WalesOnline - Special Adviser tag:blogs.walesonline.co.uk,2008-02-08:/specialadvisor/152 2008-11-06T20:21:28Z Movable Type Enterprise 4.21-en Speech by Martin Shipton to devolution conference at All Nations Centre, Cardiff tag:blogs.walesonline.co.uk,2008:/specialadvisor//152.103231 2008-11-06T20:19:53Z 2008-11-06T20:21:28Z I'm not here to beat about the bush. The devolution settlement imposed on Wales by the Government of Wales Act 2006 amounts to little more than a conjuring trick designed to conceal an instrument of national humiliation. It has created... Martin Shipton I'm not here to beat about the bush. The devolution settlement imposed on Wales by the Government of Wales Act 2006 amounts to little more than a conjuring trick designed to conceal an instrument of national humiliation. It has created a constitutional obstacle course that could very easily lead the National Assembly into a political dead end from which there is no easy escape.
Forget the hype about Wales being able to make its own laws for the first time in 600 years. The reality is that we remain as subservient as we ever were to the Westminster Parliament - and there are plenty of MPs determined to ensure that remains the case indefinitely.
When the details of the new system were revealed by Peter Hain, he was praised for the scheme's ingenuity. Ingenious it may have been - but the point of the exercise was not to create a sustainable devolution settlement, but to paper over the divisions in the Labour Party. That should be blindingly obvious, but is often left unsaid to avoid spoiling the illusion of progress.
It seems to me that some people who should have known better were seduced into believing that the LCO system was virtually as good as getting full-blooded primary lawmaking powers. The fact that they were enthused by this pale surrogate suggests they had low expectations about what could be achieved. Their ambition was stunted because they factored in the core assumption that the Richard Commission recommendations were unattainable. The Labour Party was not ready to take the obvious route, so an unwieldy alternative was rapturously embraced as much better than nothing at all.
Yet we know, don't we, that the new arrangements leave the National Assembly hopelessly fettered. Instead of being able to incorporate the possibility of legal innovation into policy initiatives from their inception, they must necessarily be viewed as an optional add-on. Ambition is inevitably constrained by the need to take into account what Westminster will be prepared to accept.
Things might have been different if Westminster had been prepared to accept a proposal put forward by the Presiding Officer before the new arrangements took effect. In an interview with me that coincided with his 60th birthday on October 18 2006, Lord Elis-Thomas mooted a protocol he suggested - perhaps half mischievously - should become known informally as the Hain Convention, under which proposals for what we now refer to as LCOs which had secured majority support within the Assembly would effectively be rubber-stamped at Westminster.
It was quickly made clear that such a Convention was unacceptable. MPs and peers would retain a controlling locus in all attempts by the Assembly to extend its powers. The rows over the scope and content of individual LCOs that have sprung up in recent months clearly demonstrate how those AMs who thought they would be able to take charge of the process were considerably wide of the mark.
There are those who argue that the new arrangements nevertheless represent a step forward from the previous system, where the Assembly had to rely on the thinly eked out portions of Parliamentary time for Welsh legislation. Yet it's difficult to avoid the conclusion that we're stuck with a process that instititutionalises slow motion politics as the only way of doing things. Added to the lack of imaginative, socially transforming ideas emanating from the Assembly likely to inspire the mass of Welsh citizens, the outlook seems bleak indeed.
Escaping from these constraints is only possible via a Yes vote in a referendum. Yet at present there is no attempt by Welsh politicians who would be in a position to take advantage of primary lawmaking powers to argue the popular case for having them. It seems that a decision has been taken to suspend activity on this front until the All Wales Convention has completed its work. With the best will in the world, it is difficult to see how the Convention will be in any better position to make recommendations about whether the time is ripe for a referendum than any of us here today. Members of the Convention will take it in turns to attend public meetings in every local authority across Wales. Big deal. Who do they think will turn up? It will be the usual suspects every time, just as the written submissions they receive will come from the usual suspects who will be providing updated versions of what they said to the Richard Commission. The mass of ordinary Welsh citizens have no idea what an LCO is and would find the concept irrelevant to their lives if it was explained to them.
Meanwhile the No campaign - absurdly designating itself True Wales - is already spreading what will be its key message if and when the referendum comes. The granting of primary lawmaking powers would be a further stage along the slippery slope to independence. This kind of scaremongering needs to be robustly countered, with credible and easily understood arguments about what benefits primary lawmaking powers could bring.
At present those wanting devolution to move forward are hampered by their own lack of ambition and imagination. To some extent this has been conditioned by the nature of the current settlement. But unless they up their game pretty quickly, Wales could be confined in a constitutional straitjacket for a generation or more.

]]> Interview with Eluned Morgan MEP following her decision to step down from the European Parliament tag:blogs.walesonline.co.uk,2008:/specialadvisor//152.39908 2008-10-15T12:07:48Z 2008-10-15T12:14:24Z Q You say in the letter you have sent to party members that it's pressures on your family that have led to your decision. What do they amount to? A It's difficult logistical problems in terms to getting to Brussels... Martin Shipton Q You say in the letter you have sent to party members that it's pressures on your family that have led to your decision. What do they amount to?
A It's difficult logistical problems in terms to getting to Brussels - that is one of the main reasons. It's very difficult to get there. It used to be possible to get to Brussels, do three days work, and essentially be just a day without seeing the children. But because of the lack of flights, it now means I have to be away from them for four whole days, which is very difficult. I arrive in Brussels at 11pm at night, and I don't get back until 9pm on the Thursday evening, which is too late to see them. Now I have to leave at 6pm on the Monday, which is a very sensitive time.
Q Previously, when there were flights from Cardiff, what was the arrangement then?
A Actually it's never been great from Cardiff, but Bristol was more flexible. I could travel over on Tuesday morning.
Q How long have you been considering stepping down?
A It's been increasingly difficult from September. When you've had the summer with your children, it's very difficult. Clearly I want women to be involved in politics, but there are some very practical difficulties. But I've done 15 years, and I think that's a very good innings. I think I've managed to achieve quite a lot since I've been there. We've seen the coming of Objective One {top level European aid for Wales} and now with the Convergence money over £3bn into Wales. Now, specialising in the energy field and having an impact and making a difference has been a tremendous honour.
Q What is it that you'll remember most about your time in Brussels?
A It's actually probably more about Wales, and the Labour Party family and the support you have and the hours of voluntary work that people put in, in order to promote an idea. People who are volunteers, who give their time on weekends, who deliver leaflets because they believe in something. And I think that is something that constantly impresses me.
Q When you were first elected, you were pretty young - 27. What expectations did you have of the job at that time?
A I'd worked out there on a kind of traineeship in the European Parliament, so I had an idea of what to expect in Brussels. What I didn't understand was that you have to have this constant balancing act between Brussels and the constituency. I think probably a lot of that constituency relationship was lost when we changed the electoral system from first past the post to a PR {proportional representation} system, which meant you necessarily are more divorced from the people you represent. When you represent one fifth of Wales, it's very different from representing the whole of Wales. That's something I think is bad - certainly that closeness with the people you represent became very difficult in the second term.
Q Representing the whole of Wales ... there's a limit to the degree of contact you can have with all the people of Wales.
A Absolutely. But I think we're in a different position from the rest of my colleagues, because we have an accountable body at the Welsh level. What was interesting was that we shifted from a first past the post system to a PR system at the same time as the Assembly came in, which meant you had a touchstone for what public opinion was at the Assembly. So that's something which has been really beneficial.
Q How have you found it working with the Assembly Establishment?
A That's been quite constructive. Obviously they've got a full-time office out in Brussels. Certainly when developing the Convergence programme, trying to make sure the politics of that was right, dealing with very sensitive and difficult issues, the UK Government and what was happening at a pan-European level ... it's been a difficult balancing act and interesting to be part of that kind of triangle.
Q To what extent to you think the people of Wales relate, even now, to the European Parliament and other European institutions?
A Not nearly enough - and that's part of the problem and part of the frustration of being an MEP. You know that the legislation we're developing is going to be impacting on people day in and day out - the food that you eat is regulated from the EU, the air that you breathe is regulated from the EU, the water that you drink is regulated from the EU, the way we do our recycling, the targets that we have to meet, the cars we drive - all of these things are regulated in some form or another from the EU. The problem we have is that when we do something good, the Government takes the credit, and whenever there's something bad, the EU gets slain. That has been a frustration. Yesterday we had a meeting with the Prime Minister on this very topic. Clearly in the run-up to the European elections, people need to understand how it impacts on their lives. And if you look at the global financial crisis, clearly Britain moving on its own was not going to be enough. And that cooperation, not just in terms of the economic situation, but also in relation to climate change, environmental issues, aircraft security, all of those things cannot be done just in the UK. And I don't think we've done enough to make that connection.
Q Another problem is that unlike in most other elections, you're not actually electing an executive - you're electing people to go and sit in this horseshoe-shaped chamber. You can't actually say, my vote is going to mean that my MEP will be part of an administration. Does that cause problems, do you think?
A The thing you have to understand with the European Parliament, and generally the continental model of politics, is that you have to compromise. It's something the Assembly is having to learn - that you don't get entirely what you want, that you have to build in room for compromise, and you have to build quite a sophisticated kind of politics where you understand there will be a lot more give and take. You have to build in negotiating capacity - it's good old trade union politics really.
Q How have you got on with members of other groups - not just personally, but politically, in terms of the way that you've collaborated with people from other groupings?
A The key thing to remember is that you can't get anything through unless you cooperate. I remember in the beginning trying to adopt the British approach, which is "winner takes all" and "I'll keep my cards close to my chest", and "I'll throw something on you and get the credit". It doesn't work like that - it cannot work in that way. You have to spend your whole time building coalitions. And what's been interesting is trying to build those coalitions. Recently, for example, I've built a very interesting coalition on the energy package. And it's been a coalition, interestingly enough, against France and Germany. It's one of the first examples where there's been a cross-party coalition which has actually meant, with the Eastern European countries coming in, that they've been defeated. It will mean that British energy firms get access to the continental market and ultimately there could be cheaper prices in the UK. Building coalitions, you have to pick your issues - and you have to have different coalitions for different issues.
Q You're 41 now. It's difficult to imagine 42 year-old Eluned Morgan sitting at home twiddling her thumbs, not really doing very much. What are you intending to do next?
A I've had a full-on job for 15 years. Almost the whole of my adult life I've been involved in politics. I think it will be quite healthy to take a step back for a while, and not make any commitments about what I'd like to do next, until I'm very clear what the options are. One thing I understand about politics is that there are no guarantees, no assurances, you can't take anything for granted, and I'm in that situation. I need to take some time to think whether I want to re-enter politics - I've still got nine months to go. Or to take some time out and have a bit of a normal life. There art lots of different options I think I could take. This has been one of the most difficult decisions I've had to take.
Q Obviously, your husband is a GP so you're not exactly going to be strapped for cash. You are in a relatively privileged position. Unlike some people who don't have supportive partners, you're not exactly going to be banging on the door of Cardiff Council asking for social housing.
A No I'm not. I've had an incredibly supportive family. My husband in particular has been extremely supportive of the kind of lifestyle that I've led. He has been very supportive, and has done way over and above what a lot of fathers do. It would have been impossible to do it without him. I just think I probably need a bit of time to focus on the family a bit more for a while. I don't think I could be a stay-at-home mother, it's not in my blood. But there are less demanding jobs in terms of travel.
Q So at the moment it's a question of not ruling anything in and not ruling anything out. If I were to go on to ask you whether you have any aspirations with regard to the Assembly, what you would say is for the moment, things are on hold, as it were?
A Yes. I think it's really important to take some time to breathe, to come to terms with the fact that I'm going to have a very different lifestyle from the one I've been leading for 15 years. And that's going to be trauma enough, so I think what opportunities are out there ... I simply don't have any plans.
Q The travelling as an MEP can be quite extensive, as well as the commuting between home and Brussels, and the Strasbourg thing as well. You've done quite a bit of foreign travel as a Euro-MP, haven't you?
A I actually have tried to do not too much of that, simply because I need to get home to see my family. So I haven't done much of that at all, to be honest.
Q With the work you've done in the Labour Party, like the report you did about attracting more Welsh speakers, there are things you'd like to see the Labour Party do to re-broaden its appeal. How do you see things panning out in that respect?
A We've started a process in the Labour Party where we are looking at how we can redevelop ourselves, engage with new ideas. We've got the Ideas Wales group, which I hope I will continue to be involved with. So I'm certainly not opting out of politics - I want to be involved in politics. I might not be in front-line professional politics, but I think there's a huge amount of work to do with the Labour Party in Wales. There's no question of that, we've had some bad results and we need to do a lot of thinking. There's room for fresh ideas, and maybe taking a little bit of time out might give me a new perspective.
Q Looking at the political situation in Britain, until very recently people were writing off Gordon Brown and saying the Labour Party was going to be stuffed at the next general election. Yet paradoxically, the global financial crisis has shown Gordon Brown's strengths, and also there is some evidence ... there was a poll at the weekend showing the Tory lead has been cut to 10%. You don't think the game is over for Labour at the moment? Do you think the next election is winnable?
A Yes, of course I do. It's clearly going to be tough. For any government to win four elections in a row is very difficult. But I think we're not bereft of ideas. Out of this tragedy of what's happening on the financial markets we need to rebuild something that's really good and positive, and get a bit of control of capitalism which has run out of control, and really try to get the markets to serve the people. That would be ideal. In order to do that you need regulation. You actually need European regulation and ultimately global regulation. I saw Gordon Brown yesterday, and he is completely reinvigorated. There was no question about that. He was engaged, he was in control. I think he is absolutely the right person to be leading us through this crisis, and I think people will recognise that.
Q What was the context of your meeting with him?
A The Labour group in the European Parliament have periodic meetings with him, maybe three times a year. So it happened to be on the day the British banks were nationalised.
Q Do you think that what has happened in recent weeks has served as the ultimate riposte to those on the right who speak about the unalloyed power of the unregulated free market?
A Surely there can't be anybody left in the world who believes in that any more, who can't see that people are simply not able to police themselves given too much slack. And we've given them way too much slack. What's key to remember is that had we clamped down on the City of London, it simply would have moved elsewhere. So that's why you have to have a global regulatory framework. And that's certainly the direction ion in which Gordon Brown is heading.
Q How would you get a global regulatory framework? What would be the institutional mechanism for that?
A That's precisely what Gordon Brown is trying to set up - the equivalent of the IMF or whatever that looks specifically at regulation. What's clear also is that you've got to pay regulators a lot better than we do at the moment, because anybody that's any good gets poached by the big money men. I think we need to be making sure we can get the best people to regulate, people who genuinely understand the markets, but have got the interests of people at heart, and the taxpayers at heart.

]]> Interview with Martin Mansfield, the new general secretary of the Wales TUC tag:blogs.walesonline.co.uk,2008:/specialadvisor//152.39073 2008-10-08T15:01:24Z 2008-10-08T15:03:24Z Q. You're taking over the job in difficult circumstances for the economy. What would you say the main challenges are facing the Wales TUC? A Clearly as part of the UK TUC we want to see the UK Government... Martin Shipton

Q. You're taking over the job in difficult circumstances for the economy. What would you say the main challenges are facing the Wales TUC?
A Clearly as part of the UK TUC we want to see the UK Government act before the credit crunch leads to substantial job losses. Some organisations are suggesting we are already in recession. A lot of organisations, particularly housebuilding and industries that feed into housebuilding are feeling the pinch at the moment. We are seeing job loss in construction. We're concerned to see that job loss doesn't feed through to other elements of the economy, and that we weather the tide of the credit crunch by cutting interest rates, relaxing the borrowing requirement and allowing government expenditure to see us through the dip in the economy.
Q There are also quite a few people employed in the financial services sector in Wales. Clearly the Lloyds TSB situation is a difficult one. What do you think the future holds for people in those sort of jobs?
A Obviously it's an extremely worrying time for those whose jobs are directly threatened by the credit crunch. Clearly the Government has to give proper guarantees to each of the financial institutions so hopefully they can maintain employment for that period. Obviously Wales has a different balance of labour market. The higher financial services - Lehman Bros etc - are to a great extent not situated in Wales. The City's going to feel that more strongly. But obviously large numbers of workers are employed in financial services and we want to see them maintain their employment.
Q Are you in favour of the idea that's being deployed in other European countries about guaranteeing all savings?
A We want to see what it takes in order to ensure confidence in the banks. The £50,000 guarantee guarantees 98% of all savings, so that should provide sufficient confidence. But markets are funny things and that 2% could be the difference between people selling and buying, and losing their funds or whatever. There aren't too many individuals, particularly in Wales, who have more than £50,000 with one institution, so their finances are guaranteed.
Q Looking closer to home in terms of the situation facing the Assembly Government, there is obviously inflation which has gone up in the last few months, and that is going to put a good deal of pressure on budgets. I know that previously there has been some kind of undertaking from the Assembly Government that there wouldn't be any compulsory redundancies. Will that hold?
A They've worked with their recognised trade unions in the Civil Service to ensure there aren't any compulsory redundancies. Clearly they are not at the moment in a redundancy situation, they're not discussing that with the unions. It's the same as in any other setting - the trade union movement would oppose any compulsory redundancies and do what they could do prevent them from happening.
Q Obviously there is pressure on the budgets, and while there will be a cash increase to a lot of the budgets, in real terms a lot of them will face an effective cut. What sort of impact do you think that is likely to have on the economy in Wales, and particularly on public services?
A Obviously the Welsh economy is tilted far more towards the public sector than other parts of the UK or regions of England. We have to be sure that public sector employment is maintained, because not doing so would have a substantial knock-on effect on the economy as a whole in terms of people's ability to spend and keeping the wheels of the economy turning. Equally important is the role government plays in ensuring that public services like health and education, which are incredibly important in people's family life, are properly funded, as well as skills for the economy. If that is in any way jeopardised by spending cuts, we've got an extremely worrying time ahead of us. I believe, and am hopeful, that the draft budget won't lead to those kinds of cuts. With political will, and perhaps stretching time scales for a couple of less front-line projects, we'll be able to get by.
Q One of the points made to me by the PCS {civil servants' union} is that the cuts in Civil Service staffing levels announced by Gordon Brown when he was the Chancellor are having an impact in Wales in terms of the DWP {Department for Work and Pensions} etc, and that is actually counter to the aspirations of the Assembly Government in terms of the high skilled, high wage workforce, and that there is a contradiction there. How do you feel about that?
A We wouldn't want to see the DWP service, in terms of giving people access to jobs, jeopardised in any way. PCS represents people directly and is better placed to describe the effects of the cuts which have been taking place at central government level. What we're keen to do is discuss with the Assembly to ensure the service to economically inactive people or those seeking to return to the labour market is maintained.
Q So are you suggesting that the Assembly Government should use its own funds to make up for the cuts coming from Whitehall?
A I think if you're looking at things like the Heads of the Valleys programme or Mon a Menai or the ways the Assembly Government is seeking to deliver economic development, it's across Assembly departments and inter-governmental, so it gives the opportunity to discuss with the UK Government and the Secretary of State for Wales and the Ministers of the relevant Departments to ensure the delivery of things like the Heads of the Valleys programme.
Q In your former life as a special adviser to {then Assembly Economic Development Minister} Andrew Davies, you obviously had an insider's knowledge of the relationship between the Assembly Government and Whitehall. How would you characterise that relationship?
A Between the Assembly Government and the UK Government?
Q Yes.
A Friendly and cooperative. They're not at daggers drawn the whole time. There are different policy priorities and interests, because that is a natural result of devolution. So where the priorities diverge, there is an opportunity to discuss the matter, but that is with cooperation rather than conflict.
Q It may be the case that Labour is staging a bit of a come-back. Opinion polls show the Tory lead cut. But nevertheless most commentators would still say there's a very serious chance of their being a Conservative government after the next general election. If that happens, what do you think the relationship between the Conservative administration and the trade unions is likely to be?
A We've been here before. When I was previously employed by the Wales TUC, most of that period was under the Welsh Office with John Redwood as the Secretary of State. A very different viewpoint from the Labour Party or political parties of the moment. We're not party political as the Wales TUC, although a number of our affiliated unions are. So we represent the half million workers in Wales who are members of trade unions to outside organisations. We have to be extremely professional in our approach and influence whatever party is in power by the strength of our argument.
Q You're still in the Labour Party?
A As an individual, yes.
Q Where do you stand in the Labour Party? Obviously, as Harold Wilson said many years ago, the Labour Party is a broad church. There are some people in the Labour Party today who, when you hear them speaking, you would think was a member of a different party.
A I am part of the Labour Party because I am part of the labour movement. It's difficult as general secretary of the Wales TUC to be directly involved in party politics. I have to step back from my individual involvement in party politics to represent all the affiliates of the Wales TUC, some of which are affiliated to the Labour Party and some of which are not.
Q Would you put yourself on the left or the right of the party?
A I'm traditional working class Labour.
Q I think Rhodri Morgan describes it as classic Labour. What about the issue of industrial action? Is industrial action a weapon the union movement can use, and in what circumstances is it appropriate?
A It's always been a weapon of last resort. Despite the publicity of the late Seventies, it's not a matter than any trade unionist sees lightly. We've got used to using members' ballots actually to avoid taking strike action. When you get a heavy vote in favour of industrial action, the employers return to the bargaining table, whereas in past years they would wait to see whether you were going to take the action or not. So there are more opportunities now to actually avoid taking industrial action, but it is a weapon of last resort that must remain.
Q What about the current state of employment law? Obviously there are moves on the left of the labour movement that thing the right to engage in secondary action should be brought back, and mass picketing. Where do you stand on those issues?
A I think we have to deal with the law as it stands and be as effective as we can be. We should do our bit in ensuring there are fair laws and rights for trade unions. I don't believe secondary picketing or mass picketing was high on our affiliates' agenda. It got perhaps more publicity than some of the other items that were higher on the agenda. Individual affiliates will discuss these matters. The TUC will seek to ensure the law allows us to operate fairly as trade unions.
Q So do you think the current state of the law is about right?
A I think there's always room for improvement - we can always hope for better. No matter what settlement we get we always look to ensure we get the best possible settlement. It's what's achievable, and again I return to the force of our argument. Any government of whatever persuasion will have a lot of different interests presenting evidence and lobbying them, and they will make their assessment of what the correct settlement is following that. So we have to put the force of our evidence and our arguments up against the CBI and the other employer organisations, and I believe we can.
Q And with your background at the Assembly Government as a special adviser, you're aware of the need to have proper evidence-based research as a very important element in the tool-box of trade unions?
A It's something I'm hoping to bring to the table. Access is easy with devolution. People can get used to meeting ministers and lobbying on an informal basis. I think we have to be a lot more professional and formal in our approach to ensure we're getting the best out of our contact with the Assembly Government.
Q
Where do you stand on the devolution settlement. Obviously there's a debate going on about whether the Assembly needs primary lawmaking powers. Where do you stand on that in particular?
A I think the Wales TUC has been historically since our inception in favour of devolution. We were on the losing side in 1979 and the winning side in the second referendum. We want to see devolution effective. We are keen to see the settlement work properly and that the legislative powers that are there at the moment are used effectively. If it requires full legislative parliamentary rights in order to be effective, then I'm sure we would support that when the time is right. It also has to be supported in a referendum. As I said, we were on the losing side in 1979. We don't want to be on the losing side at another referendum.
Q It sounds as if you are not entirely convinced there is the need for primary lawmaking powers at the moment.
A I think the settlement that we have is one that we should try and make work. If there is need for primary lawmaking powers and the current settlement isn't working, then we would take as strong a part as anyone else in seeking a referendum so we can move on.
Q But you're not convinced that's necessarily the case at the moment?
A I don't think there's been an opportunity to see whether the powers are sufficient to do what we want to do. So far we haven't seen anything blocked that the Assembly Government is seeking to do. I think all organisations in Wales with an interest in devolution need to keep a careful eye on it.
Q What's your view of the Labour/ Plaid coalition? Were you in favour of that being established?
A I'm in favour of effective government, and obviously the establishment of the coalition is a matter for the parties involved. They went through their democratic processes and decided to go into coalition. There's a great deal in the One Wales agenda that is of interest to us, and that we support them in. It's far easier, speaking as an external body, to deal with a government that's got a substantial majority than dealing with a minority government.
Q Did you vote for it?
A As an individual?
Q Yes.
A There was a conference of delegates, but I wasn't attending. There would have been indirect representation from my constituency, but as I said, I take a back seat now.
Q Was there a vote at your CLP {Constituency Labour Party}?
A There was, and I didn't take part in it.
Q In terms of trade union organisation, what do you think can be done to improve it? Obviously there remain a lot of workplaces that are not unionised, and in some quarters there are employers who are hostile to trade unions.
A I think the experience of those employers who do deal with trade unions is overwhelmingly positive both in terms of the performance and morale of their workforce. It matters to their bottom line. Private sector employers who recognise trade unions realise it's of benefit to their business. I think if we can spread that message to employers who aren't used to dealing with trade unions, they will perhaps take an opportunity to look again at how they deal with trade unions. More important than influencing the employers is influencing the workforce to become trade union members. Wales has got the fastest growing density of trade union membership in the whole of the UK. It grew from 35.8% of the whole workforce to 37.3% between 2006 and 2007. We're certainly not at the level we were in the mid to late Seventies, which was historically the highest period for trade union membership. But we're now at a level which is historically quite high compared to other industrialised countries. If you compare us with Spain or America, we're extremely high. That's not to say there aren't challenges and opportunities in the future. It is fair to say that the age profile of our members is not the same as the age profile of workers as a whole. We need to put far more resources into young people, and representing young people. A lot of that is going to involve taking a long hard look at ourselves to see if we are the sort of organisation that young people want to participate in.
Q There are concerns particularly among the public sector unions about PFI {Private Finance Initiative schemes}. In Wales, there hasn't been the same sort of wholehearted embrace of PFI as there has been in England. Do you think that's the right approach, or do you think there's scope for more public private partnerships?
A We want to see public investment, both in the infrastructure and what that can mean for trade unionists and their families, but also in terms of managing our way out of a potential recession. We don't want to see that investment managed in such a way that future generations will find themselves paying heavily for it, and we don't want to see it done at the expense of people delivering the infrastructure or developing the service. We'd certainly be opposed to the privatisation of services or the private ownership of current public services.
Q You're taking over the Wales TUC after a difficult period. The previous general secretary {Felicity Williams} was on gardening leave for quite a long time before she finally resigned following bullying allegations. How has the organisation coped with that situation, and how are you hoping to take things forward now?
A We certainly want to draw a line under that experience. It's been difficult for everybody involved. That situation has now been resolved, and it's a testament to the commitment of the staff of the Wales TUC that the actual service and structure was maintained throughout all that period. What I'm hoping to do now is add value to that. We've seen that the teams can operate and continue to provide services to trade unions. I want to now take that forward and take a look at our longer term and medium-term future, so we at the Wales TUC can really start to make a difference for unions and their members. Where can we pick up on some of the areas that unions in Wales perhaps haven't got the resources or the capacity to deliver on. Things like green jobs, the future of a low carbon economy. That will be coming. It could have an incredibly bad effect on employment. We have to be looking at those issues and trying to influence that agenda.
Q What are the pitfalls of the low carbon strategy in terms of employment?
A Clearly it's got the potential if it's not managed to damage anything that's high energy in its usage - in steel, we've got the example of Anglesey Aluminium. All of our industry has historically been based on fairly high carbon emissions. That is changing, but if we are to meet the reduction targets we have to do that by avoiding mass churn as the economists put it, or unemployment as we put it, in those industries. And we have to do that by creating new jobs in those industries and by giving people new training opportunities.

]]> Conversation with Adam Price MP on his 40th birthday tag:blogs.walesonline.co.uk,2008:/specialadvisor//152.33226 2008-09-22T16:06:41Z 2008-09-22T18:29:30Z Q Do you see reaching 40 as a meaningful milestone? A I guess so, yes - not to sound too self-absorbed. I think it is in anyone's life. I was trying to think - after 18 or 21, which have... Martin Shipton Q Do you see reaching 40 as a meaningful milestone?
A I guess so, yes - not to sound too self-absorbed. I think it is in anyone's life. I was trying to think - after 18 or 21, which have become kind of merged now, I suppose 40 is one of the big ones, along with 65. It is the end of one chapter and beginning of another. Your mind inevitably starts to think, 'what do I aim to achieve in the next phase of my life?'. I think these days in politics, much as in any sphere, there's a trade off between vitality, which is associated whether we like it or not with youth in our culture, and experience. They're curves, if you like, which go in opposite directions. As you get older, of course, you become more experienced, and hopefully wiser. On the other hand, you're becoming older. I think maybe in competitive spheres like politics or business, for example, it's probably that decade between 35 and 45 where the combination between vitality and experience are in optimum. You're still young enough to present a sense of novelty and new ideas, dynamism or what have you. At the same time you're not wet behind the ears - you have something to draw upon in terms of experience. So that's the key platform, really, when you build your platform for whatever you want to achieve in the second half of your professional life. That's not to say that you're finished - look at John McCain. You're not written off at any stage. That's one of the things about this period as well - that people are healthier for longer. So I hope to be contributing for many decades to come. But I do recognise that the time when the epithets "young", "rising star" etc can be used has a cut-off point - you can't always be a rising star. The star has to have risen.
Q You know as well as I do that many people within Plaid and beyond Plaid say, here is Adam, he's obviously contributed a lot at Westminster and all that, but he is in the wrong place, because the right place for a Plaid Cymru politician is the National Assembly. Everyone I speak to in Plaid says of course Adam is doing sterling work at Westminster, that sort of stuff, but he really ought to be in the National Assembly for Wales, which is, after all, the raison d'être for Plaid Cymru, the Party of Wales.
A They used to say that, of course, about Simon Thomas {former Plaid MP for Ceredigion, who lost his seat in 2005 and now works as a special adviser to Plaid Ministers in the Assembly}. I'm sure he wouldn't mind my saying that he got there, but not by the route he would have chosen. I hope that curse doesn't visit itself upon me. I think actually it's something we should be proud about in Plaid, that the escalator of ambition for us goes from London to Wales, and not the other way round. We've seen Conservative politicians - David Davies, David Jones, Alun Cairns, question mark - using the Assembly as a stepping stone to London, almost as if an Assembly Member is an MP in short trousers.. We've never seen it that way, and our distinct focus is on the National Assembly for Wales and on forming a government for Wales. We in Westminster are very much supporting that. Being in Westminster is a vitally important role, and we need strong people there, particularly at the current time with the world economic crisis and Labour palpably having run out of steam and ideas. We need more people there. I've never made any secret of the fact that for me kicking my heels or doing anything else as a backbencher for 25 years was never part of my personal life plan. I felt there was a job of work to do and it is an enormous privilege to represent this constituency. It's the place where I was born, it's the people I was brought up with. It's not always possible in politics, but if you have the chance to represent the people you have a real connection with, it is the best place to be in representative politics. I feel authentically that I can be the voice of this part of the world. It's been a privilege to do that for seven years, and if they choose me again I would be privileged to do so again. I've always said there was a job of work for me to do, and at some point I want to come home - and I want to come home to a Welsh Parliament. I enjoy doing what I do. It's a fantastic opportunity you have as an elected politician. You get to listen to people with their problems, you have ideas, and you try to put them into practice. What better job is there for someone who is passionate about his country, his community, the world etc? There's no better job. So any politician who moans about the job they do - maybe they should look elsewhere. It's a privilege every day you get to do that job. The House of Commons, on the other hand - I can't stand the place. There are House of Commons men and women, and I'm certainly not one of them. It doesn't frighten me - I think I've proven that. I'm not in awe of the place or cowed by anything to do with the place. But in many ways I really dislike the political culture that we have at the House of Commons. The political culture of the place is part of the problem, it's one of the reasons people are turned off. The pomp and circumstance - some people say, 'isn't it wonderful? - it's part of our heritage'. I think actually it's a barrier to people. We only stopped calling visitors - the electorate - "strangers" recently. And we still have the Strangers' Bar - I don't think anyone's calling it the Visitors' Bar. And having doors opened for you, the kowtowing, and all the rest of it - it's a place that is absolutely full of snobbery and cliquishness. I've said before, if I had my way, we'd ship the thing, lock stock and barrel, to somewhere real. SW1 is not a real place. It's in London, but it's not really in London. It is a goldfish bowl - there's a florist there, there's a barber there, you can buy your milk in the tea room, you don't need to leave the building. Press a blue button and a taxi comes in to pick you up. All these little things suggest to me that Westminster, in the same way as Congress, is insulated from real life, and particularly at the moment when people are worrying about what's happening in their industries, that's a problem, that we have a political class that actually spend most of their time with other members of the political class. Aneurin Bevan talked about this very eloquently in In Place of Fear, the experience particularly of working class Members going into this hallowed institution. And he said there's nothing quite like this at home - the Miners' Welfare, perhaps, quite an impressive building. This kind of neo-Gothic architecture is like a page ripped out of a book of the cathedral builders of the Middle Ages. And exactly the same rationale as the cathedral builders had in wanting to make you feel small against the glory of God, the architects of the Houses of Parliament had in wanting you to feel small against the glory of the state. The ship of state carries on without you. You are in it, you are there as a member. So you melt into the foreground, shall we say. They round up their vowels, they start to develop the kind of verbal mannerisms, the physical tics of Members of Parliament, walking in a particular way, talking in a particular way, and they become more and more distanced from the people they are supposed to represent, and also the people they once were. And that's the real tragedy - it's kind of a nightmare, as well, at the back of my mind. It's good to have a little bit of fear sometimes. You could turn into one of those caricatures, if you spend too much time there. I do admire people who can spend decades there and remain absolutely rooted solid in their own political lives and their social and cultural background. But I think there's a cultural power in the place which worries me. I'd ship it to Liverpool or somewhere like that. Maybe we'd have better policies then. Both senior civil servants and parliamentarians would be confronted by a very different reality to the one that they see when they step out the door and see the South Bank cultural complex. I don't like the place, I don't enjoy the place. Having said that, I'm not by any stretch of the imagination misanthropic. I don't walk around looking thoroughly depressed all the time. I don't think anybody would want to spend any length of time with someone like that. There is something about the place which deeply unsettles me."
Q So what are the logistics of getting you to the Senedd then?
A I've been selected as the candidate for Carmarthen East and Dinefwr for the next election. That was done at some speed last year because of the impending general election which didn't happen. My suspicion is there will be - I've just changed my opinion in the last week, I've changed my opinion several times because it's so difficult to keep up with the turmoil in the Labour Party - I think now that Gordon Brown will go and I think there will be a summer election. I was assuming up until a week ago that the rebels had lost their nerve and they weren't going to do anything, but now I think it's inevitable that he will go.
Q The Glenrothes by-election?
A Yes, the Glenrothes by-election. Unless Gordon Brown can somehow drill down deep into his political character and find something that hasn't been evident until now, and really inspire people with a kind of new economic vision, because that's what people are crying out for. I'm very surprised he's not made a Prime Ministerial statement yet to the nation, because people are crying out for one. The fact is, Labour Prime Ministers in an economic crisis have always been found wanting - Ramsay MacDonald 1929-31, Harold Wilson, 1967 - the devaluation, and then Jim Callaghan in 1978-79. So is Gordon Brown the first Labour Prime Minister who can prove he can handle a recession? That's the political challenge. He should relish that. But it's not a vibe that he's given. So I think unless he can find something pretty spectacular, then ... The economy is inevitably going to get worse, unfortunately, and therefore the polling will get worse. So I think we're looking at a summer election, and I will be the candidate for that election. What happens in the future ... as I've said, I don't want to be there forever. Nothing is forever, and I would like to come home. At a personal level, I have to say, I would like to live and work in the same country. There's commuting and commuting, but this is ridiculous. There is a very important job to do. I suppose this next term in Westminster is going to be very different. Barring a complete political volte face, which doesn't seem to be in the offing, certainly we're looking at the Conservatives being the major party, and the economic recession is expected to last at least until spring 2010, so the election could be on the cusp of a depression. So these are very worrying times and we need a strong phalanx of Plaid people there to provide some alternative to the two major parties. I think we're going to win Ceredigion and Ynys Mon, I think we're certainly on song there because of the problems of Labour and the Liberal Democrats. And Llanelli and Aberconwy certainly can be won, with tactical votes in different directions in both places. Certainly in Aberconwy we're in with a chance - Labour will come third. We've got a very strong candidate and there's a strong chance we'll win in Llanelli as well. Labour's majority in Llanelli based on the opinion polls now is down to about 2,000 to 3,000. If there's no Conservative resurgence in Llanelli - they're not going to win - then I think we've got a very strong chance of winning there as well. So we could be looking at seven Plaid Cymru MPs, 26 SNP MPs, that's what the latest poll suggests, so a 33-strong group of nationalists against current opinion polls which predict the Liberal Democrats would get 30. So we would be the second biggest opposition group, and that means we would be sitting where Nick Clegg sits now. For the first time since the Irish Party left the House of Commons before the First World War, nationalists would be sitting on the front bench in Westminster. So I'm entering a new phase in my life, but we're entering a new phase politically and economically too. I think that would be an interesting time to be at Westminster.
Q Nevertheless, in terms of development at the Senedd ... you were very instrumental in the One Wales agreement and the All Wales Accord which preceded it and was a necessary step towards the One Wales agreement. So even if you are at Westminster, you're going to be very much involved in developing policy for the next Assembly election.
A I certainly hope to be. I'm director of elections. Currently we've finished the strategy document which will lead us up to the general election. We're now working on the Project 21 strategy. It's called 21 because that's the number of seats we need, we think, to become the largest party.
Q It involves winning Ogmore and Cardiff West.
A There are different permutations - even we have different permutations. Cardiff West, actually - I'm not saying for one second that we'll win Ogmore - Cardiff West certainly will be a target seat for us in 2011. We're very confident of winning that with Rhodri standing down, and there's a natural swing towards us in that seat for demographic reasons. It's a big ask, but that's what we've got to do. For Plaid, the last year has been our apprenticeship, if you like, an apprenticeship year in government. We've passed our apprenticeship year, and now the party has got to move up a gear or two. By 2011 we need to be performing at the same level as the SNP were in the 2007 election. That really will be a qualitative step change for the party. We've got to get on. Incremental growth, organic growth, has been the tradition with Plaid. There have been spurts of growth as well. I'm not getting any younger, clearly, and that was the starting point of the conversation. Incremental growth, growing like a mushroom in some dark corner over there, is not good enough any more. It's problematic in Wales - we have slow motion politics. Everything in Wales takes longer. If you think about the difficulty of getting from an idea to a policy affecting people's lives - first of all we have to get it in a manifesto, then if it requires legislation there are the 14 hoops it's got to fly through in the current process. Hopefully we can circumvent that by getting a Parliament. But this country - a country which is relatively poor - needs the opposite of slow motion politics. What we need is acceleration, we need accelerated development, and that means the politics must move faster as well. You can't do anything without a political party - they're imperfect tools, but they're the best thing that we've got, and what we in Wales need now is for Plaid Cymru to move forward and become the dominant force in Welsh politics. And that's a big ask for the party. There are real issues in terms of organisation, in terms of the party's narrative, in terms of policy development. Many of these things are not in place at the current time. If you compare where Welsh nationalism is with where Scottish nationalism is, clearly there's a massive programme of change that the party's got to go through before we actually start to change Wales. We're doing it a bit at a time, given the limitations of the current political settlement and the fact that we're a junior partner as well. We can't do everything we want because we're a junior partner - that's obvious. But the party's got to change as well. There's that hackneyed phrase - be the change. But I suppose there's truth in all these truisms or cliches. The party, first of all, has got to become as modern, as exciting and as professional as the Wales we say we want to create. I think we're half way there, we've made huge progress at every level. But if you think at the last election we had these eye-catching policy initiatives, what I call signature policies, they neatly encapsulated a broader message about what the party wanted to do in general terms and in a given area. But they did that in a way which people could get their heads round - we didn't have to spend 30 minutes explaining them. So that was very successful. But did they form part of a 20 year, long term programme to transform the Welsh economy and society?
Q Probably not.
A No - and I think we have to be honest about that. First of all you've got to start with an analysis. What's the problem? The big question - and if you don't answer this one, you can forget about all the others - is the economy. Unless we can actually prise ourselves out of this long term position of relative economic failure, then everything else we want to do in public services, in culture, the arts, whatever, we'll always be playing catch-up with the rest of Europe and the rest of the UK. So you first of all have to have an analysis. OK, if that is the key issue, how do we get out? There has to be a detailed comprehensive analysis, and then we develop a programme. And then of course the political marketing gurus come along and turn that programme into bite-sized chunks. We've still got to do that. People are not going to digest a 400-page document, the national economic plan for today. But I think we've got to have that intellectual robustness at one level and then be radical with an economic programme, which looks at the kind of ideas which could prise us out from where we are. To me, we're looking at 12 years of Conservative government in London, so that's going to be the political backdrop. We've got to get the Parliament out of the way, that's unfinished, that's got to be done. But we need to ask ourselves, what's going to be the next stage. We have to get control over tax varying powers. We're not going to be able to do anything meaningful in the long term unless we have those levers.
Q The trouble is, can you imagine a scenario where the Welsh public vote for tax varying powers in a referendum?
A I think it has to be part of a comprehensive economic package, because there are inter-relationships between tax varying powers and the Welsh block and Barnett. So it would have to be a comprehensive package and Wales would have to be better off as a result of that. It's for people like me to try to negotiate that with Westminster and future governments. Nobody else is going to lift us - Wales - out of the position in which we find ourselves. We're going to have to prise ourselves out. If we accept that, because I don't accept this trade off argument which some people in the Labour Party believe in. There's a trade off between the nations of the UK - we give England southern England water and graduates and LNG coming through my constituency and energy of course where we are a major net exporter. We give them those things and they give us social security payments in return. I don't buy that quite frankly and also I'm not prepared to accept that - long term emiseration or relative poverty as some kind of happy trade off. I don't think it has to be that way. If it's only us who can provide our salvation, then we have to have the tools and the levers that any other nation or indeed region - regions in the states of America have fiscal federalism, and of course Gordon Brown is in trouble over this. It's an unsustainable situation where you have a national government that has no kind of accountability in financial terms to the electorate. There's no incentive to improve the performance of a government because there is no bottom line. That's not good for democracy as well as not being good for the economy. We have to I think have those fiscal powers because that' s what you need to do. you think creatively. When you're relative under-performers you have to use the tools. A very successful tool is using lower business taxes. Personally I would go ... if there was an independent Wales there would be a case for having business taxes in any case low because actually if you think about it there's double taxation. A business is taxed on its profits, then the owners of that business are taxed in income tax and capital gains tax. If you want a taxation system, then make sure it's progressive, the rates that people pay at different levels. Business taxes - what are you doing there? 95% of all investment in businesses comes from retained profits. So all you're doing effectively by heaping more taxes on a business is preventing them from investing. If you want to use taxation, as I do, to have a fairer society, use income tax or capital gains. Don't use business taxes, because they hold the economy back. So even from that perspective - as a socialist - I'm a very strong advocate of low business taxes. And particularly in Wales we need it desperately. We need to use that as a mechanism for redirecting the enterprise people show in other areas of Welsh life. We're a nation of performers, as Peter Stead has said. We are a performance culture. As team players but also as individuals. There is a Welsh form of individualism as well. It's about singing on a stage or being the best actor, scoring the goal etc. We can do that on the stage or in the stadia, but why can't we do that in the sphere of business as well. Why can't we create a cultural attitude where, yes, we want people to excel? So that's a cultural programme of change we need, but at the same time we need to have carrots incentives in there including actually some large manufacturing companies. There still are opportunities there in key sectors which we've identified for us to do that. I think we've got to go down that road.,"

]]> Peter, Paul and Me tag:blogs.walesonline.co.uk,2008:/specialadvisor//152.27374 2008-08-29T12:01:14Z 2008-08-29T12:02:20Z I like and have a great deal of time for both Peter Black and Paul Flynn. They are pioneers in the blogosphere, and both their contributions are of significantly greater interest than those of most other bloggers. I have a... Martin Shipton I like and have a great deal of time for both Peter Black and Paul Flynn. They are pioneers in the blogosphere, and both their contributions are of significantly greater interest than those of most other bloggers.
I have a particular admiration for Paul's satirical skills, which were put to especially good effect during the disgraceful stitch-up that led to Alun Michael's election as Welsh Labour leader instead of Rhodri Morgan.
It's a couple of stories I have written this week about the next Welsh Labour leadership election that have prompted both Peter and Paul to take issue with me in their very different ways.
The original story reported how some Labour people - both within and outside the Assembly - were so disenchanted with the likely candidates to succeed Rhodri Morgan next year that they were speculating about the possibility of Peter Hain and/or Eluned Morgan being parachuted into the Assembly to widen the field. The story pointed out that such an eventuality was extremely unlikely, given that Labour was likely to lose by-elections in either of the seats mentioned in the speculation - Neath and Clwyd South.
The point of the story, therefore, was not to give credibility to the speculative scenario, but to inform readers that such speculation was going on within the Labour Party. The speculation reflects the increasing desperation felt by some Labour people about the choice they will be faced with when Rhodri steps down, and the lack of confidence they have in Carwyn Jones, Andrew Davies, Huw Lewis, Leighton Andrews and Edwina Hart as potential First Ministers.
Both Peter and Paul, it seems to me, missed that crucial point. Instead, Peter wrung his hands in despair at the Western Mail's alleged obsession with matters of personality rather than policy (conveniently forgetting that to get policies through you need effective leaders who are good communicators), while Paul wrote a fairy story with me as protagonist that I enjoyed very much.
As a reporter, I have always considered it my duty to share with readers interesting information I have picked up that most of them would not be privy to. Often, to my frustration, I am constrained by the libel law. On this occasion, however, it was entirely appropriate to pass on what I had picked up. My thanks to those who made me aware of this speculation.

]]> Speech by Martin Shipton to inter-faith conference on religious stereotypes: 1 Christianity tag:blogs.walesonline.co.uk,2008:/specialadvisor//152.14707 2008-07-02T13:30:38Z 2008-07-02T13:31:50Z WHATEVER one's beliefs about the origins of the universe, stereotypes are most definitely man-made. The degree to which stereotypes are accurate is variable, but there is usually some grain of truth hiding within them. The danger of stereotypes, of course,... Martin Shipton WHATEVER one's beliefs about the origins of the universe, stereotypes are most definitely man-made. The degree to which stereotypes are accurate is variable, but there is usually some grain of truth hiding within them. The danger of stereotypes, of course, is that they can grossly simplify and distort what in reality is a far more complex picture.
Christianity, it seems to me, is subject to a number of stereotypes, some of which are mutually exclusive. The reason they are mutually exclusive is that Christianity is - to coin a phrase - a broad church. Within Christianity, as we know, there are longstanding differences that have persisted for centuries. Some disagreements are theological, others about matters of personal conduct. But they all throw up their own stereotypes.
One stereotype that stays with me from my time many years ago at York University is the kind of Christian who is completely intransigent, will not enter into a rational debate, and who is so convinced of his or her fixed beliefs that any other view is dismissed as wholly unacceptable and beneath contempt. Such became my view of the members of York University Christian Union when I conversed with them as they were seeking to proselytise. There was no discussion with these people, just assertion and counter-assertion. I quickly came to the conclusion that there was no point engaging with them.
Another stereotype, based on an assessment of Christianity in history, is that of a powerful creed prepared to crush all dissidents and non-believers. The Spanish Inquisition was used to persecute heretics, the murderous conflicts in Europe between Catholics and Protestants showed how little the lessons of the Sermon on the Mount were taken on board by those who called themselves Christians, and the expulsion of the self-proclaimed atheist Shelley from Oxford University showed that religious conformity was an absolute requirement. Such conformity was instilled by brainwashing: "give us a child for the first seven years of its life, and it is ours forever" was the often-quoted mantra of the Jesuits. Readers of Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man will remember the terrifying sermon with its graphic description of the torments of hell that awaited that awaited those who strayed from the path of Church-imposed righteousness.
This leads to another stereotype: that of the Church as the biggest cult of all, keeping control of its adherents by fear which reaches their innermost being, and disables them for rational discourse.
Turning to the content of the Christian belief system, it is easy to come to the conclusion that they are seeking to square a circle. How is the vengeful, vicious God of the Old Testament compatible with the compassionate teachings of the Gospels? The stereotypical view would be that Christians pick and choose the elements of the Bible that conform to their own preferences, and ignore or gloss over those that are inconvenient. "An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth" is the favourite Biblical quotation for the kind of Christians who demonstrate outside American prisons when convicted murderers are being executed inside. It's probably also a favourite text for Christians who consider they are carrying out God's work when they assassinate abortion doctors.
At the other end of the spectrum are those Christians - much more to my taste, I readily confess - who derive the essence of their version of christianity from the Sermon on the Mount, with its emphasis on forgiveness, non-violence and compassion. But the question such Christians have to confront is whether in ignoring those elements of the Bible that they find uncongenial, they are guilty of misunderstanding their religion in its entirety, and are therefore in a way as culpable as those who place all their emphasis on the vengeful God of the Old Testament. There are many examples of appalling behaviour by the God of the Old Testament that in no way conform to the positive stereotype of the God of the New Testament - yet in some strange way, Christians are supposed to take both on board in some odd holistic synthesis. Yet they can's, and they don't, and they therefore inevitably are seen as full of contradictions.
As scientific progress accelerated from the Middle Ages to the present day, it became more and more difficult for Christians to stick to their traditional world view. Yet at each step of the way, the stereotypical view would be that the Christian Establishment was on the side of conservative reaction and against the spirit of progress. The treatment of the astronomer Galileo is a perfect illustration of the way scientific discovery was seen as the enemy of religion and had to be denied or combated. Today, faced with overwhelming evidence, there are few members of the Flat Earth Society, if it still exists. But the spirit of reaction remains a force to be reckoned with. There are schools in Britain - around a decade ago I visited one in Wales - where creationism is taught as fact and evolution is rejected as a false theory. Genesis is taken absolutely literally by this kind of fundamentalist Christian. Allegorical interpretations are seen as false: only a one-dimensional acceptance of each Old Testament assertion is seen as acceptable. On the other hand, those who prefer the allegorical route are obliged to engage in all manner of intellectual contortions to account for the cruel excesses of the Old Testament deity. How, for example, can the story of Abraham agreeing to sacrifice his son Isaac be interpreted in any way other than that of an appalling example of child abuse? Such obnoxious nonsense has doubtless had an influence on mentally ill people whose lack of clear thinking can impel them to commit acts of murderous violence.
Turning to some of the contemporary stereotypes associated with Christians, and especially with their role in 21st century Wales and Britain, I would begin by suggesting that for many people, the Church has become an irrelevancy that is still accorded too much influence. Despite attracting fewer and fewer people to its services, Church figures like the Archbishop of Canterbury, or in Wales the Archbishop of Wales, are accorded access to the media for their views in a spirit of what can border on deference. Their pronouncements can seem tiresomely predictable, in tune with the Rev JC Flannel parody of Private Eye: Christmas should be reclaimed from the commercial circus it has become, we should do more to help the developing world, rising house prices are creating misery etc etc. The efforts of Church leaders to appear relevant in a society that largely ignores them can be seen as a rather pathetic attempt to reclaim the kind of authority their predecessors will have taken for granted. But without the clout that derived from a position of power in society, the pronouncements can seem hollow.
Another stereotype derived from the Rev JC Flannel model is the Christianity of woolly, wishy-washy thinking in which society as a whole is collectively guilty of some social ill, rather than the individuals who perpetrate it. This kind of approach is typified by the kind of pronouncement that says: "We are all guilty. Society is to blame." What this amounts to is an attempt to remove from individuals responsibility for their own behaviour. Instead, they almost become ciphers for the influences that have been brought to bear on them throughout their lives. In a way, this harks back to a Calvinistic view that individual fate is pre-determined, and that it is not possible to change the course of one's life through personal effort. In the post-Enlightenment, existential world, where the individual is elevated into an agent of change, it is easy to see why this kind of approach does not resonate.
And for all its attempt to portray itself as a progressive force, the Church very often seems to lapse into fail safe reactionary mode. The issue of the role of women in the Church in Wales illustrates this tendency perfectly. That it took until the late 20th century for the Church in Wales to be brought kicking and screaming to a point where it was prepared to accept women priests was an indictment of its whole approach to gender equality. All the arguments - such as they are - against the ordination of women are essentially misogynistic. Women are seen as lesser beings unworthy to act as God's mediator. There really is no other way of expressing it. The recent decision not to allow women Bishops shows that kind of thinking is still prevalent within the Church. There seems little logic in accepting women as priests and then rejecting them as Bishops. The decision confirms the status of women as second class priests, who cannot aspire to a senior leadership role. Such a position is only lawful because the church is exempt from sex discrimination legislation - another reason why it is seen as somehow apart from mainstream society, and thus somewhat irrelevant.
The decision on female Bishops also exemplifies a kind of moral cowardice that the Church can have levelled against it. It's a decision not to do the right thing because doing so may have other undesirable consequences. The fear, of course, is that the ordination of women Bishops could lead to the departure of some male priests who cannot stomach the idea of having a woman as boss - for strip away the theological sophistry and that is what it amounts to. Further, there is a fear that other Churches will decide they want nothing more to do with our church. Concerns in these circumstances range from wondering who will take the services when the misogynists have left their parishes, to a schism in the community of Churches. The trouble is that capitulating to blackmail of this kind - for that is what it amounts to - destroys the moral basis which provides the Church with its raison d'être.
To a very large extent, the same considerations apply to the Church's treatment of homosexuals. The reality is, of course, that there are many gay priests in the Church in Wales, just as there are in the Church of England and (dare it be said?) the Catholic Church. The church's approach to this is, surely, pure hypocrisy. Gay priests are tacitly accepted, so long as they are discreet: in other words, so long as they seek to deny an essential element of their own humanity. Here, surely, is an example of the Old Testament defeating the New. I simplify, of course. St Paul was a man of Old Testament values on this and other issues, including - in Letters to the Ephesians - the obligation on slaves to obey their masters and women their husbands. With St Paul in league with the ethos of the Old Testament, is it any wonder that misogyny is still rampant within the Church?
Returning to the issue of gays in the Church, last weekend I was at a 50th birthday party for a gay friend - held, perhaps appropriately, in the deconsecrated Norwegian church. His mother, a churchgoer, was in a conversation with another woman, who came from a Welsh Independent chapel background. Rather sadly, I thought, my gay friend's mother said she believed gays should have nothing to do with the church because of the hostility towards them that still prevailed. The other woman took issue with her, saying that her view of christianity was firmly founded on love, and that the homophobic attitudes shown by many church people were, in her view, entirely unChristian.
The recent case of the former Bishop of St Davids did not see the church in its best light. Whatever the truth of the matter, the handling of it was seen by many as poor. Rumour and gossip was given credibility by a round robin letter that got into the public domain. The Bishop's friendship with his chaplain and their respective separations from their spouses became a soap opera which lasted for months. The church's inability to handle the whole matter with discretion reflected badly on its role as a force for reconciliation and damaged its reputation.
As I said at the outset, some of the stereotypes I have outlined are not compatible with each other. They all, however, make up part of a complex whole. Because of the nature of my remit, I have necessarily concentrated on the negative stereotypes. On this occasion, however, I do not apologise for the lack of balance.

]]> Speech by Martin Shipton to inter-faith conference on religious stereotypes: 2 Islam tag:blogs.walesonline.co.uk,2008:/specialadvisor//152.13593 2008-06-20T15:39:23Z 2008-06-20T15:44:07Z There is an immediate and obvious point to bear in mind when considering the different kind of stereotypes that exist in Wales and Britain about Islam, in comparison with those relating to Christianity. In the main, the indigenous population has... Martin Shipton There is an immediate and obvious point to bear in mind when considering the different kind of stereotypes that exist in Wales and Britain about Islam, in comparison with those relating to Christianity. In the main, the indigenous population has a far better understanding of Christianity for the simple fact that they have been exposed to it from an early age. Even those who would not regard themselves as Christians, or who might simply pay lip service to the religion, would nevertheless have it as a touchstone in their lives.
In a very straightforward way, therefore, we have arrived at the first stereotype about Islam. It is seen as a religion that is not European, that comes from another continent. This is a strange perception, in a way, because of course Christianity was originally from the Middle East too. But over many centuries it has become seen as a European religion in the way Islam has not - at least, not yet. That's not to say, of course, that there are not many Muslims in Wales, Britain and Europe: we know there are. But, from a stereotypical perspective, Islam is from elsewhere. As with anything different from what we already know, it takes an effort to find out about something new. Many people don't have the time or inclination to do that, and it is easy to see how inaccurate stereotypes can be created. At its most basic, this can amount to a fear of the unknown. And when a catalyst arrives to add extreme negativity to the perception, there is a potential for catastrophic misunderstanding.
I shall be looking at stereotypes about the religion itself before considering the stereotypical view of Islam as a force in society and on the world stage today. There are, of course, those in Britain, and some in Wales, who are determined to propagate a negative view of Islam. They argue that from the very outset Islam was a religion founded on war and conquest. It is arguably unfortunate in this context that Mohammed lived in a time of great social turmoil. It would have been so much more convenient, perhaps, if he had not been a military commander who fought in battle with his followers against his enemies. But the facts of his life do suggest that for a man of his time, Mohammed displayed a remarkable degree of compassion and restraint. At a time when it was commonplace to slaughter those who had been defeated in battle, Mohammed was keen to minimise casualties and was prepared to forgive those who had fought against him. He showed great respect to people of other faiths - and particularly to Christians and Jews, regarded as "People of the Book". Nevertheless, his involvement in acts of violence does make it possible for the negative stereotype to be created that Islam is essentially no more or less than a movement for war.
The historic expansion of Islam, too, was often the result of military campaigns that resulted in people of other religions being conquered. As in all wars, there are examples of atrocities that can be cited by those opposed to Islam who want to portray it as a religion of violence.
Such a view does, of course, conveniently ignore the incredible flowering of a tolerant and progressive society in Al Andalus - Spain - over several centuries. Unprecedented advances took place there in mathematics and science that were far ahead of anything achieved in Christian-ruled Europe at the time. Muslims, Christians and Jews lived in harmony while elsewhere Jews in particular were suffering persecution and murder.
For many in Christian Europe, however, the Crusades gave rise to a negative perception of Islam as the violent religion which had seized control of the Holy Land. The romantic view of the Crusaders as liberators, rather than the plunderers they were, has persisted through the centuries and coloured our judgement of Islam.
Today, in some countries where Islam is the dominant religion, the failure to allow christians to worship freely is a major contributory factor to negative perceptions of the Muslim world. Such countries appear to defy the wish of Mohammed to allow Christians and Jews to follow their religions without being persecuted or forced to convert.
A further, highly significant stereotype suggests that Islamic states are totalitarian in nature and will not tolerate behaviour that fails to conform with a rigidly imposed norm. The existence of religious police in countries like Saudi Arabia and Iran lends weight to this view. Most people will have read newspaper articles or seen TV documentaries depicting life in these countries. The despotic behaviour of the religious police seems designed to intrude into every aspect of an individual's life, robbing them of any vestige of freedom he or she may once have had or dreamed of.
The treatment of homosexuals in Islamic countries is a disgrace. In the main, homosexuality is illegal and in some cases punished by death. The recent case of an Iranian gay man's fight for asylum in the UK following the execution of his partner for no other reason than his sexuality, illustrates the point adequately.
The treatment of women in Islamic societies is a further cause for concern which helps create another stereotype. Many people in Wales and Britain find it extraordinary that many Muslim women feel obliged to cover themselves with various garments so their physical features are not visible. While only a criminally minded minority would behave in an antagonistic way towards women wearing the veil - and, of course, there have been examples of such women being physically assaulted - there is a widespread perception that men are using these clothing rules to subjugate women. I recall watching BBC's Newsnight programme and seeing a particularly dogmatic Islamic activist rudely telling some Muslim women involved in the discussion that they should be wearing veils.
The idea that women need to be covered in this way in order to fend off unwelcome sexual attention from every man is insulting to men and fails to reflect the realities of life in a modern society. The stereotype extends into a consideration that Muslims are seeking to create a society within, but not of, indigenous Wales and Britain. By insisting that its female members conform to the social requirements not of Wales and Britain but of elsewhere, the Muslim community appears to be rejecting Wales and Britain, and asserting a more important connection with another continent. This leads to a further question: if the mores of the indigenous population are considered unacceptable, why do such people want to be here at all? The stereotype, therefore, is that of people who want to be in a prosperous western society, and enjoy its material benefits, while fundamentally rejecting the foundations on which that society has been built.
I am reminded of a story I wrote a couple of years ago when a group of Muslim scholars spoke at an education conference in St david's Hall, cardiff. Several days before the event, I was contacted by someone who sent me information about one of the speakers, together with various web links to videos and public statements he had made. I found some of his views shocking: he advocated the execution of apostates, those who had given up their faith, he said that the testimony of women in murder trials was not to be accepted because they were too emotional, and the only music that was permissible was the banging of a one-membraned drum. The Western Mail ran the story on the front page: the speaker, who was a doctor from India, was described as an extremist. Much to my surprise, I received some emails from Muslims informing me that the speaker concerned was not an extremist, but was in the mainstream and was much loved by the Muslim community in Cardiff.
I found it troubling that members of the Cardiff community - my community - considered it appropriate to hold such views and apparently to share them. Such opinions, of course, go against everything that a western liberal society like Wales, like Britain, stands for. Why would someone who believes that apostates should be executed want to live here - where apostasy is tolerated - anyway? And it really isn't a question of saying they shouldn't be here, as asking them why they would wish to stay somewhere whose ethos was apparently diametrically opposed to everything they believed in.
It is people like this, presumably, who would support the carrying out of the fatwa against Salman Rushdie, or who would approve of the murder of the Danish cartoonist who drew the controversial cartoons depicting Mohammed. The unappealing stereotype is of a group of people who will engage in the ultimate form of bullying to get their own way: murder. It is of people who believe they have a right to ban anything that offends their sensibilities, and that their right to do so is greater than the right of those who subscribe to the Enlightenment values of freedom of speech and expression to have their say, even if some are offended.
The great Egyptian Nobel Prize winning novelist Naguib Mahfouz, who was persecuted at the end of his long life by Islamic extremists, made a telling point when he said it was more unIsalamic to commit acts of violence than to publish drawings of Mohammed.
Aspects of Sharia law - those that perpetrate acts of horrendous violence against criminals and adulterers - provide further scope for stereotyping.
But the most potent Islamic stereotype of our age is, of course, that of the Muslim as terrorist. Every time we pass through an airport security scanner, or go through a similar device to enter the Senedd, we are reminded of 9/11, of 7/7 - numbers that now act as shorthand for the most appalling terrorist outrages to hit America and Britain. Those responsible - ranging from Osama Bin Laden to Mohamed Atta to Mohammed Siddique Khan and smaller fry - all describe themselves as Muslims. The fellow travellers who appear angrily on our TV screens and in our newspapers justifying the attacks and seeking to draw in young men to their evil plans equally describe themselves as Muslims.
It doesn't matter that they represent a tiny minority of the community: those with the loudest voices invariably grab the most attention. So it is not enough for the Muslim community simply to say that those who engage in acts of terrorism are not true Muslims. It's as ineffectual a comment as to say that those Catholics and Protestants who took part in the Northern Ireland Troubles were not true Christians.
During the recent local government elections, the International Development Minister Shahid Malik visited Cardiff. I sat next to him as we had lunch in a mosque in Riverside. His two messages were that Muslims should speak out against terrorism and that they should integrate with the rest of the community. This advice, it seems to me, is thoroughly sound.
It brings me back to where I began. Negative stereotyping stems from ignorance and a failure to recognise the common humanity of other members of the community who come from different backgrounds. When you know real people who are Muslims or christians, the stereotypes tend to melt away, at least so far as those individuals are concerned. And as you get to meet more Muslims or more christians, you realise it is ridiculous to regard everyone from a particular group or particular religion as if they were the same. For that is what stereotyping is - depriving people of their individual lives and instead viewing them as part of some amorphous mass which is invariably negative. Stereotyping can so easily develop into racism - so please do your best not to indulge in it.

]]> Speech by Martin Shipton to UK Devolution Conference in London organised by the Constitution Unit of University College, London tag:blogs.walesonline.co.uk,2008:/specialadvisor//152.10923 2008-06-04T08:51:01Z 2008-06-16T15:11:49Z WHILE in Scotland, Labour has accused the SNP administration of being “all style and no substance�?, a cynic in Wales might characterise the present Welsh Assembly Government as possessing no style and little substance. At a time when most ordinary... Martin Shipton WHILE in Scotland, Labour has accused the SNP administration of being “all style and no substance�?, a cynic in Wales might characterise the present Welsh Assembly Government as possessing no style and little substance.
At a time when most ordinary people in Wales are preoccupied with the effect of the credit crunch on their purchasing power, the impact of the Assembly Government on their lives can seem increasingly marginal.

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By its own estimation, the One Wales Labour-Plaid Cymru coalition’s achievements would accurately be described as modest. A list of such achievements provided to me this week is headed by the introduction of free car parking for hospital patients and staff, the appointment of the world’s first Commissioner for Older People, granting nurses their full pay award of 2.5%, and the creation of a single business support investment fund.
The list goes on to claim credit for introducing the Foundation Phase, a new approach to learning for three- to seven-year-olds. It does not refer to the concerns of head teachers, who were continuing to assert this week that the scheme is “woefully underfunded�?.
Credit is claimed for single farm payments made to farmers, with 95% of such payments having been made already.
The final two achievements claimed in this list of eight innovative ideas relate to action against climate change. Yet there is nothing dramatic to report so far: a sustainable energy route map was published in February suggesting how Wales could become self-sufficient in renewable electricity within 20 years, and Forestry Commission land is to be leased for the construction of wind turbines – a controversial decision which has met considerable opposition in rural Wales.
It is important to remember, of course, that the One Wales agreement has a span of four years, with three more to run. Before 2011, there are promises that include the introduction of a distinct curriculum for schoolchildren in Wales, the introduction of sprinkler systems in new and refurbished schools, and legal powers to suspend the right to buy council houses in areas of great housing need.
Quite a few initiatives have a familiar feel: a commitment to “work closely�? with local authorities and developers to ensure there are enough affordable homes to buy in new developments; a “Welsh Food Debate�? aimed at persuading people to eat healthily; and improving the “patient experience�? by endeavouring to make hospitals cleaner.
Much of the One Wales agreement, in fact, seems deliberately vague when it comes to specific, practical commitments. A typical phrase is “working towards�?: “working towards reforming NHS Trusts�?; “working towards eliminating the use of private sector hospitals {by the NHS} by 2011�?, a commitment that some would see as mere ideological posturing, with the get out that a failure to achieve the aspiration does not represent a broken promise.
One notable achievement was the meeting of an interim patient waiting time target. By March this year no-one was waiting more than 22 weeks to see a consultant, against 21,500 in the same month last year. Only five waited more than 22 weeks for treatment, against 10,000 in March 2007. Nevertheless, patients in Wales are still waiting significantly longer than their counterparts in England.
In terms of public perception of the One Wales Government – such as there is – there has been considerable resentment from Labour activists about the high profile on TV of Plaid Cymru ministers. This reflects the quite widespread view amongst those who care that Plaid are playing something of a double game. They want to be in government, yet they also want to retain their detachment from ultimate responsibility. A clear Plaid strategy is to grab advantage of the kudos attached to being in government, while reserving the right to blame Labour at Westminster for any shortcomings, especially a lack of funding. This was correctly identified in advance by Labour opponents of the One Wales deal.
Nearly a year on, it is sometimes easy to forget how momentous the decision of Labour and Plaid to come together in government was. Ludicrously, it probably would not have happened if a crucial Liberal Democrat meeting had taken place in Cardiff rather than Llandrindod Wells, and if Lib Dem AM Kirsty Williams had not been worried about losing the support of Labour-inclined supporters in Ystradgynlais. If the Lib Dem vote at the Llandrindod meeting had gone in favour of a “rainbow coalition�? involving Plaid, the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats, Ieuan Wyn Jones would now be the First Minister instead of merely Rhodri Morgan’s deputy. As it was, the vote at the Lib Dem meeting was tied, and according to party rule the rainbow option was rejected. That convinced both Labour and Plaid that the Liberal Democrats would be unreliable coalition partners, making a Labour-Plaid deal the only realistic possibility remaining.
Plaid leader Ieuan Wyn Jones is no Alex Salmond. He lacks charisma and has a reputation of being cautious. His detractors say he is over-cautious. Perversely, this may have been a blessing for Plaid in government, at least initially. He is an unthreatening figure who is incapable of frightening the horses. Moderate voters who would be put off by a more strident nationalist figure than Mr Jones can now see Plaid as a credible party of government.
The other Plaid ministers – Rhodri Glyn Thomas (Heritage) and Elin Jones (Rural Affairs) have also established themselves in the public eye as competent and reassuring. Ms Jones, it is generally agreed, did particularly well in handling the foot and mouth outbreak, which required her return from holiday in New Zealand, over compensation payments to farmers, and latterly over her decision to cull badgers in a bid to eliminate bovine TB.
Unfortunately for Labour, its ministers have often been at the sharp end of difficult economic controversies. Andrew Davies, the Finance Minister and one of Rhodri Morgan’s possible successors, has been in the firing line over a lower than hoped for settlement to local government. Jane Hutt, who was constantly under attack in her earlier role as Health Minister, is beginning to attract criticism over such matters as the underfunding of the Foundation Phase and the decline in the relative level of school funding in Wales in comparison with elsewhere in the UK.
One way of describing Edwina Hart, the current Health Minister, is as an exponent of creative feistiness. Notorious for her dislike of the media, she nevertheless has the ability to make controversial decisions that make news. Responding to widespread concern over car parking charges at hospitals, she decided to scrap them – even if in so doing she appeared to be cocking a snook at her government’s climate change initiatives. She became involved in a public row with UK Labour Health Minister Ben Bradshaw over the issue. Then this week she again diverged from the Westminster line by insisting that failed asylum seekers would be entitled to free NHS treatment.
Mrs Hart’s willingness to disagree openly and robustly with her colleagues in London is a refreshing exception to Welsh Labour’s usual determination to paper over the cracks. More of this could help to provide the “style�? or attitude the Assembly currently lacks.
Rhodri Morgan has announced his intention of stepping down as First Minister next year, probably in September, although up until now there has been little evidence of the impending party election to choose his successor. Equally, there has been no depiction of Mr Morgan as a lame duck leader, possibly because of the lack of open clamouring to succeed him. Carwyn Jones, who is perhaps the favourite, now has the relatively low profile role of Counsel General and Leader of the House.
In a nation where most politicians have appallingly low public recognition factors, Rhodri Morgan is well-known. Some choose to criticise him for his scruffiness or his quirky manner of speaking, but he continues to have many fans. He remains an antidote to the kind of depersonalised, passionless politician typical of the worst of New Labour. But the affection he attracts has little to do with ideology: as the social historian Peter Stead suggested recently, he is capable of making an impression regardless of what he says.
Much as Labour MPs at Westminster may dislike it, the issue of lawmaking powers for the Assembly will continue to be a looming presence on the Welsh political agenda. The current settlement, brought in after last year’s election, requires the Assembly to seek permission from Westminster to legislate in clearly defined policy areas. So far the process has been characterised by the kind of delays that some predicted. So far, just one Legislative Competence Order (LCO) – covering an uncontentious matter relating to people with additional learning needs – has received the Royal Assent. Although only several paragraphs long, the LCO received Royal approval on April 9 – a full 10 months after it was initially proposed on June 11 last year.
Even the Presiding Officer, who has been a staunch supporter of the new arrangements, was prompted to criticise the delays earlier this month, saying: “I think the Welsh Affairs Select Committee has not been operating in the way that it was expected to operate in the Government of Wales Act.
“It’s been investigating and seeking to gather evidence on the reasons for requests for legislative proposals coming from here {the Assembly}, and asking all sorts of questions about what might come out of that.
“Measures are nothing to do with them. These measures are for the Assembly. Quite honestly, they’re a bit tardy in scrutinising them, in my view.�?
In making his comments, Lord Elis-Thomas hinted at another looming problem: the question of how a Tory Government at Westminster will deal with LCO requests from an Assembly run by Labour and Plaid. The Conservatives certainly do not seem any more inclined than Labour at Westminster to accept the kind of unwritten convention proposed by Lord Elis-Thomas under which LCOs proposed by the Assembly would be rubber-stamped by MPs and peers. Tories at both ends of the M4 have indicated they will vote against the proposed affordable housing LCO because it would permit the suspension of the right to buy. Plaid sees this as a dangerous precedent and a constitutional threat: according to them, the right time for the Tories to oppose the suspension of the right to buy would be after the power has been transferred to the Assembly and a measure is being proposed. But this argument is rejected by the Conservatives, who point out, perhaps with some constitutional justification, that MPs have a locus under the Government of Wales Act to decide whether LCOs should be passed.
At present, with Labour in power in Westminster, the opposition of the Conservatives to LCOs whose consequential measures they disapprove of may not matter. But there will be plenty of scope for clashes between Cardiff Bay and Westminster with a Cameron-led administration.
In response to demands from Plaid, Labour agreed to set up two independent commissions: one to examine the conditions for a referendum on primary lawmaking powers, and the other into the funding of the Assembly. Despite the appointment last October of Sir Emyr Jones Parry to chair a convention looking at the referendum, no other members have yet been announced and it will still be some months before work begins. As for the commission on funding, which will look at the contentious issue of the Barnett formula, we have heard no more.
No-one can say for certain whether the One Wales coalition will last the course of a full term – not even the participants. The dynamics of working with an incoming Tory Government at Westminster could have a bearing, as could the reaction of Plaid activists if a decision is taken not to proceed with the promised referendum. Plaid will undoubtedly be reading the runes to see whether their future electoral prospects are tarnished by association with Labour.

]]> Reflections on a day trip to Auschwitz tag:blogs.walesonline.co.uk,2008:/specialadvisor//152.10922 2008-05-14T18:10:59Z 2008-06-16T15:11:49Z A day trip to Auschwitz from Wales is an exhausting, harrowing, but extremely rewarding experience, as I have discovered. Together with a number of other journalists, and some politicians, I was invited by the Holocaust Educational Trust (HET) to join... Martin Shipton A day trip to Auschwitz from Wales is an exhausting, harrowing, but extremely rewarding experience, as I have discovered.
Together with a number of other journalists, and some politicians, I was invited by the Holocaust Educational Trust (HET) to join its first journey to the death camps with students from Wales. There were more than 150 sixth-formers and A-level college students on the trip.

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The invitation came several weeks ago and I took the opportunity to read a book that has languished on my bookshelf unread since its publication eight years ago. The Third Reich: A New History was written by Michael Burleigh, who at the time was a history professor at Cardiff University. Always intending to read it when the time was right, I found its 812 pages utterly enthralling. Burleigh analyses the turbulent social conditions that made Hitler’s rise to power possible, identifying the pseudo-religious delusions promising national salvation that made his appeal so powerful.
Six days before the trip, the HET organised a four-hour “orientation seminar�? in Cardiff’s Thistle Hotel. When I attended it, I confess I was somewhat on my guard. I thought there was a possibility that the facts of the Holocaust might be used to paint a tendentious view of the world political situation today, especially with regard to the Middle East. But I was quickly reassured by the inclusive nature of the presentation, with its references not just to anti-semitism, but to racism, Islamophobia and homophobia, extending to hatred and intolerance in general.
The star of the seminar was Ziggy Shipper, a Polish Jew who survived Auschwitz and now, at 78, spends much of his time touring schools to enlighten what he calls the “third generation�? to the facts of the Holocaust. Together with a number of other survivors, Ziggy decided some years ago that he had a responsibility to share his appalling experiences. He spoke without notes for an hour and then answered questions put by the students. His was a message not of bitterness, but of the absolute need to be tolerant of others’ differences.
After listening to Ziggy, those going on the trip were split into six groups, each led by an “educator�?, most of whom are school teachers who take on the role in their spare time. My group was led by Steve Woodrow, who teaches in Gloucestershire. He asked us what expectations we had of the trip and raised several ethical questions for us to consider. Was it appropriate that tour companies were advertising trips to Auschwitz as they would visits to conventional tourist destinations? How did we feel about the propriety of taking pictures in the death camps? The consensus in my group appeared to be that after an initial sense of tastelessness, the tour companies’ adverts should be seen simply as a means for those interested to find out the practicalities of a visit. Decisions over whether to take photographs or not were best left to individuals.
The logistics of the trip required an early departure. I set the alarm clock for 3.50am, but woke in expectation five minutes earlier. My 4.30am taxi to Cardiff airport (The driver asked me if I was going anywhere nice. My response was something of a conversation killer) got me there in time for my 5am rendezvous with the group prior to a 7am flight.
In some cases the students had been brought to the airport by their parents, and I had to remind myself that for many, this would be a far more daunting trip than for me, a seasoned traveller well into middle age. Probably in most cases, they were travelling on their own abroad for the first time, without their parents or at least a whole group of familiar classmates.
Arriving at Krakow airport in mid-morning, the first sight I noticed as we drove away was what to my eye was a decrepit building with a sign indicating it was a Holiday Inn. This reminded me that despite its entry into the European Union, Poland remains a relatively poor country, certainly in comparison with those further west.
Our first stop in Oswiecim, the Polish town renamed Auschwitz after the Nazis invaded in September 1939, was the Jewish cemetery. Desecrated shortly after the invasion, many of the headstones were smashed up for use as tiles. Some were preserved and have been re-erected, although with one exception they do not correspond with the bodies buried beneath them. The exception is the tomb of Shimshon Kluger, the last Jew to live in the town whose pre-war population was 58% Jewish. We reflected on what the smashing up of the cemetery amounted to: an attempt by the Nazis not simply to kill all living Jews, but to obliterate them from history by killing their past too. Sadly, the cemetery walls have been daubed with anti-semitic slogans in recent years.
On to Auschwitz 1. The concentration camps have, rather oddly, now become Poland’s most popular visitor destination in terms of numbers. This is immediately evident by the large number of coaches and cars outside, as the fast food joints and bar right next to the entrance. One kiosk offered everything you might need for a trip to a concentration camp: “Flowers, Candles, Sweets, cake, Fruit, Cold drinks�?. I know it’s offering a service, but the commercialism did seem inappropriate.
As a pre-booked party, we didn’t have to buy tickets and after a short introduction about the camp by our guide Marta, we soon found ourselves confronting barbed wire, now mercifully not electrified. The camp was opened in 1940 for Polish political prisoners, and its mission was to improve on the efficiency of the first Nazi camp established at Dachau in 1933. Neighbouring Auschwitz-Birkenau, also referred to as Auschwitz 2, opened as an extermination camp for European Jews in 1942.
What faces a visitor to both camps is what I would describe as an accumulation of horrors. When you think you’ve exhausted your capacity to be appalled, there is something equally dreadful around the corner. Very quickly after entering Auschwitz 1 you see a sign stating: “The corpses of prisoners shot while trying to escape were often displayed here as a warning to others�?. This is typical of the neutral, informative style used throughout the camps. In my view, this is far more powerful than it would be if the message included an explicit condemnation. The important thing is for the visitor to have both a personal response and to make his or her own moral judgement. What I appreciated about the HET’s approach was their insistence that people need to make their own minds up about what happened, and that there is no single “correct�? response.
Having said that, you would have to be emotionally stunted to remain unmoved by what is to be seen at both camps. In one room you are likely to be overwhelmed by the sight of two tonnes of human hair, in another by a wall-length display of boots, crutches and prosthetic limbs. There are children’s dolls and children’s shoes, where only red colours have survived the decades, the rest having faded to a dusty grey. Brushes of different kinds – hair, clothes and tooth – are mixed together in one display cabinet.
At one end of the camp you come across a gallows, specially erected after the war to execute Rudolf Hoess, the camp commandant who lived yards away with his family. We reflected on how someone could carry on a normal family life in such circumstances.
Auschwitz-Birkenau is more bleak, with less of the feel of a museum. You step into a stables built for 52 horses, but made to house 400 prisoners in dreadful insanitary conditions. I was especially nauseated at the spot where a Nazi doctor made instant judgements about who should be instantly gassed and who should be given a temporary reprieve.
One of the issues we discussed, without reaching a definitive conclusion, was the sometimes grey area between those who were bystanders and those who were guilty. To what extent, for example, were the train drivers and other railway staff who transported Jews across Europe to death camps like Auschwitz culpable? How feasible would it have been to defy the Nazis and not face recriminations? The fact is that many soldiers volunteered to participate in the hunting down and killing of Jews.
At the end of the visit, shortly before we returned to the airport, we attended a non-denominational series of readings led by Rabbi Barry Marcus of the Central Synagogue London, who accompanied us. The readings took place at a memorial between the ruins of two gas chambers and crematoria blown up by the Nazis as the end of the war approached. Defying conventional wisdom – or is it just a cliché? – we heard the sound of birdsong.
I am grateful for the opportunity to have joined so many articulate students on the trip to Auschwitz, and believe more sixth-formers and college students from Wales should have the chance to go.
One thing I would be wholly opposed to is the use of Holocaust education to absolve the state of Israel from the duty to behave with tolerance towards Palestinians. While in my view there can be no legitimate comparison between the systematic mass murder of Jews by the Nazis and the harsh treatment of Palestinians by Israel, there are some uncomfortable resonances. The Nazi desire for “lebensraum�? (living space) that prompted the invasion and annexation of neighbouring countries has its parallel in the establishment of Jewish settlements on Palestinian land. Surely one of the most important lessons from the Holocaust should be that no-one has the right to victimise others, however much they may have been victimised themselves.

]]> In memory of a murdered journalist tag:blogs.walesonline.co.uk,2008:/specialadvisor//152.10921 2008-01-27T18:50:08Z 2008-06-16T15:11:49Z Speech given by Martin Shipton at an event in Cardiff to commemorate the murder of the Turkish-Armenian journalist Hrant Dink On January 19 2007 Hrant Dink was shot dead as he returned to the offices of Agos, the bilingual Turkish-Armenian... Martin Shipton Speech given by Martin Shipton at an event in Cardiff to commemorate the murder of the Turkish-Armenian journalist Hrant Dink

On January 19 2007 Hrant Dink was shot dead as he returned to the offices of Agos, the bilingual Turkish-Armenian newspaper he edited in Istanbul. His murder was a shocking reminder of the dangers facing journalists in many countries from individuals and groups that would deny them free expression. Only months before, the Russian investigative journalist Anna Politkovskaya was gunned down outside her home in Moscow.

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Dink was closely associated with the cause of the Armenian minority in Turkey and was prosecuted on three separate occasions under the controversial laws against insulting 'Turkishness'. But it is clear from his work that he was committed to reconciliation rather than confrontation.
In becoming one of Turkey's best known journalists, he had overcome considerable personal difficulties. At the age of seven he was enrolled in an orphanage in Istanbul after his family was left homeless because of his father's gambling debts. As a child in the orphanage he met his future wife Rakel, who was herself from a displaced family.
The newspaper that he ultimately edited was the result of an initiative aimed at bringing the Armenian community into the mainstream of Turkish civil society. Before Agos was founded in 1996, there were no bilingual Turkish and Armenian newspapers. The establishment of Agos was intended to break down the barriers between Turks and Armenians, and it is certainly the case that the paper increased public awareness of the issues affecting the Armenian community. It also led to a greater participation of the Armenian community in Turkish affairs.
But although Dink was supportive of Armenian rights, he also displayed the essential characteristics of an independent minded journalist: the ability and determination to be critical of his own community's institutions when he felt it appropriate to do so.
Such subtleties, however, meant nothing to those who decided he had to be eliminated. But murderous extremism has no appreciation of subtlety: it is brutally one dimensional in its assessment of the world, and who may be allowed to live and who must die.
Last Thursday the International Federation of Journalists - the worldwide umbrella group of journalists' unions including my own NUJ - published its annual report on journalists who were killed in the preceding year. Deadly Stories 2007 states, "For the third year in succession, the IFJ reports an extremely high number of deaths of journalists and people who work with them. Many killings were targeted attacks, some were crossfire casualties in war zones, and others were deaths in accidents.
"The total of 172 is again dominated by the body count of Iraqi journalists in a war that has now accounted for more than 250 media killings according to the IFJ's affiliate the Iraqi Syndicate of Journalists.
"During 2007 some 65 died giving fresh urgency to efforts to put in place the Iraqi Media Safety Group, a local self-help operation supported by the IFJ and the International News Safety Institute. This group is now co-ordinating help to media to strengthen safety awareness and reduce the risks facing local journalists.
"In Palestine, where the political divisions between Palestinians on the West Bank and those in Gaza have also affected the journalism community, the kidnapping of Alan Johnston galvanised divided local journalists who led a vocal and unified campaign for his release. One of the first messages a relieved and tired Johnston gave on achieving his freedom was to recognise this effort, which may well have saved his life.
"In Africa 14 killings were recorded, some eight of them in Somalia alone, a country where the tragedy of tribalism and lawlessness has caused chaos and where media are victimised when they try to report honestly on the tragic conditions within the country.
""In the Americas, 19 deaths were recorded, with Mexico continuing to dominate the list with six killings - many of them journalists singled out because of their reporting on gangsters operating in the country. In one horrifying case in October three workers were killed at El Imparcial del Istmo which had been receiving death threats over its reporting of drugs gangs."
The report includes a statement by Arne Konig, chair of the European Federation of Journalists, on the murder of Hrant Dink. Konig writes, "Hrant Dink was a strong and powerful person. When he spoke the audience listened.
"I spent time with him twice but only on one day. I met him on a December morning in 2006 in the Swedish Parliament in Stockholm at a discussion on freedom of speech and human rights in Turkey.
"Then I saw him again the same evening at a more informal meeting with the Turkish and Armenian communities in Stockholm.
"When Hrant Dink spoke I listened. He filled the room when he spoke in support of press freedom as an essential part of free and open discussion among different nationalities in the Turkish state. He spoke of the right to openly debate history and saw that as a prerequisite for peaceful and democratic development in Turkey.
"At the time Hrant was facing charges in Turkey for his work as a journalist. And like many brave journalists in Turrkey he decided not to leave the country but stay and risk a jail sentence.
"The infamous paragraph 301 in the Turkish penal code is a vague clause that can be used by the authorities to bring charges against those who defame or question the concept of 'Turkishness' or the Turkish state.
"Hrant's voice was powerful, his words convincing and for that reason some dark forces within Turkish society sent a killer to murder him
"In Turkey, journalists and other friends of press freedom demonstrated against his murder and in honour of Hrant's memory. In Stockholm I talked at a meeting with the same purpose. We demanded the killers be brought to justice, we spoke against paragraph 301 and we demanded the abolition of this shameful law.
"The memory of Hrant will always be connected with the long and ongoing fight for freedom of speech in Turkey."

]]> How the media treats Europe - and why tag:blogs.walesonline.co.uk,2008:/specialadvisor//152.10920 2008-01-02T18:50:20Z 2008-06-16T15:11:48Z Speech by Martin Shipton to the Wales Council of the European Movement on the media’s treatment of Europe The relationship between the British media and Europe is a schizophrenic one. Even the most rabidly anti-European British newspapers will regularly carry... Martin Shipton Speech by Martin Shipton to the Wales Council of the European Movement on the media’s treatment of Europe

The relationship between the British media and Europe is a schizophrenic one. Even the most rabidly anti-European British newspapers will regularly carry features in their lifestyle pages praising various aspects pf European life and culture to the hilt. In doing so, they reflect the schizophrenia of many of their readers.

]]> The roots of this are complex, although the consequences are often a grossly simplistic portrayal of issues that deserve to be treated with much more subtlety.
In trying to make sense of this strange relationship, I’ve decided today to take a very personal approach. Earlier this month I celebrated my birthday in that exquisite European city Venice, having last year done so in another fine city, Berlin. I haven’t made some pretentious ideological decision to go to Europe for my birthday – it’s simply that it tends to fall at half-term, a convenient time to whisk my wife and daughter abroad.
In formulating this sentence last night – I expect you spotted it – I involuntarily fell into a habit so typical of the British media and, too often, the general British mindset. I referred to going to Europe for my birthday – as if Europe was elsewhere from where I am. This idea of Britain being somehow detached from Europe is so ingrained in the British consciousness that even those of us who are favourably disposed towards Europe as a concept find ourselves falling into the trap.
It’s this idea of Europe as a separate place that underlies, I believe, the more troublesome aspects of the British media’s approach.
Thinking back through my life, I suppose my first awareness of Europe was as the huge film set for World War Two. I was born eight years after the war ended, but my childhood was spent in a London still obsessed with it, and, indeed, with World War One, which was only as long ago as the heyday of the Beatles is now. I have no doubt that the mood of the time conditioned the attitudes towards Europe of many of those holding influential positions in the media today.
Europe was a place where our servicemen had recently risked their lives fighting against barbarians. The best known places were those where battles had taken place. Europe’s civilian population did not exist, or only as extras in the battles played out between our heroic military men and the savages who opposed them.
The only contact most people had with Eirope was via newsreels, films or vicariously with relatives or neighbours who had negative impressions to cinvey because of their war experiences. Until the 1960s only a tiny minority of wealthy individuals travelled to Europe for pleasure, and there weren’t many who went to work there either. Thus had it always been for centuries. Britons had gone to Europe to fight, and not much else.
Colonial expansion and the creation of an Empire brought Britain into further conflict with her European neighbours. While international alliances shifted and changed, the general view adopted by many was that Johnny Foreigner was not to be trusted. This attitude, in fact, permeates English literature of the Nineteenth Century at all levels from scurrilous leaflets that can only be seen as the forerunners of today’s BNP material, albeit with a different set of stereotypes, right up to the great novelists, where Europeans are usually depicted as eccentrics at best, even where the negative image is being satirised, as in George Eliot’s Daniel Deronda, for example.
These attitudes, which lasted well into the Twentieth Century, are, I am convinced, responsible for the tentative, if not downright hostile, approach towards Europe of many middle-aged British journalists today. On the other hand, as I mentioned at the beginning, the same people will not be averse to sampling the best of what Europe has to offer, whether in terms of food, drink, beaches and even high culture.
With this background, then, it is no surprise that there was no great enthusiasm to join the prototype Common Market when it was set up. When overseas came into play, the British mindset was still firmly tuned into its recently emancipated colonial possessions, whom it sought to cling on to via that dubious post-imperial invention known as the Commonwealth. Also, of course, there was the growing cultural and economic dominance of that other long-lost colony, the United States. The Americans might be cocky and have an inflated view of their significance in winning the war, but at least they spoke our language and ate variations on our diet.
When I was a boy my parents used to read the Daily Express, which was owned by an unashamed anti-European, Lord Beaverbrook. The paper was full of jingoistic rhetoric, invariably accompanied by the Union Jack, and I have never since then been able to dissociate the flag in my mind from connotations of xenophobia. The arguments were, it seemed to me then as now, nonsensical, assuming that Britain could recreate some trading bubble comprising itself and the White Commonwealth.
I was in the sixth form when Ted Heath came to power in 1970 promising to take Britain into the Common Market. I sense a change of mood at the time, possibly as a result of the growth of idealism, some of it naive, in the late Sixties. War films depicting evil Nazis were no longer fashionable and instead there was a lot of talk about international cooperation within Europe. School exchange trips flourished – my own school was twinned with one in Hamburg, although my own preference at the time was for France, having been sent to private French lessons from the age of 11.
When I went to York University to read English, there was a great wave of European enthusiasm. People weren’t so bothered about the intricacies of the economic arguments for joining the Common Market. What attracted them was the idea of being involved for the first time in an international collaboration based on equality – something Britain had never been involved with before. It was used to dominating other countries, but the anti-militarism of the time – speading from concerns not just about Britain’s imperial record but also most immediately from America’s involvement in Vietnam – led to many thousands of young people especially embracing with great enthusiasm the European ideal. This even pervaded the media for a relatively brief period and there was generally positive coverage when Britain entered the Common Market in 1973.
The opponents had not gone away, however. They were vociferous not only on the Little Englander wing of the Conservative Party, but with greater influence within the Labour Party, where the argument against Britain ceding sovereignty to Europe was articulated with force. These days the most vocal opposition to the EU comes from the right, and the central message is that the EU places unreasonable and intolerable restrictions on businesses and the individual. In the 1970s, the opposition came predominantly from those on the left of the Labour Party who feared that their dream of creating socialism in one country would be destroyed by the capitalists across the Channel. When Harold Wilson won the February 1974 general election – much to his surprise – because of the public’s disenchantment with the three day week precipitated by the miners’ strike – he knew he had to hold a referendum on Common Market membership to keep his party together. He cleverly stage-managed a supposed renegotiation of terms which didn’t amount to much, and led the Yes campaign in the referendum of 1975. Most of the media backed the Yes campaign, partly because it was convinced by the twin arguments based on idealism and economics, and partly because the idea of withdrawal seemed like taking isolationism too far. The No campaign’s constitutional objections were swept aside in a way today’s pro-Europeans would be jealous of. There was a sizeable victory for the Yes campaign, and the question of EEC membership seemed to have been settled once and for all.
Even so, it seemed to me that Britain, despite the brief idealistic posturing, never really came to terms with what membership actually meant. The opaque nature of European institutions meant that ordinary people never felt truly engaged with what was going on. Whether it weas known as the Common Market, the EEC, the EC or the EU, it was always something that happened “over there�?, and that is how the media have always portrayed it. Decisions made in Brussels by representatives of all the member states are, much of the media would have us believe, made by Brussels. The subtle change of one word makes all the difference to public perception. Nevertheless, in the years immediately after Britain joined up, Europe was a relatively minor consideration – and certainly not one that involved relentless campaigns of antagonism towards the EEC as an institution. Britain was too obsessed with its own social and economic problems to worry too much about fanciful threats from Europe.
Margaret Thatcher’s election victory in 1979 brought Britain’s relationship with Europe into a new dimension. If she had been an ardent pro-European, she could not have played her hand so skilfully. By using British nationalist rhetoric to the full, she kept the sceptical public on side when she signed the Maastricht Treaty, and with it gave away more sovereignty than Britain had ever before ceded. The Conservative-supporting press was behind her all the way throughout her dealings with Europe. The more grandstanding she did, the more they loved it. But while a Labour Prime Minister would have been lambasted for signing up to Maastricht, Mrs Thatcher was portrayed as a worthy successor to Churchill because she was seen as defending the interests of the nation.
The fact is that Euroscepticism – or, as it might more accurately be portrayed, downright Euro-antagonism – did not come into its own until the John Major Government of the early and mid-1990s. From that time, a much more virulent knind of anti-Europeanism can be detected in the utterances of politicians and in the newspapers that woke up to what they saw as the European menace. A lot of the change can probably be attributed to the reluctance of editors to openly criticise Margaret Thatcher. They had built up her reputation as the Iron Lady, and – perhaps unusually – did not want to knock her down. They probably thought they would come out worst if they tried. John Major, however, was not given the same consideration. After his unexpected victory in the 1992 general election, he soon found out that he would be under siege from the Europhobic wing of his own party. Cursed by a small majority, they constantly goaded him, egged on relentlessly by supporters in the press. The frenzy of anti-Europeanism found expression in different ways. We quickly heard about the supposed banning of bent bananas and other similar distortions. Questions of sovereignty were also raised constantly, with newspapers apparently seeing no inconsistency between their current hostile position to Europe and theirrelatively emollient tone at the time of Maastricht. Major saw off the challenge of the rebels by resigning and fighting a leadership election against John Redwood, who resigned as Secretary of State for Wales to stand. But he was mortally wounded, and it was inevitable that Tony Blair’s revitalised New Labour Party would win a crushing landslide in 1997.
Yet despite the scale of that victory, it seems to me that from the outset of the new administration, the Eurosceptics were allowed to call the shots. In this, the role of the media has been absolutely crucial. However much they may wish to deny it, both Tony Blair and Gordon Brown have been desperate to curry favour with Rupert Murdoch, a latter day media baron who puts Beaverbrook well into the shade. For his own commercial ends, Murdoch is an avowed anti-European. He has all the zeal of the convert to be expected from and Australian turned American whose ambition is to dominate all sections of the news media in the English-speaking world.
Labour, of course, is haunted by past election defeats influenced by the editorial stance of Murdoch-owned papers. But it is for this reason that the present UK Government does not articulate a coherent pro-Europe message. That, and the fear that too many swing voters might buy the anti-European message next time if the issue becomes too prominent.
In my view, however, the purely constitutional battle over Europe has largely run its course. There isn’t going to be a referendum about the European constitution in Britain, however similar it may be in its new form to the old form rejected in referendums elsewhere. The truth is that most people cannot get excited about the intricacies of qualified majority voting, even if they get that far in reading a story on the matter. And I’ve read countless stories and seen countless news items where no explanation at all is given about what the EU constitution is or contains. It’s spoken about or referred to as an undefined entity that happens to be the subject of political controversy.
And this leads to another problem involving the relationship between the British media and Europe. It is, to a very great extent, lacking in content. And I’m not referring just to somewhat abstruse stories about the European constitution. It is actually difficult to find information about political or more general news events in Europe. My wife lived for 10 years in Germany before we were married, for most of the time in Hamburg. A couple of weeks ago there were serious floods there that forced many people out of their homes. It was barely mentioned in the news here, although doubtless if similar flooding had occurred in the United States we would have heard all about it.
There is very little political news reported about fellow EU member states in the British media. This makes it much more difficult for people in Britain to assess how our country is doing over a range of issues in comparison with our near neighbours.
This lack of coverage is in stark contrast to the amount of especially broadcast time given to events in Pakistan, a country that has, after all, been a military dictatorship for most of its existence. I am not saying that events in Pakistan should not be covered – and I accept that many people in Britain have roots there. What I am arguing for is more coverage of European politics, which has more direct relevance for Britain as a country and EU member state.
In terms of political controversy, by far the most potent Europe-related issue is that of the opening up of the labour market, and particularly migration from the accession countries of the east. It’s a classic case where the shying away from political debate at the crucial time – both in Parliament and in the media – has left many people feeling powerless and resentful.
It is not xenophobic or racist to question the wisdom of the British Government’s decision to be just one of three member states to allow unrestricted access to the British labour market.
Now there are arguments on both sides, but the point is that membership of the EU was supposed to be about raising the levels of prosperity in the accession countries. It is at least arguable that that cause is not served by instantly creating the conditions that allow a significant proportion of the workforce to migrate for work to richer western countries. It risks destabilising the economies of the accession countries, and depleting wage levels at the lower end of the labour market in the west. There is evidence that that has indeed happened, and that the unexpectedly high level of arrivals from the east has led to a decrease in GVA per head. Not to mention concerns over the impact on the social infrastructure.
Now this was a decision taken entirely by the UK Government, although unjustly the EU has borne some of the flak. It seems to me that this is a very good example of where a mature debate, conducted without rhetorical bluster, would have been appropriate at a much earlier stage. The fact that it did not happen is largely, I believe, down to the lack of self-confidence in the pro-Europe camp, and especially by the lack of leadership shown by the UK Government – not to mention what may well have been an inherently bad decision. No wonder there have been negative news stories about Europe.
I must say I’m quite alarmed at the UK Government’s current stance on Europe. Recently the Foreign Secretary, David Miliband, made a bizarre speech to students in Bruges which was reportedly altered by Gordon Brown because its content was perceived as too pro-European.
Nevertheless, the speech as delivered contained some extraordinary blue sky thinking in which Mr Miliband advocated the expansion of the EU over time to include countries in the Middle East and North Africa. Apart from the crazy geographical realignment, it seemed to me to illustrate that a senior member of the UK Government had lost sight of what Europe is about. Gordon Brown’s insistence on British values rather than European values is another example of the failure to state clearly what contemporary Europe means and where it has its roots. While fully acknowledging the downside of European history, with its holocaust, slavery and exploitation, we often don’t state sufficiently loudly or with enough vigour the virtues that derive from the Enlightenment. On the one hand, I see this as a result of too much credence being given by our opinion formers, many of them in the media, to the macho, anti-welfare, fundamentally illiberal thinking of the neo-cons. I also believe, on the other hand, that wrong-headed ideas about the nature of diversity sometimes result in punches being pulled, and the tolerance of intolerance. Last year (2006) I wrote about an Islamic preacher from India who was addressing a Muslim education conference at the council-owned St David’s Hall in Cardiff. Despite this gentleman’s views, which included execution for apostates – those who have lost their faith – less credence given to the testimony of women in murder trials because they are “too emotional�?, and a ban on all music except the banging of a none-membraned drum, his presence was not criticised by anyone from the council. The only voice of protest came from the Monmouth Tory MP David Davies.
I suppose the failure of many British newspapers to support and expound the liberal values of the European Enlightenment derives from the fact that they do not share them.
Now I want to end on a positive note, and that conveniently brings me right back to Wales. I believe the Welsh media is, in general, much more positive about the EU than the media in England. The pity is that so many people in Wales choose to ignore the Welsh press and prefer to buy newspapers produced in London – but that’s another story. The dominant European story in Wales has been EU structural funds – Objective One and now the Convergence Fund. Put simplistically, the EU has been seen as the hero, providing funds for the rejuvenation of the Welsh economy, while the UK Government – in the guise of the Treasury, which won’t provide match funding – as the villain. Now that’s a story which has been well worth telling.
NB This speech was delivered before the assassination of Benazir Bhutto

]]> Why the coalition will stay the course tag:blogs.walesonline.co.uk,2007:/specialadvisor//152.10919 2007-11-29T10:01:33Z 2008-06-16T15:11:48Z Speech given by Martin Shipton to a seminar organised by the CentreForum think tank at the National Assembly on Wednesday November 28 THIS week, on successive days, I have found myself writing two stories that illustrate very clearly how difficult... Martin Shipton Speech given by Martin Shipton to a seminar organised by the CentreForum think tank at the National Assembly on Wednesday November 28

THIS week, on successive days, I have found myself writing two stories that illustrate very clearly how difficult it might appear to predict how the Labour-Plaid Cymru coalition will pan out.
On Sunday I spoke to Dafydd Wigley, curious to hear exactly what his position on going to the House of Lords might be, now that Plaid has abandoned its longstanding objection to sending members there.

]]> It was already clear that what swung members of Plaid’s national council behind the notion was the specific need to help smooth the passage of Welsh legislative plans through the upper house. But in outlining his view of the circumstances under which he would prefer to go there, Mr Wigley took matters a stage further. He advocated the idea of forging a “coalition team�? of peers from both Labour and Plaid, which could act as some kind of educating force in the Lords, seeking to persuade those peers who are sceptical about the orders in council process that will be used to grant the Assembly legislative powers to ditch their objections and effectively rubber-stamp proposals coming from Cardiff Bay. The former Plaid president suggested such a team could be vital in heading off the possibility of Lords’ vetoes, and even suggested the names of three former Labour AMs he would like to join him in the august chamber.
Then on Monday I received an email from the Labour AM Alun Davies, ironically a former protegé of Dafydd Wigley’s in the period when he was a Plaid “Young Turk�?. Mr Davies’s email contained a letter he had just sent to Glyn Mathias, the Electoral Commissioner for Wales, who coincidentally and irrelevantly happens to be his prospective father-in-law. If Dafydd Wigley’s proposal can be seen, at least on one level, as an attempt to extend the remit of the One Wales agreement to another place, Alun Davies’s letter seemed in no way designed to make collaboration between the two parties any easier. He took his cue from a ruling last week by the Standards and Privileges Committee of the House of Commons, which declared advertisements placed by the three Plaid MPs in newspapers during the run-up to the Assembly election as a misuse of their communication allowance for political campaigning purposes. Mr Davies was pulling no punches. He accused Plaid of operating both fraudulently and illegitimately. But he went even further. He called for an investigation by the Electoral Commission into whether a number of election results – including that in his own Mid and West region – should be declared null and void as a result of what he argued was “illegal�? campaigning.
The head of the Electoral Commission in Wales, Kay Jenkins, was quick to put Mr Davies right on the legal issues: there would be no question of any election re-runs. But the interesting element here is what we make of an intelligent if only recently elected Labour backbencher making such remarks about his party’s partners in government. Mr Davies told me he thought it would be wrong of him to censor himself and not raise the matter publicly because of the One Wales deal he supported. But I gather that once the matter was raised through the usual channels of communication between Plaid and Labour, possible radio appearances did not go ahead.
Now it seems to me that different as these stories are, taken together they show that the rules of the coalition game remain uncertain. Dafydd Wigley was doing what he has done with varying degrees of success throughout his political career – floating an idea that appears to be non-partisan, but which also seeks to serve his party’s political and constitutional aims: to push Welsh Labour further down the path to a self-governing Wales, and to create a joint front of Plaid and Labour pro-devolutionists to take on in another setting (ie Westminster) Labour’s anti-devolutionists. It will be fascinating to see the extent to which Mr Wigley can pull this off, although he starts with a great advantage he has never had before, in that both parties at the Assembly want to see their joint legislative programme get through.
It would be tempting to see Alun Davies’s contribution merely as a bit of political grandstanding, designed to reassure those in Labour who haven’t signed up to the love-in with Plaid that the old hostilities can still be nurtured and expressed. But there is far more significance in it than that. It’s an expression of the great fear within sections of Welsh Labour: that the party is in retreat, that its predominance in Wales is no longer a given, and that while the creation of the coalition with Plaid may have become inevitable, it is not necessarily a lifeline that will last.
The fact is that Welsh Labour had the fright of its life when the Rainbow coalition of Plaid, the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats became a real runner. Before the election and in the brief period after when virtually everyone assumed there would be another coalition with the Lib Dems, the Rainbow was little more than a whimsical add-on used by political journalists as an antidote to predictable outcomes. It was only when it became a credible option, indeed the favourite, that Labour was forced to take a deal with Plaid seriously.
At the level of the Assembly Government itself, the leading figures of both parties appear to be getting on with each other famously. That, at least, is what they would have us believe. Before the election, we learned from a leaked internal party document written by a Labour special adviser that Plaid Cymru was perceived as being incapable of running a cockle stall, let alone a country. Plaid’s description of the way Labour was running Wales was barely more flattering. There was a period when Labour was constantly portraying Ieuan Wyn Jones as a pathetically weak leader, until they toned the message down when they feared he might be forced out of the leadership. Before the Assembly election, Labour focused on Plaid’s “grossly irresponsible and unaffordable�? spending plans.
But all of that has now been airbrushed from history in the same way that a Communist Minister who had fallen from favour was pixelled out of official photographs in post-war Czechoslovakia. Rhodri and Ieuan have forged a partnership based on mutual trust – but then they always got on with each other anyway, even when Rhodri’s party was saying rude things about Ieuan, and Ieuan was accusing Rhodri’s team of gross incompetence in its management of the Welsh economy.
For the moment, the love-in persists. At least so far as those involved in the administration are concerned. And it’s difficult to see how they could be shaken apart – for better or worse, the two parties are in it together. The draft budget has been published, and while there are plenty of interest groups who are unhappy with the settlement – none more so than local government – once the budget has been fixed, it will essentially run until the end of the current Assembly. It’s not going to get any bigger, and Plaid will be, if not content, reconciled to manage with what they’ve got, especially given private polling evidence that suggests their credibility with the electorate is significantly up since they entered government. Labour, of course, has nowhere else to go.
Any problems over legislation – and it already seems there have been disagreements behind the scenes over the breadth or otherwise of Legislative Competence Orders in two areas, the environment and affordable housing – are much more likely to be between Cardiff Bay and Westminster/Whitehall than between the coalition partners.
The All Wales Convention is likely to report before the end of 2009, but even if it is lukewarm about the prospects of an immediate referendum on primary lawmaking powers, it is unlikely to result in the coalition breaking up. Neither Labour nor Plaid want to hold a referendum before there is certainty about a positive outcome.
Outside the administration itself, however, we can expect to see various manifestations of discontent from elements in both parties. What a shame there are such few parts of Wales where they will be fighting each other with ferocity in next May’s council elections.

]]> First big test for the Labour-Plaid coalition tag:blogs.walesonline.co.uk,2007:/specialadvisor//152.10918 2007-10-10T16:49:05Z 2008-06-16T15:11:48Z The reaction of the two parties of government to the tough Comprehensive Spending Review settlement has been fascinating to observe. On past occasions, Labour ministers in the National Assembly have been happy to sing in chorus with Labour ministers in... Martin Shipton The reaction of the two parties of government to the tough Comprehensive Spending Review settlement has been fascinating to observe. On past occasions, Labour ministers in the National Assembly have been happy to sing in chorus with Labour ministers in London about the superb rises in the Assembly block grant thanks to the excellent stewardship of public finances, and how the money would be spread across Wales to everyone's satisfaction. Meanwhile, regardless of the details of the settlement, the Plaid leadership complained unfailingly at how Wales continues to be robbed by the population-determined Barnett Formula, which takes no account of social need.

]]> This time there was much speculation in advance about how the two new partners would play it. As Finance Minister, Andrew Davies was clearly the right man to speak on behalf of the Assembly Government. But how would he pitch his statement so it satisfied both Labour and Plaid? Was that even possible? And would Ieuan Wyn Jones, Deputy First Minister with responsibility for the Economy, really say nothing, in contrast to his outrage on previous occasions?
In the event, we had Peter Hain and Adam Price singing from contrary hymn sheets in London. Mr Hain predictably issued a statement saying what a great settlement it was for Wales, while equally predictably Mr Price referred to it as the least generous settlement since devolution. Mr Price also made much of some jiggerypokery involving baselines and percentages, a matter not touched on by Mr Hain.
Mr Davies eventually issued a statement describing the settlement as tough, but insisting that it still provided a framework for the two parties' programmes to be delivered. A diplomatic reference to the need for further clarification about the baseline calculations (involving the small sum of £200m) was inserted.
Heavy hints have since been dropped that some projects may have to be postponed. Mr Jones has been silent, leaving the criticisms to Mr Price in London.
The Assembly Government's draft Budget, now due in early November, will be the first real test for the Labour-Plaid coalition. It goes without saying that both parties will be fighting hard behind the scenes to get as many of their manifesto commitments into it as possible. While it would be going too far to say at this stage that the credibility of the whole One Wales deal is on the line, it is certainly under pressure. Plaid activists did not vote to enter a coalition with Labour that within months has to push through spending cuts.Labour veterans, of course, will recall similar dilemmas from the not too distant past.

]]> Why our politicians have no balls tag:blogs.walesonline.co.uk,2007:/specialadvisor//152.10917 2007-10-09T11:25:00Z 2008-06-16T15:11:47Z “No taxation without representation�? was the battle cry of the American colonials in their struggle against the British in the 18th Century. While the circumstances are clearly a long way from 21st Century Wales, the link between taxation and representation... Martin Shipton “No taxation without representation�? was the battle cry of the American colonials in their struggle against the British in the 18th Century. While the circumstances are clearly a long way from 21st Century Wales, the link between taxation and representation is one that should give devolution watchers pause for thought – especially in the context of the UK Government’s Comprehensive Spending Review (CSR).
Elsewhere, in places where devolution is entrenched in the constitution and mindset of the people – in the United States, Germany and Spain, to give but three examples – different tiers of government all have the ability to raise money for themselves.

]]> Here in Wales, despite the creation of our National Assembly, the amount of money available for public services is entirely dependent on decisions taken by the Chancellor in England. That is why policy makers and pundits will this afternoon be studying in great detail the statistical tables of the CSR. Alistair Darling’s decision on how much should be spent on the NHS in England is of particularly crucial importance to us in Wales: the figure represents about 40% of the calculation of the Barnett Formula, which determines how much the block grant sent to the Assembly amounts to. Decisions about the funding of other English responsibilities, like education, make up the rest of the calculation.
The fact that AMs have less power to determine how much money is available to them than the smallest community council – which has the power to set a precept – is surely a severe handicap. At a UK level, much political discourse revolves around decisions over whether taxes should be decreased, put up, introduced or abolished. Power over taxation allows a considerable leeway to political parties in framing their priorities. Last week’s spectacular Conservative opinion poll bounce has largely been attributed to the promise to scrap inheritance tax below a £1m threshold. No such promise, of course, could be made in Wales, where parties have to make do with the block grant handed to them by the UK Government.
The lack of power in fiscal areas explains why the four parties at the Assembly agree about so much, despite all the rhetoric. It made the prospect of a Plaid Cymru/ Conservative/Liberal Democrat administration a serious contender following May’s election. That “rainbow�? option will remain until the Assembly gets tax-varying powers – in other words, for the foreseeable future. It is difficult to imagine a Yes vote in Wales in a referendum giving the Assembly Government the right to vary taxation.
In the mean time, we are left with a somewhat emasculated institution – in other words, politicians without balls.

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