself.  It’s not question of receiving Communion or not; he has already done serious harm to the communion of faith of the Church, to the communion of moral life, and therefore that person himself is doing an act that is inconsistent with what he says he believes,” the cardinal said.(5)

For those unfamiliar with the workings of the Vatican, the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith is the modern name for what used to be called the Holy Office of the Inquisition. Under the prefect-ship of the current pope, Joseph Ratzinger now Benedict XVI, the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith became notorious for its world-wide persecution of liberal and liberation theology Catholics (more on this, below). From this point of view, Rodríguez Maradiaga’s u-turn may be seen as a recognition that Ratzinger’s hard line continues to dominate doctrinal matters.

One benevolent interpretation of Rodríguez Maradiaga’s intervention in favour of the Honduran oligarchy is precisely that Rome has ordered him to tow the hard line. This ‘Vatican-victim’ status is, however, flatly contradicted by the role that Rodríguez Maradiaga played while he was general secretary of CELAM, the Spanish-language acronym for the Latin American Episcopal Conference. CELAM was once a Catholic institution dominated by progressive Latin American clergy. The clergy initiated a radical movement known as ‘liberation theology’, and established what became known as ‘Ecclesiastical Base Communities’ throughout the continent. Such communities had a critical orientation that explored ways of helping the poor to overcome centuries-old exploitation by groups such as the ones that have carried out the coup in Honduras. The principle was that traditional Church calls for Christian generousity had clearly failed, and so what was needed was a radical redefinition of the Church’s policies and priorities in defence of the poor.

The Vatican initially tolerated the initiative. However, first under Pope Paul VI, and then again under the arch-conservative Pope John Paul II, the liberation theology movement was opposed, and then entirely eliminated by conservative CELAM general secretaries imposed by the Vatican, with Ratzinger as the Catholic Right’s éminence grise. Towards the bitter end of this process, from 1995 to 1999, Óscar Rodríguez Maradiaga was one such secretary; as noted by the Washington Post, ‘although he has spoken out against free-market policies and in defense of millions living in abject poverty in Central America, Rodríguez Maradiaga is an opponent of the “liberation theology” that once supported leftist rebellions and sought to bend the rules of orthodoxy to bring the Church closer to Indian groups and the poor’(6). In 2001, John Paul II rewarded Rodríguez for his loyalty by making him the first cardinal of Honduras, and a few years later Rodríguez threw his hat into the ring of candidates to replace John Paul II when he died in 2005. The Golias article quoted earlier wondered if Rodríguez’s stance vis-a-vis condomns was part of a strategy designed to endear him to the Vatican’s all-powerful Right. The cardinal’s most recent actions raise similar questions: could it be that Rodríguez now has ambitions to replace Ratzinger and is willing to sacrifice the poor in Honduras in order to improve his chances of becoming the next pope?

Far, then, from being a victim of the Vatican, there is good reason to regard Rodríguez Maradiaga as the kind of Catholic leader that has haunted Latin American societies for centuries: a leader who, when it suited the Church, criticised the ruling elite for their greed; but also a leader who, when push came to shove, knew full well that the Vatican’s ideological interests were intimately aligned with those of the very oligarchies occasionally berated for their avarice. The Honduran cardinal’s sudden abandonment of a mediating role, and the extraordinary nature of his attack on Zelaya appear to be a sad example of just such a push, and just such a shove. The actions suggest that, at least where the Roman Catholic Church’s political interventions are concerned, Latin American history is being repeated.

UPDATE July 6

News today that the Honduran coup leaders have not only turned back Zelaya, but have killed one and maimed several others to ‘prove’ the cardinal’s point. (For updates on the rapidly evolving situation, see the Latin America News Review.) EcoLogics asks readers to consider: would the Honduran businessmen behind the coup have engaged in any of these actions if Obama had presented them with an ultimatum to cease and desist their actions immediately?

Update July 10

According to news in Britain’s Guardian, Joseph Ratzinger’s (Benedict XVI) third encyclical reportedly suggests that ‘The conviction that the economy must be autonomous, that it must be shielded from “influences” of a moral character, has led man to abuse the economic process in a thoroughly destructive way’.'In the long term, these convictions have led to economic, social and political systems that trample upon personal and social freedom, and are therefore unable to deliver the justice that they promise.’  EcoLogics will study the encyclical and will publish a post on the matter. However, on the face of it, it sounds eerily like Rodríguez Maradiaga’s own stance: the pope can certainly talk the talk of moral condemnation, but when one looks at his history, it becomes apparent that he has walked the path of destroying the very people who raised these selfsame concerns and tried to do something about them decades ago in the context of liberation theology.

Notes

1) ‘La Iglesia pide a Zelaya que no regrese’, in El País, July 5, 2009, http://www.elpais.com/articulo/internacional/Iglesia/pide/Zelaya/regrese/elpepuint/20090705elpepiint_1/Tes, accessed July 5, 2009.

2) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%93scar_Andr%C3%A9s_Rodr%C3%ADguez_Maradiaga, accessed July 5, 2009.

3) ‘La Iglesia pide a Zelaya que no regrese’, in El País, July 5, 2009, http://www.elpais.com/articulo/internacional/Iglesia/pide/Zelaya/regrese/elpepuint/20090705elpepiint_1/Tes, accessed July 5, 2009.

4) ‘L’enquête Caritas : Maradiaga déçoit’ in Golias, http://www.golias.fr/spip.php?article2853, accessed July 6, 2009.

5) Catholic News Agency, ‘Honduran cardinal clarifies interview on Communion and pro-abortion politicians’, May 18, 2007. http://www.catholicnewsagency.com/new.php?n=9402, accessed July 5, 2009.

6) ‘Oscar Rodríguez Maradiaga, Honduras’, Washington Post, April 16, 2005, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A57842-2005Apr15.html, accessed July 5, 2009.

When Fascism came knocking on Tony Blair’s door

Post updated at 13.50 BST

According to a Guardian article published today,

The Formula One commercial rights holder, Bernie Ecclestone, has stoked up controversy by claiming that Adolf Hitler was a man who “was able to get things done”, that democracy has not worked out for Britain and that his colleague Max Mosley would make a good Prime Minister. Ecclestone had previously stirred outrage when he suggested in 2008 that racist comments on a website about the British driver Lewis Hamilton had “started as just a joke”.

Here is, courtesy of the not-exactly-progressive Sunday Telegraph, an aide-memoire for those who have only dim memories of the significance of Bernie Ecclestone to New Labour, and to Tony Blair in particular:

The Ecclestone Affair was New Labour’s first major scandal and a test of Mr Blair’s leadership and his claim to be cleaning up British politics after John Major’s government. As the affair deepened with the revelation that Mr Ecclestone had donated £1 million to the Labour Party just months before the tobacco advertising climbdown Mr Blair faced calls to resign. The Prime Minister appeared on the BBC’s On The Record Programme to defend the exemption and to insist he was “a pretty straight sort of guy.” At the time the Government insisted that the decision to exempt Formula One was not decided by Mr Blair following his meeting with Mr Ecclestone on 16 October 1997. They insisted it was a joint decision made with the Department of Health at a later date. However, the newly released documents prove conclusively that Mr Blair ordered his Government to prepare for the policy change immediately following his meeting with Mr Ecclestone – a fact which was not revealed at the time of the scandal.

As this blog and countless other political commentators have noted over the years, Tony Blair is quite far to the right. It now turns out that the person with whom he engaged in what was to be the first of several major acts of political corruption is a Nazi sympathizer. We all thought it was bad enough that Blair was corrupt; now we know that when fascists came knocking at his door, Blair was only too happy to swing it wide open.

Blair and his acolytes will argue that he had no way of knowing that he was welcoming a Nazi sympathizer into 10 Downing Street. But Ecclestone did not go alone to Downing Street; he went accompanied by the president of FIA, Max Mosley, who was a member of his father’s Fascist party in his youth. Any suggestion that this was no more than a ‘youthful error’ is made somewhat suspect by the recent revelation that Mosley enjoys, shall we say, authoritarian sex. The Wikipedia entry on Mosley suggests that he played a significant role in the lobbying that led up to the Ecclestone scandal:

… Mosley was attempting to delay European legislation banning tobacco advertising. At this time all leading Formula One teams carried significant branding from tobacco brands such as Rothmans, West, Marlboro and Mild Seven. The Labour party had pledged to ban tobacco advertising in its manifesto ahead of its 1997 General Election vicitory,  supporting a proposed European Union Directive. The Labour Party’s stance on banning tobacco advertising was reinforced following the election by forceful statements from the Health Secretary Frank Dobson and Minister for Public Health Tessa Jowell. Ecclestone appealed “over Jowell’s head” to Jonathan Powell, Tony Blair’s chief of staff, who arranged a meeting with Blair. Ecclestone and Mosley, both Labour Party donors, met Blair on 16 October 1997.

Presumably anyone invited to 10 Downing Street is very carefully vetted by the prime minister’s political minders, if not by the British security services. Are we really expected to believe that Blair’s 10 Downing Street didn’t know full well what kind of characters it was allowing into the inner sanctum of the British government?

By way of a postscript: is a former prime minister who is happy to take money from Nazi sympathizers really the kind of president that the European Union wants?

Obama’s Big Stick and Alvaro Uribe’s ‘Entreguismo’

A number of commentators have noted over the past months that Obama’s political practice now flatly contradicts the hopeful rhetoric of his campaign speeches. It seems that the Bush-Cheney skulduggery has been replaced by a rather more astute modus operandi, one that involves a continued use of lofty Obama oratory even as Obama allows his lieutenants to engage in policies that are more and more difficult to distinguish from those of the Bush administration.

So it is, for example, that the Wall Street finance barons are once again getting their way thanks to the intervention of Timothy F. Geithner; that Steven Chu has performed extraordinary u-turns vis-à-vis coal-fired power stations and hydrogen cars; and that there is still no guarantee that the Guantánamo prison will actually be closed down. While political realists will claim that there have been pragmatic reasons for each of the mentioned volte faces, the fact is that the Obama administration has shown a remarkable willingness to accommodate many of the very policies that it denounced during the election.

As if the mentioned policy u-turns were not enough, this week the Obama administration has shown that is it even willing to return to the bad old days of ‘banana republic’ diplomacy in Latin America.  In June, the Honduran oligarchy decided that the democratically elected, and increasingly left-wing President Manuel Zelaya had gone too far in the direction of addressing the country’s age old inequalities. In the manner of a García-Márquez novel, they whisked him out of the country whilst he was still in pyjamas, and instituted one of their own as interim president.

As noted by Mark Weisbrot in The Guardian, it is extraordinary that Obama administration’s first statement did no more than call for ‘all political and social actors in Honduras to respect democratic norms, the rule of law and the tenets of the Inter-American Democratic Charter’. When the strength of the response of other nations became clear, Hillary Clinton issued a somewhat stronger statement that stopped short of calling the coup a coup, and didn’t say anything about Zelaya returning to the presidency. It was only on Monday afternoon that Obama finally said ‘We believe that the coup was not legal and that President Zelaya remains the president of Honduras.’ Even so, during a press conference later that day, Clinton herself still refused to confirm that ‘restoring the constitutional order’ in Honduras meant returning Zelaya.

What critical observers on this side of the Atlantic failed to comment on was that Obama made his statement in the course of a press conference with Alvaro Uribe, Colombia’s arch neo-liberal, and far-right wing president. Anyone who wants to find out what Uribe has been up to over the last decade or so should read the letter that Human Rights Watch sent to President Obama on the eve of his meeting with Uribe. In one particularly telling paragraph, the HRW letter says that

In recent years Uribe has said trade unionists are “a bunch of criminals dressed up as trade unionists.”  He has railed against his country’s own Supreme Court, which has spearheaded ground-breaking investigations of paramilitary infiltration in the Colombian government (the “parapolitics” investigations), accusing its members of representing “terrorism.”  He has claimed that opposition politicians are “terrorists in business suits.”  And he has accused assistant Supreme Court justice Ivan Velásquez, who is in charge of coordinating the “parapolitics” investigations, of trying to frame him for murder by offering illegal or inappropriate benefits to an imprisoned paramilitary to testify against Uribe (an investigation by the Attorney General’s office later found that, in fact, Velásquez was the one who the paramilitary and others were framing).  After Velásquez was cleared, last year, Semana magazine revealed that senior Uribe advisors held a meeting in the Presidential Palace with another paramilitary leader to discuss supposed evidence against Velásquez (which also turned out to be false).

In this context, all credit goes to the pre-election Obama for criticizing Colombia’s appalling human rights record. In a speech given to the AFL-CIO in Philadelphia on April 2nd, 2008, Obama said that he would ‘oppose the Colombia Free Trade Agreement if President Bush insists on sending it to Congress because the violence against unions in Colombia would make a mockery of the very labor protections that we have insisted be included in these kinds of agreements’.

Alas, now it appears that this stance is also set for an Obama u-turn thanks to a remarkable new development in the region. This year, the U.S.’s agreement with Ecuador to use the military base in Manta expires. The base is located on the Pacific coast just south of Colombia, and is nominally used by U.S. AWACS E-3 and P3 Orions for the purpose of cocaine trade interdiction. Critics of the growing American military presence in the region suspect that the base has also been used to spy on governments in the area and to help Colombia with its anti-guerilla operations.

The Manta base acquired a new notoriety after March 1, 2008, when Alvaro Uribe launched, some say at the very least with U.S. logistical support, an attack on a FARC guerrilla camp across the border in Ecuador. Some commentators at the time went further and suggested that some or all of the planes were actually flown by U.S. pilots who took off from the Manta base. Whatever the case, Uribe’s attack was such a flagrant violation of international law that it drew condemnation from everyone except the Bush government. Correa called back his ambassador in Bogotá and relations between the two countries reached their lowest point in living memory. The conflict rumbles on; an Ecuadorian judge has just issued an international arrest warrant for the former Colombian Defence Minister, Juan Manuel Santos, one of Uribe’s key lieutenants and political allies, and a member of one of Colombia’s most powerful families.

Unsurprisingly, the Correa government vowed ‘never again to repeat a policy of entreguismo [literally ‘giving-up-ism’], of giving up part of the national territory’. There will be no renewal of the Manta agreement with the U.S., and the U.S. has accepted that its last flight from the base in Manta will be in July. Where, then, will the U.S. spy planes and ships be relocated? No prizes for guessing the answer. The Colombian magazine Cambio has reported that a deal has been hammered out that will allow the U.S. to establish bases in no less than five Colombian sites: most probably the Palanquero airbase near Bogotá, but also the Alberto Pouwels airbase on the Caribbean coast; the Apiay base in the country’s eastern plains near the Venezuelan border; and two naval ports in Bahía Málaga and in Cartagena, on the Pacific and Caribbean coasts respectively. So instead of having one relatively isolated base in Ecuador, the U.S. will now perhaps have five quite sizable bases scattered strategically across all of Colombia. Not bad for a president who got himself elected by promising to bring to an end the Bush-Cheney administration’s war-mongering.

We do not know yet what quid pro quo Uribe has extracted for this deal, which is unlikely to be supported by a majority of Colombians.  There is, however, already evidence that a deal is in the offing: in his remarks after the meeting with Uribe, Obama was quoted as saying

We discussed, most prominently, the interests of both countries in moving forward on a free trade agreement. This is something that has been discussed for quite some time. I have instructed Ambassador Kirk, our United States Trade Representative, to begin working closely with President Uribe’s team on how we can proceed on a free trade agreement. There are obvious difficulties involved in the process and there remains work to do, but I’m confident that ultimately we can strike a deal that is good for the people of Colombia and good for the people of the United States. […] I commended President Uribe on the progress that has been made in human rights in Colombia and dealing with the killings of labor leaders there, and obviously we’ve seen a downward trajectory in the deaths of labor unions and we’ve seen improvements when it comes to prosecution of those who are carrying out these blatant human rights offenses.

The sudden improvement suggested by Obama flies in the face of the letter sent to him by Human Rights Watch. But then again, similar contradictions are now routinely appearing in Obama’s public statements, which conjure one reality even as Obama aides act on another.

Obama may also maintain or even increase the vast amounts of aid that the U.S. already gives to Colombia’s military. All of this officially, of course, in the name of interrupting the flow of drugs from Latin America to the U.S. In fact, the key U.S. priority has been, and under Obama seems likely to continue to be to wage something akin to a post-cold war by proxy. And not just by proxy: the new bases will make it even easier for Obama to wield a new big stick against the U.S.’s most vocal critics in the region: Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez, Nicaragua’s Daniel Ortega, and Ecuador’s Rafael Correa. The location of the bases will mean that U.S. combat aircraft could be minutes away from key civilian and military targets in each of the mentioned countries. Even if the U.S. never sends its bombers, there can be little doubt that the U.S. military will be quite happy to lend a logistical hand in the way that they appear to have done during the attack on the guerrilla base in Ecuador.

The military and political advisers behind any deal with Colombia probably hope that the American military presence in Colombia will counteract the resurgence of left-wing politics in the region. In fact, it is more likely that the policy will revive lingering anti-U.S. sentiment by showing that U.S. policy in the region remains unchanged, despite all the Obama promises. It will also trigger a new regional arms race as the threatened countries scramble to update their air defence systems. Hugo Chávez has already spent vast sums updating Venezuela’s U.S.-made military hardware, and the new bases will be a boon to the Russian and European arms makers that have replaced Boeing and other U.S. merchants of death.

Years after the U.S. finally removed the notorious ‘School of the Americas’ from the Panama Canal, it does not seem unlikely that the bases may yet even serve as training sites for the coups that may be organised by the U.S., or which the U.S. will ‘actively condone’ by way of statements of the kind issued by Hillary Clinton vis-á-vis the coup in Honduras. When it comes to Latin America, the Monroe Doctrine and its Roosevelt Corollary appear to have the full backing of even the most democratic of U.S. presidents.

Given these developments, Obama’s famous slogan  of ‘Yes we can…’ now seems like both a distant, and an extraordinarily ironic memory.

The Two Faces of David Cameron

British media are reporting today that David Cameron has embarked in what is being described as another major step in the modernisation of the Conservative Party. This time he is offering a public apology for section 28, the notorious legislation which banned the ‘promotion’ of homosexuality in British schools. Cameron has apparently condemened section 28 as ‘offensive to gay people’ (EcoLogics would add that it is not just offensive to ‘gay people’) and apparently is even predicting that a Conservative could become Britain’s first openly gay prime minister.

The problem is that this grand prediction, and the mea culpa that goes with it, fly in the face (well, one of the faces) of what Cameron has recently done on the European stage. As noted by EcoLogics in another post, Cameron snuk off to Poland a few weeks ago, where he met with the Kaczyński twins, the leaders of the hard-right Polish Law and Justice Party. Amongst other things, the Law and Justice Party—with which Cameron’s ‘new’ Conservatives are officially allied—oppose same-sex marriages or any other form of legal recognition of homosexual couples. According to Wikipedia, Jarosław Kaczyński has even been quoted as saying that homosexuals should not be teachers, but that homosexuals would not be persecuted. He has also stated that “The affirmation of homosexuality will lead to the downfall of civilization. We can’t agree to it”.

In this as in so many other cases, EcoLogics wonders which way the Janus-faced Cameron actually intends to go. Is he trying to sweeten up New Labour voters, who are hard to the right on economic issues but more liberal when it comes to a variety of social issues? That would certainly explain why he made sure that there were no Tory media to provide extensive coverage of the weekend during which he spent some quality time with the Kaczyński twins…

In future posts, EcoLogics will use a smaller version of the above photograph as a kind of Janus ‘logo’ to signal a post about the many faces of David Cameron. He may well become the next prime minister, but if this blog has its way it may get a bit more difficult for Cameron to be the ally of hard-right wing parties one day, and a liberal the next.

G20 protests: Home Affairs Select Committee shows who’s boss

The following extraordinarily disingenuous news from the Guardian:

Untrained officers must never again be put in the frontline of policing public protests, according to a highly critical MPs’ report on the G20 protests published today. [...] The conclusion from the Commons home affairs select committee inquiry into the G20 protests of April 1 follows admissions from senior Metropolitan police officers that some inexperienced officers, who were clearly quite scared, used “inappropriate force”. [...] The report by the cross-party group of MPs says they “cannot condone the use of untrained, inexperienced officers on the frontline of a public protest under any circumstances”.

EcoLogics will not waste time writing a detailed critique of the ludicrous implication: that police brutality is no more than a matter of inexperience and a lack of training. So we are to believe that the systematic suppression of badges on the part of the most brutal officers is also down to ‘inexperience’? And is the same true for commanding officers who looked on while men like the one that struck down Ian Tomlinson did their work? Are they also ‘inexperienced’?

No, instead of wasting time analysing the implications of the enquiry, it seems more appropriate to point out that while the Home Affairs Select Committee is made up of members of all three main parties, it is led by someone who was causing controversy about parliamentary expenses—and not just expenses—long before the current furore made headlines. Anyone who wants to know something about Keith Vaz MP’s politics only has to go to Wikipedia to begin to realise why he might not be exactly the best person to lead a parliamentary enquiry about police brutality. If the Filkin enquiry is anything to go by, then it’s a wonder that the Home Affairs Select Committee didn’t actually congratulate the Met for covering up the killing of Ian Tomlinson in the way that it clearly did.

To be sure, the problem is not just with Vaz; would MPs who risk being investigated by the police for fraud be likely to condemn police brutality?

Peter Mandelson in Higher Education (or, when New Labour’s Amazonia came to Britain’s Universities)

Updated June 25 @ 17.33

“In the 21st Century, our natural resource is our people – and their potential is both untapped and vast. Skills are the key to unlocking that potential.”
Sandy Leitch, in press release about the publication of the Leitch Review of Skills, 2006

“As one commentator puts it graphically, universities are ‘the coalmines of the 21st century’”
Tony Blair, in speech on higher education, 2004

In 1995 John Major’s Conservative government began the long march towards the vocationalisation of higher education when it merged Education with Employment to produce a new department of Education and Employment. Tony Blair’s New Labour government not only retained this title, but in 2001 gave the employment side of education a particular emphasis when it created a Department for Education and Skills. This shift was taken a step further by Gordon Brown when he became prime minister in 2007. At that point, Brown split Education and Skills into two separate departments: a Department for Children, Schools and Families, and a Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills. This meant that by 2007, the UK—or rather, England, Wales, and Northern Ireland—could lay claim to the rather dubious distinction of being nations bereft of a Department for Education.

Anyone who assumed that this dynamic could be taken no further was in for a surprise when, in the wake of New Labour’s disastrous results in local and European Parliamentary elections this month, Gordon Brown eliminated the Department of Innovation, Universities and Skills in its entirety. All of the defunct department’s functions were delegated to a new department titled ‘Business, Innovation, and Skills’. The new ‘super-department’ is headed by none other than Peter Mandelson, aka ‘The Prince of Darkness’, New Labour’s Neoliberal–in–Chief, Frequenter–of–Russian–Oligarchs (and not just Russian oligarchs), and the man who was so naughty (even by New Labour’s high moral standards) that he was forced to resign not once, but twice from Tony Blair’s cabinet.

This is the man who has now penned an article extolling the virtues of the Open University. On one level, staff and students at the OU have every reason to be proud. Mandelson is right to say that the OU is a remarkable institution. However, on another level—the level that New Labour actually conducts its politics—the OU, and indeed the directors, academics and students of other universities should be worried, very worried.

As always with New Labour, and with Mandelson in particular, one has to interpret what is said knowing that it matters far less than what is not said. For every phrase that appears extolling the virtue of one thing, the reader has to assume that what is really at stake is quite a different thing, an unacknowledged policy which will be put in place under the cover of that which is officially stated.

* * *

In this case, praise for the OU will act as cover for two processes. Mandelson does acknowledge the first one en passant when he invokes the New Labour mantra: ‘The huge and growing global market for education’ (emphasis added). As EcoLogics has noted in several other posts (see for example, New Labour’s Assault on Higher Education), one of the main forces behind New Labour’s policy for higher education involves nothing less than a back–door (and now not–so–back–door) dynamic of privatisation. One whose motivations are no less corrupt than the ones that have driven Mandelson’s efforts to hand over the Royal Mail, despite protestations to the contrary, to the Dutch giant TNT (and this, remarkably, via another Dutch company, the investment bank UBS).

What does this have to do with the OU and distance education? A clue may be found in the following passage in Mandelson’s article:

‘In recognition of the OU’s expertise in this area, the prime minister has confirmed a further £12m (£7.8m contributed by the Higher Education Funding Council for England) to continue to develop the OU as a national resource, so that other UK institutions can collaborate with it and benefit from its experience of providing distance learning in the UK, and increasingly, around the world.’

Read, the knowledge and expertise that the OU has acquired over the last 40 years will be made available to all those who are seeking, or will eventually seek, to transform their universities into businesses that specialise, or at least capitalise, on distance education—i.e. higher education versions of the failed Carter & Carter, which was the ‘niño mimado’ (the spoilt child) of New Labour’s Train to Gain project.

This proposal—and the broader idea of using the neoliberal wand to turn higher education into money—might sound like a good one until the reader asks just who is to gain, and indeed to gain the most, from the training. One thing is pretty clear: it won’t be the students who will have to pay through their nose, and who, if New Labour has its way, will have to take whatever courses their employers say they must take as part of the vocationalisation of higher education proposed by the Lambert and Leitch Reviews.

*   *   *

The second process, the second motivation lies in the transformation of higher education into yet another instance of New Labour’s Amazonia. Lest EcoLogics be branded a Luddite blog, let it be known now and for eternity that EcoLogics believes that the internet, and indeed distance education can be a fantastically good things. The problem arises when both become yet another way of exploiting people. The expression ‘New Labour’s Amazonia’ refers to New Labour’s efforts to model public sector institutions—including higher education, it now seems—on the business practices of Amazon. As EcoLogics noted in a post published late last year (New Labour’s Amazonia), New Labour ministers are planning to force GPs to improve their performance by posting patients’ comments about them on an NHS website. Health Minister Ben Bradshaw told the Guardian that he wanted the site to do for healthcare what Amazon has done for the book trade. Like Amazon, GP’s should start posting ‘customer’ feedback, ‘warts ‘n all’.

It was no coincidence, that post argued, that less than two weeks before Bradshaw & Co leaked their proposals, the Times revealed that Amazon has a draconian policy when it comes to disciplining its workers—not least on matters relating to its workers’ health. According to the newspaper,

‘Amazon…employing thousands of casual workers in Britain to fetch and package items under arduous conditions. An investigation by The Sunday Times at Amazon’s enormous warehouse in Bedfordshire has found that workers were:

– Warned that the company refuses to allow sick leave, even if the worker has a legitimate doctor’s note. Taking a day off sick, even with a note, results in a penalty point. A worker with six points faces dismissal.
– Made to work a compulsory 10-hour overnight shift at the end of a five-day week. The overnight shit, which runs from Saturday evening to 5am on Sunday, means they have to work every day of the week.
– Set quotas for the number of items to be picked or packed in an hour that even a manager described as “ridiculous”. Those packing heavy Xbox games consoles had to pack 140 an hour to reach their target.
– Set against each other with a bonus scheme that penalises staff if any other member of their group fails to hit the quota.
– Made to walk up to 14 miles a shift to collect items for packing.
– Given only one break of 15 minutes and another of 20 minutes per eight-hour shift and told they had to notify staff when going to the toilet. Amazon said workers wanted the shorter breaks in exchange for shorter shifts’.

What on earth, the reader may ask, does this have to do with higher education? EcoLogics suggests that what is really at stake in Mandelson’s hagiography of the OU is a proposal to transform higher education into an Amazon.com–like provider of ‘knowledge and skills’. Even as students are increasingly forced to learn in the work place—the Train to Gain ethos—lecturers will be forced to come up with so many ‘products’ that can be bought and sold on the internet, in much the way that their own books are via Amazon.

This too, might sound like quite a good idea until academics stop to think about the nature and volume of the work that will be required by distance education—distance education that will happen, in some cases, even as ‘normal’ classes and marking take place. As is already beginning to occur in many institutions, there will be no extra pay, no adjustment for the duplication of the workload. On the contrary, it will be disingenuous to expect anything other than the gradual institution of the work controls employed by Amazon. Academics may not have to ask for permission to pee, but you can be your bottom dollar (Amazonian dollar, that is) that there will be performance related pay that hinges on the number of modules produced, student evaluations, etc. etc.

In the same way that the Tories tried to turn parents against teachers, EcoLogics can well imagine that New Labour will tell students to ignore the complaints of academics. Why shouldn’t academia become virtual pack mules like the rest of ‘us’ (e.g. like Mandelson, who has done so badly from his shift from elected, to non-elected politics).  In fact, New Labour’s (Higher) Amazonia may well mean that all but the wealthiest or most privileged of students will be forced to wave goodbye to what many describe as ‘the best years of our lives’: a time when they can learn face–to–face in the space apart that is (still) higher education. A time when they can meet people from all walks of life (well, some walks of life) even as they reflect on what they want to do with the rest of their own life. Many have in the past, and will in future continue to elect to use that space as a way into Mandelson’s world. But in future, those who choose to question the neoliberal fundamentalism may well have to do so via their isolated, yet less–than–private computer screens. Not during late night chats with fellow students about the meaning of life, let alone in debates with other real students in a real classroom. Whether by design or by ‘mission creep’ or both, it is this challenge, the real university challenge, the challenge to the status quo, which New Labour is strangling. Unsurprisingly given the Orwellian nature of its authoritarianism, the Party has decided to call this suffocation ‘The New University Challenge‘.

*   *   *

The comments that follow Peter Mandelson’s article in the Guardian pretty much say it all. Deano30 says ‘Keep this man away from this revered institution. He will contaminate it as with other revered institutions that have come his way. The OU is no place for Toad of Toad Hall’, and ‘Please please go away – you will be out of office soon. Have you no conscience? We must have something of value that is unsullied at your hands.’

For her part, IndependentLady says

‘The best thing the Prince of Darkness could do for the OU would be to reverse the decision not to provide funding for equivalent or lower level qualifications. The OU (and other institutions like Birkbeck) is one of the few places that allow people to change careers and develop new skills without them having to leave work or put off their dreams of change. The ELQ funding change is a nonsense when this government keeps bleating on about making the UK workforce highly skilled. Every time one of them says lifelong learning, I want to throw up. […] Put the funding back and let people change direction when they want to, rather than when they are forced to, but can’t afford it. […] Then leave them alone.’

The Berlusconi Thing by José Saramago

“I don’t know what other name I could give it. It’s a thing that looks dangerously like a human, a thing that throws parties, that organises orgies and rules a country called Italy. This thing, this illness, this virus threatens to become the cause of the moral death of Verdi’s country” (continues below)

Note: the following is EcoLogics’ translation of an article that appeared in El Pais (Spain), and that was penned by the Nobel prize-winning author, José Saramago. Saramago has written a series of scathingly critical articles about Berlusconi, and a Berlusconi-controlled publishing house has retaliated by stopping the publication in the Italian language of one of Saramago’s latest works. The following is not an official translation. It is included in this blog as part of an ongoing critique of the nocturnal connections between authoritarianism, neoliberalism, and corruption. As EcoLogics noted in a recent post, David Mills, the husband of Tessa Jowell, the New Labour minister for the Olympics, was recently found guilty by an Italian court of taking a massive bribe from Berlusconi. According to the Italian judges, Berlusconi paid Mills hundreds of thousands of dollars to lie in court about the Italian prime minister’s business dealings (for an account of the ruling, see for example ‘Silvio Berlusconi faces calls to resign over David Mills trial’, in the Daily Telegraph, May 19, 2009, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/italy/5350720/Silvio-Berlusconi-faces-calls-to-resign-over-David-Mills-trial.html, accessed May 19, 2009). As EcoLogics also noted, Tony Blair, who was fond of holidaying in the now infamous Berlusconi villa in Sardinia, accepted Tessa Jowell’s suggestion in March 2006 that she knew nothing about her partner’s financial dealings. This despite the fact that it was alleged at the time that Berlusconi’s bribe covered the repayment of a large mortgage which Jowell herself signed off.

EcoLogics leaves it to readers to decide whether Saramago’s assessment of Berlusconi is a valid one.

* * *

The Berlusconi Thing by José Saramago

I don’t know what other name I could give it. It’s a thing that looks dangerously like a human, a thing that throws parties, that organises orgies and rules a country called Italy. This thing, this illness, this virus threatens to become the cause of the moral death of Verdi’s country. If a deep vomit doesn’t succeed in ejecting it from the consciousness of Italians, the poison will end up corroding the veins and destroying the heart of one of Europe’s richest cultures. The basic values of human coexistence are trampled daily by the viscous feet of the Berlusconi thing; amongst its many talents, it has a funambulesque ability to abuse words, perverting their intention and meaning, as in the case of the People of Freedom, the name given to the party with which the thing took power. I’ve called the thing delinquent and I don’t regret it. For semantic and social reasons that others will be able to explain better than I can, the term delinquent has in Italy a much stronger connotation than it has in any other language spoken in Europe. I use the meaning given to the term by Dante’s language in order to translate clearly and forthrightly what I think about the Berlusconi thing—though it is more than doubtful that Dante ever used the term. In my Portuguese, and according to the dictionaries and the current practice of communication, delinquency means ‘the act of committing crimes, disobeying laws or moral codes’. This definition fits the Berlusconi thing without a wrinkle, without any jarring, to the point that it seems more like a second skin than the clothes that the thing puts on itself. For years and years the Berlusconi thing has been committing crimes of a variable but always demonstrated seriousness. It’s outrageous that it not only disobeys laws, but worse, it invents them to safeguard its public and private interests as politician, businessman and the companion of minors. Where the moral codes are concerned, it’s not even worth talking about it, there is not a person in Italy or the rest of the world that doesn’t know that the Berlusconi thing fell into the most abject of states a long time ago. This is the Italian prime minister, this is the thing that the Italian people have elected twice to serve them as a role model, this is the path to ruin which is dragging along the values of liberty and dignity that suffused Verdi’s music and the political actions of Garibaldi—the ones that, during the struggle for unification in the 19th century, made of Italy a spiritual guide for Europe and for Europeans. This is what the Berlusconi thing wants to throw into the rubbish bin of History. Will the Italians end up allowing this to happen?

Roy Anderson and the Privatisation of Higher Education in the UK

Updated June 7, 2009

‘This monster was so poisonous that he killed men and women with his breath, and if anyone passed by when he was sleeping, they breathed his tracks and died in the greatest torment’
—updated version of the Lernaean Hydra myth, as told by Hyginus

How many heads does a hydra have? The standard answer is nine. However, some poets suggest that the serpent-like creature of the underworld has more heads than a painter can paint. If Hyginus’ account is correct, we may never know the true answer: anyone trying to produce an accurate likeness will almost certainly die whilst trying to represent the monster.

Now we Moderns have always been told that Hercules managed to kill the Hydra. At first, each head that he severed grew back twofold, but, in the end, Hercules allegedly succeeded in defeating the creature either by using a firebrand to cauterize each head stump, or, according to some versions, by dipping his sword in the poison of each head so as to kill each noggin with its own venom.

Alas, EcoLogics regrets to inform academics and students in Britain’s universities that both versions are false. Hercules never actually managed to kill the Hydra, which already in Ancient Greece was the guardian of the Under World of big business (then known as the agoracorporations). During the medieval ages, the Hydra licked its wounds (with the tongue of a head that Hercules failed to spot), and then, during the Renaissance, it slowly recovered its strength and grew back many more heads amid the fetid smells of a swamp near Lake Lerna. In the 19th and 20th centuries, the Hydra began to recover its nerve, and made increasingly bold forays in the Upper World. Many illustrious figures tried to repeat Hercules’ labour wherever the malevolent creature re-emerged, but the sad truth is that the monster bred by Typhon and Echidna lived on, and went on to spawn its own toxic progeny. The progeny had the ability to enter the bodies and minds of mortals, and to do Hydras’ dirty work from within the unsuspecting corporeality of each victim.

* * *

One of these offspring recently surfaced in the world of Higher Education and has come to be known as Kappa Epsilon (KE). This blog has documented how it keeps reappearing in new (and not so new) universities, despite having its head severed in each previous institution.

Now we hear that another member of the brood has appeared in the form of the Head of Imperial College. This head has given an interview to the Evening Standard (’Privatise Top 5 Universities in the UK to Form Ivy League, says Imperial Head’) and according to the paper,

‘Sir Roy Anderson, head of Imperial College London, warned that Britain’s world-leading reputation for higher education was under threat from funding cuts and a lack of government vision. He suggested elite academic institutions such as Imperial, Oxford, and Cambridge should be given the power to charge unlimited tuition fees and take on more overseas students.‘

The paper quotes Anderson as saying

‘How important is higher education to UK Plc? Staggeringly so. It is a multi-billion-pound industry. It is one of the few things we are world competitive in.’(1)

By way of a non-mythological aside, does the expression ‘UK Plc’, and the invocation of a multi-billion pound industry have a familiar ring to it? Readers of this blog may recall that this was exactly the discourse of another head (of higher education), Sir Howard Newby, and indeed of  the security loving David Blunkett, who in his long-forgotten days as the Secretary of Education spoke of the multi-billion pound value of higher education.  The parallels do not end there. Like Newby, Anderson has made his career partly by spending time in government—in Anderson’s case, he was the chief scientific adviser for the Defence Ministry, no less. Also like Newby (and other members of the New Labour nomenclatura) Anderson has made headlines for reasons not necessarily associated with academic cleverness. According to the Times Higher,

‘Seven years ago, a stint as Linacre chair of zoology at Oxford ended in embarrassment when he resigned after falsely alleging that a female colleague had slept with the head of zoology before gaining her post.

In the same year, Sir Roy resigned as director of the Wellcome Trust’s Centre for the Epidemiology of Infectious Diseases before two inquiries cleared him of financial impropriety but found regulations had been breached and criticised his management.’(2)

*   *   *

Should we be surprised that yet another head has emerged to call, this time rather more explicitly, for the privatisation of British (in fact, English) universities? Of course not. And will this be the last head to do so? Ditto. The hydras of neoliberalism, as present in HE, will be able to count on the support of at least two groups: first, the mythical ‘UK Plc’, which continues to plot, if not at the bottom of Lake Lerna, then in a Greek hotel (you may or may not have heard of the secretive Bilderberg meetings, the 2009 version of which reportedly took place in Athens). The second group is made up of all those people who, like Lord May and Lord Krebs, have cosily conservative views of the relation between power and knowledge; or who will argue that universities in the UK ‘have no choice’ if they are to compete in the global ‘market’ of knowledge. For a few ready examples, read the first comments posted after this article in the Guardian.

If these two groups fail to have things their way, then big brother New Labour—or perhaps the Kaczynski-fied Tories—will be waiting on the edge of Lerna to launch a helpful review of the kind fronted by Lord Leitch. Contrary to what the hydras of neoliberalism ever so earnestly suggest, the bell thereby continues to toll for the idea of universal access to higher education in the UK.

Now more than ever, we need a new Hercules, or rather, a legion of Hercules to carry on driving neoliberalism back into its lair.

Or do we?

The students and staff of Liverpool have recently shown what can be done when people rise to defend themselves from the hydra. Perhaps we all have a Hercules within…

*   *   *

By way of a postscript, two quotes which now drip with irony, and which were uttered by one of the heads of the hydra that was vanquished by its own poison:

‘Labour was elected to extend opportunity. This is our defining mission in politics, to secure a future fair for all.’ Tony Blair

‘As one commentator puts it graphically, universities are “the coalmines of the 21st century”’ Tony Blair
(Both statements made in the context of a speech on higher education reform given in 2004)

Update June 2, @ 16:45: It appears that Anderson is also keen to see newer universities excluded from funding, and rebranded as vocational training centres: in an interview in the Telegraph, he says that “The likely consequence [of the equitable distribution of research funds] is that in the longer term Britain will not continue to play in the top league. Some of them [the newer universities] should not be universities, they should be vocational training centres.”(3) So perhaps what Anderson conveniently regards as the ‘top five’ should be allowed to become private institutions, charge £12.000 per student, and get all of the government research funds? Sir Roy may wish to consult an expert in exorcism…

Update June 7: News coming in that DIUS, the UK’s Department of Innovation, Universities and Skills (an eloquent ministerial title, if ever there was one), has been disbanded in the wake of Gordon Brown’s chaotic ministerial reshuffle. The remains of the department—the ‘bit’ to do with universities—have been chucked into Peter Mandelson’s Department of Business. Mandelson now has the farcical title of ‘First Secretary of State’ and ‘Lord President of the Council’. Can it get any worse?

References

1) June 1, 2009. http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard/article-23701944-details/Privatise+top+five+UK+universities+to+form+Ivy+League%2C+says+Imperial+head/article.do, accessed June 2, 2009.

2) Profile: Sir Roy Anderson. Times Higher, 29 June 2007, http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?storyCode=209461&sectioncode=26, accessed June 2, 2009.

3) http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/universityeducation/5422883/Top-universities-should-sever-ties-with-Government.html, accessed June 2, 2009

What does David Cameron have in common with the Kaczyński twins?

Updated June 3, 2009

Where was David Cameron on the weekend of May 30-31st? You probably wouldn’t have found out by scanning the UK’s press headlines on the Sunday morning because the event he attended seems to have been the object of a news blackout—then again, perhaps the UK’s political editors joined the millions who headed for the beach during what proved to be an extraordinarily hot weekend. Whatever the case, here’s a clue as to Cameron’s whereabouts: he was meeting with the Kaczyński twins.

The Kaczyński twins are the leaders of the hard-right Polish Law and Justice Party. One of the twins, Lech, is the current president of Poland. The other, Jaroslaw, was the prime minister until the current PM, Donald Tusk, defeated him in the 2007 general elections. Imagine that… it’s like saying that if the U.S. had a prime minister, George W. Bush would have been president, and his brother Jeb would have been prime minister. If that doesn’t make you shudder, the following will: according to Wikipedia, Europe’s most notorious twins are in favour of

–allowing the president the right to pass laws by decree (when prompted to do so by the Cabinet), a reduction of the number of members of the Sejm and Senat, and removal of constitutional bodies overseeing the media and monetary policy

–strengthening restrictions on abortion, which is already illegal in Poland except in extraordinary circumstances. They also oppose same-sex marriages or any other form of legal recognition of homosexual couples. Jarosław Kaczyński has been quoted as saying that homosexuals should not be teachers, but that homosexuals would not be persecuted. He has also stated that “The affirmation of homosexuality will lead to the downfall of civilization. We can’t agree to it”.

–in 2005, the Kaczyński-led government engaged in an action that reminds EcoLogics of New Labour’s transformation of the old Department of Education into two new departments: Children, Schools and Families, and Innovation, Universities and Skills. The Polish government at the time closed down the Office of Government Representative for the Equal Status of Women and Men (Biuro pełnomocnika rządu ds. równego statusu kobiet i mężczyzn), and replaced it with the newly created Department of Women, Family and Counteracting Discrimination of the Ministry of Labour and Social Policy (Departament Kobiet, Rodziny i Przeciwdziałania Dyskryminacji MPiPS). What may have appeared to be a purely semantic change, or indeed an improvement from the point of view of social justice, actually masked a profound change in policy towards the right.

Back to David Cameron: Cameron travelled to Poland during the weekend in question to meet with the members of the Law and Justice Party, as well as other parties far to the right of the European parliament. Why was he doing this? A couple of years ago, Cameron decided to ditch his alliance with the centre-right parties in Germany and France in favour of a deal with parties such as Law and Justice.

Apparently the move is a result of Cameron’s wheeling and dealing at the height of the last Conservative Party leadership battle. Fearful that he might lose the contest, he agreed to withdraw his MEPs from the centre-right EPP-ED grouping in the European parliament (1). In that context, the Kaczyński twins’ policies must have appeared to offer a solution to Cameron’s typically New Tory dilemma: on the one hand, he needed, and still needs to hold on to a ‘base’ that is almost rabidly right-wing, especially but not only where European policies are concerned. On the other hand, he needed, and still needs to avoid an association with the kind of Old Tory public service slash ‘n burn techniques if he is to get a substantial number of New Labour votes. Could it be that Cameron can do this by embracing the Kaczyński twins’ ultra-nationalist policies as well as their enthusiasm for a safety net for the poor, and free health services provided by the state?

The funny thing is that Merkel and Sarkosy already stood for right-wing versions of the latter policies (safety nets, free health services). We must thus deduce that Cameron remains happy to take his party further—much further—to the right in his quest to appease Tory Eurosceptics.

In this context, hands up how many people in the UK think that Cameron is a real alternative to New Labour’s authoritarianism. Or, put more sharply, hands up how many people think that Cameron is a New Labour wolf in Kaczyński clothing…or is it a Kaczyński wolf in New Labour clothing? Either way, the slogan ‘Law and Justice’ really does sum it up.

Update June 3, 2009: The Guardian has published an excellent article whose title says it all:
‘Anti-gay, climate change deniers: meet David Cameron’s new friends’

References

1) ‘Exist stage right: the pledge to quit big party alliance that haunts David Cameron’, in Guardian, http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2009/may/29/david-cameron-european-parliament-epp-ed, accessed May 30, 2009.

Howard Newby, Higher Education’s Dr Beeching, has been stopped

Howard Newby is to Higher Education in the early 21st century what Richard Beeching was to our country’s railways in the 1960s.

Earlier this year, Newby tried to close down three departments at Liverpool University (Politics and Communication, Philosophy, and Statistics). He used the excuse of the latest RAE results, claiming that the departments were not doing well enough in terms of their research achievements. Following Newby’s announcement, students and academics across the UK could almost hear the sharpening of knives amongst like–minded vice-chancellors. If Newby could so blithely close down three departments, then surely other neoliberal VCs could do the same.

Alas, staff and students at Liverpool opposed the move with such unexpected vigour that Newby was forced to regroup, and to review his draconian measures. Now EcoLogics understands that Newby has been forced to back down. According to the Times Higher,

In an email to staff, the vice-chancellor, Sir Howard Newby, says that closure will no longer be recommended, provided that the departments show progress.

“As a result of the formal reviews of the eight units of assessment in which the university was in the lowest quartile nationally in the RAE, each affected department has been asked to prepare a recovery plan. These specify clear targets for research output and improving research performance that will be monitored by faculty deans and academic committee,” the message says.

“Provided these plans are accepted by the departments concerned and by academic committee, we will recommend them to senate and the university council. Assuming demonstrable progress is made towards achieving these targets, the option of closure for the School of Politics and Communications studies, the departments of philosophy, and statistics, will not be pursued.”(1)

Staff and students at Liverpool, and in universities up and down the country, have much to celebrate. The students at Liverpool who made their threatened courses count should be particularly commended for having faced down Newby and his knowledge exchangers. They demonstrated to university communities across the country that it is possible to stop the neoliberal juggernaut, provided that you believe strongly enough in the principles of universitas and educere, and are willing to make your views public. Universities in the UK need not go the way of our railroads—and indeed of so many other public services that are now the cosiest of baskets for some of the fattest cats in the land.

It will of course be important to remain vigilant over the coming months and years. While the neoliberalism that is behind the policy of knowledge exchange is now utterly discredited, the social network that promoted Newby and his followers to key positions in places such as Liverpool University will continue to be very keen on privatising higher education in the UK. The absence of anything like a credible discourse will not prevent the people involved from trying more of the same at other institutions.

This week, however, is a time to say a big ‘Hip Hip Hooray’ to and for Philosophy, Politics & Communication Studies, and Statistics at Liverpool University…

References

1) Times Higher Education, ‘Liverpool lifts threat of closure from three departments’, http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=26&storycode=406558&c=1, accessed May 20, 2009.