Articles Comments

David Porter » Articles at Suite 101

A Welcome in the Vales: Where Is the Welsh Economy Going?

September 4th, 2012 | Add a Comment

 

Whether down in the gloomy depths of valleys or high on the hills of optimism, Wales’ economy is in the spotlight as discussion continues about direction.

In the traditional-nostalgic Welsh anthem, We’ll Keep a Welcome, the chorus goes: We’ll keep a welcome in the hillside/We’ll keep a welcome in the Vales/This land you knew will still be singing/When you come home again to Wales’. That’s determination to keep going, look on the bright side and welcome people home.

Economic realities don’t live up to folk culture and song, but the fact is, that like much of the rest of Britain, Wales has the necessary resilience, commitment, ideas and drive to regenerate and thrive. Of course, different people hold different views.

Professor Dylan Jones-Evans is Director of Enterprise and Innovation at the University of Wales. He is also Chairman of the Conservative Party’s Economic Commission for Wales, and the only person to write a weekly column in the Welsh national newspapers, Western Mail and the Daily Post. In a personal viewpoint in December 2009, he commented on the Welsh economy in terms of ‘myths, fables and fairy-tales’.

Since 1997, Wales experienced the lowest increase in average full time weekly earnings of any UK region; the earnings gap between Wales and the rest of Britain, had widened; many of the poorest UK areas were Welsh – Central Valleys, Gwent Valleys, Anglesey, Conwy and Denbighshire, he said.

Manufacturing the Key?

The Professor stated that the relative importance of manufacturing in Wales rose between 1992-1997 from 27% to 28% with output up 31%, but had declined to 18% with no growth after 1997, when Labour came to power. Agriculture’s contribution also declined.

His political point was about people’s collective amnesia and anti-Tory bias among politicians and media, that Conservative years were bad for Wales. These were the ‘fairy-tales’. In speaking of the need to ‘encourage enterprise, invest in innovation and get the economy back to work’, he sounded identical to other parties’ commentators.

After Labour took power in the Welsh Assembly after the 2011 elections, Edwina Hart was appointed Minister for Business, Enterprise, Technology and Science. She told Western Mail’s Sion Barry in June 2011 her department’s goals and challenges. ‘I find a very risk-averse culture within the Assembly’.

The Official Line

She wanted to improve ‘the clarity’ of business support and decisions and to be ‘strategic’. Welsh entrepreneur Sir Terry Matthews agreed, saying he wanted the Welsh administration to ‘speed up decision making, planning or whatever’.

As a small nation on the edge of Europe, the ‘main economic levers are not with us. We must use what resources we have for best advantage’, Hart said. On the question of transport as an economic driver, she recognised links between better rail connectivity and improved economic performance.

Her brief does not include transport as such, but it cannot be divorced from jobs and growth. There are to be more cross-portfolios, or ‘joined-up thinking’ as the jargon has it. Investment projects such as electrifying the Valley lines into Cardiff, can only happen with total co-operation, governmental and business.

The previous administration identified six sectors in Economic Renewal Programme, including ICT and the creative industries. They could now be widened to take in construction and tourism. The English idea of enterprise zones could move into Wales, with groupings round, not geographic areas, but specific industry sectors.

Support to micro-businesses, encouragement of enterprise and entrepreneurs seem high on the agenda. Utilising the UK government’s Business Growth Fund should help businesses with potential.

It’s recognising that governments can’t make wealth, but need to create environments for wealth to be made. Tax-varying they cannot; borrowing powers may come. Fewer grants, more repayable loans may continue. Former policies are under review, as normal with a new regime.

Five Years Ahead

Edwina Hart has a formidable reputation as an achiever and ‘not suffering fools gladly’. She wanted to see more people in work, up-levelling of skills and Wales ‘seen as the place to come to invest in’. Larger, more strategic regional work is possible, co-ordinating councils’ transport, regeneration and economic development.

Greater collaboration between business and academia is required. Research and Development bring the most exciting new ideas, products and ways of doings things. She felt where English or Scottish universities were already ahead on a given area, Wales should focus on ‘what we are good at’.

Gloomy View From the Hills

An alternative view came in August 2011, when Claire Miller writing in the Western Mail, warned the ‘Welsh economy may already be in recession’. She drew on figures showing retail footfall in Wales dropped by the most in Britain, jobseekers rose by 10,000 in three months to indicate concern about the country’s economic vulnerability.

She cited Dr Calvin Jones, from Welsh Economy Research Unit at Cardiff University who said it was hard to measure the economy, but ‘even if it’s not in recession, growth is so slow that a fraction of a percentage point makes little difference’. Zero growth is just that.

To say that other countries are in the same position is cold comfort. The Welsh economy depends on the UK as a whole, plus European and global contexts. He felt the problem could be worse in Wales because ‘we don’t have much economic resilience’, relying on leaders’ decisions elsewhere.

University of Glamorgan Professor in Economic Development Policy, David Pickernell, concurred broadly, arguing the public sector cannot rescue them with more public expenditure, only the private sector can. Most business leaders reported that despite it being tough, they were determined to survive. Institute of Directors Wales director, Robert Lloyd Griffiths, heard businesses saying: ‘we’ve had this before, we’re getting on with it’.

Niche Making and Selling

Peter Midmore, Economics Professor at Aberystwyth University told Claire Miller that Wales needed to find its economic niche, rather than focussing on strategies like high-tech manufacturing, telecoms infrastructure and green energy that have succeeded elsewhere. Instead, he felt they should try areas others haven’t done so well.

He suggested high-quality food and tourism should contribute more that they do already. Developing a distinctive brand is essential. This was borne out by Village SOS, broadcast on BBC 1 on 31 August 2011.

The prime-time TV programme showed how the small village of Myddfai, Carmarthenshire, had attracted lottery money to create a business selling gifts that drew on the area’s history and skills of locals. It paralleled redevelopment of their ancient village hall into a community resource and enterprise magnet.

Tellingly, when they took the products to a trade fair in London, non-Welsh business people disliked the unpronounceable name. The people of Myddfai stuck with it, though, homing in on the local, niche idea, and it’s working. Perhaps that’s a model for other parts of Wales, too.

First published on Suite 101, 3 September 2011

Image: Welsh Tourism Ripe for Development? – Arpingstone

Filed under: Articles at Suite 101

High Road or Low Road: Where is the Scottish Economy Going?

August 31st, 2012 | Add a Comment

As a think-tank economist warns Scotland will be ‘third-world’ by 2030, it’s timely to ponder financial assets with independence remaining contentious.

As visitors leave Edinburgh after another International Festival, Douglas McWilliams, chief executive of the Centre for Economics and Business Research, said in less than 20 years ‘low living standards and slow economy’ would reduce Scotland to ‘merely a third-world tourist destination’.

Scot McWilliams founded the Centre (Cebr) in 1993 to provide independent forecasts and analysis to private, public and third sector organisations. It specialises in ‘making business sense of economic data’ so clients understand their markets.

For 2011 they predicted yet another Euro crisis, slower growth, retirement at 75 in Japan and banks lending again. McWilliams’ August 2011 comments arose from data suggesting Scotland ‘lacks entrepreneurship, mis-spends money and suffers too much government intervention’, according to The Daily Telegraph (30 August 2011).

Can Scotland Pay Her Way?

Will Scotland ride out the world economic slump, Euro and banking problems, changing demographics and technological advances? In May 2011 when the Scottish National Party (SNP) swept to power in the Scottish Parliament elections, it put independence centre of the debating arena.

Could Scotland prosper outside the UK? Oil is a contentious issue, with some feeling that too much has been given away already. If nationalist parties have traditionally cashed in on past grievances and wrongs, that theory was turned upside down when the SNP won controlling power in the summer of 2011.

Aditya Chakrabortty wrote in The Guardian in May 2011 that their winning 53% of all seats in the Scottish legislature ‘under an electoral system designed to prevent such majorities’ made independence lurch from ‘counterfactual fantasy to outside possibility’. SNP leader Alex Salmond promised to ‘re-industrialise Scotland’, starting with turning the North Sea oil industry into a giant renewable energy industry.

For Chakrabortty, the political debate north of the border wasn’t about whether spending cuts were ‘too far, too fast’, but about an economic strategy that served as job creation policy. In short, it was a ‘metaphor for industrial renewal’. Opponents, who included former Labour energy minister Brian Wilson, argued making the North Sea ‘the Saudi Arabia of wind’ would bring barely 5000 jobs to north-east Scotland.

While debate continues, taxing energy, the follow-up to the collapse of much Scottish-based banking (Royal Bank of Scotland and Halifax Bank of Scotland) and the future of energy renewables are in the spotlight. Chakrabortty quoted Graeme Bell, boss of Green Ocean Energy, who felt an event was needed to get people and economy moving. Severing the union could be that event.

But cost-benefit analyses are not ready, business model not available. Divorce terms are undrafted, division of assets barely considered. Would England’s and Scotland’s respective economics look much the same as now?

Is Tourism the Economic Key?

In July 2010 STV News reported a visit to Heartland Project by Enterprise, Energy and Tourism Minister, Jim Mather. The scheme, supported by VisitScotland, offered vouchers to local attractions when short breaks were purchased.

Mather said that boosting tourism was vital; it contributed over £4bn a year to Scotland’s economy, from 12.5 million UK visitors. It’s an industry that cannot be outsourced, can only stay in Scotland, and will outlive oil and gas.

In May 2004, the Journal of Vacation Marketing published Scottish Tourism: Scenarios and Vision. It said: ‘We have the essential physical ingredients of a successful tourism destination, but to compete in the 21st century we need ambition, strong leadership, commitment and passion’. Has it been forthcoming?

Using 2005 figures as the base, the Scottish Parliament’s Economy, Energy and Tourism Committee (SP Paper 141, 2008) aimed to increase tourism revenue by 50% by 2015. They anticipated the leisure market from all over the world, business tourism and increased expenditure as much as greater numbers would achieve the target. They didn’t anticipate the global economic slowdown, although the trend for ‘stay-cation’ holidays in the UK has mitigated a little.

Is the Movie Industry Economic Salvation?

In August 2011, Magnus Bennett reported on BBC Scotland news how hundreds of people working on a film set gives Scotland’s economy ‘a shot in the arm’. The shooting in Glasgow of part of Brad Pitt’s zombie movie, World War Z, gives temporary work in accommodation, food, transport, extras, designers, crew and scene makers, worth around £2m as estimated by Glasgow City Council

In bigger terms, it makes people want to visit, as ‘ movie-tourism ’ or ‘set-jetting’ is a growth industry. Wicker Man (1973) left a legacy of the Wickerman Festival in Kirkcudbright. Chariots of Fire (1981), Local Hero (1983), Braveheart (1995), Trainspotting (1996) and The Da Vinci Code (2006) are among those which put Scotland on the map and raised revenue, from the films themselves and advertising.

Location income is worth about £20m a year, but supporters of film funding believe the potential is far greater. Hollywood blockbusters have large budgets, and big name stars spend more and attract crowds. Creative Scotland is the agency charged with maximising economic benefit from films. Location manager Belle Doyle told the BBC they were hopeful of further big films.

One neither produced nor filmed in Scotland – Brave, a 3D computer animated fantasy adventure of myths, magic, legends from the Disney/Pixar studios is set in the Highlands with the voices of Billy Connolly, Kelly Macdonald, Emma Thompson, Robbie Coltrane and Julie Walters. It’s slated for release in 2012 and VisitScotland hope it will generate huge worldwide interest in Scotland.

Forthcoming releases starring Ewan McGregor (Perfect Sense) and Tom Hanks and Halle Berry (Cloud Atlas, 2012) have been shot in Scotland. Under the Skin, starring Scarlett Johansson as an alien seductress harvesting body parts in the Scottish Highlands, is expected to bring in tourist business!

Clearly, no one sector is the answer. Just as the Edinburgh Festivals work together, so collectively, each part of the economy buttresses others. There is no question that Scotland is well placed, well-provisioned and well motivated to take every advantage of world economic growth in the future. The only question is whether that is within or without the United Kingdom.

First published on Suite 101, 30 August 2011

Image: Scottish Tourism Could Increase 50% – Christian Bickel

 

Filed under: Articles at Suite 101

Monetising the Web: the New Business Generation’s Holy Grail

August 30th, 2012 | Comments Off on Monetising the Web: the New Business Generation’s Holy Grail

 

Two linked debates about the internet in 2011 are open and equal access, and how to monetise or charge for content successfully without restricting access.

September 2011, the UK’s Guardian is offering a one day course in London, Monitising Digital Content, aimed at small and medium businesses, marketeers and organisations. A website is a brand, as they say, ‘a customer service centre, retail outlet and community.’ Many businesses make money online, but maximising it is the magic ingredient of commercial success in this part of the century.

The Guardian set out key online revenue streams: advertising, paid-for content and e-commerce. Sessions revolve around those keys: How and why do customers buy? Which revenue stream is right for a given business? How to market successfully from own and others’ content? Affiliate marketing, social commerce and lessons from the High Street are also part of the course.

It’s just one event among dozens in the UK alone. Retailing, marketing, direct selling, personalised billboard advertising are all ideas being explored, in some quarters, quite frantically, as the web evolves and the need to make money becomes paramount.

Open Internet

In March 2011, internet founder Sir Tim Berners Lee told a round table event in London, chaired by communications minister Ed Vaizey, that internet service providers (ISPs) must ‘uphold neutrality’ as they strive to handle increasing web data. A two-tier internet (premier league big providers and the rest seen as minnows) would void the net principle of neutrality.

Berners Lee said: ‘The web has grown so fast precisely because we have had two independent markets, one for connectivity, and the other for content and applications’. He was keen that situation should continue. One observer likened it to the principle behind UK rail privatisation in the 1980s/1990s, keeping the fixed track operator separate from the rolling stock providers. Of course, that is still not without controversy.

Minister Vaizey summarised the event’s three agreed principles: ‘The first, users should be able to access all legal content. Second, there should be no discrimination against content providers on the basis of commercial rivalry. Third, traffic management policies should be clear and transparent’.

Fear of Abuse

Because web experience often began with non-commercial, information-gathering contexts, many failed to see business opportunities. Once business online really took off, so many people were subjected to so many varied scams, that some concluded no legitimate money could be made from it and the security risks were too high.

However, one only has to look at the success of Google, Facebook, Microsoft and Amazon, for instance, to realise that they are growing revenue at a massive rate. In July 2011, The Daily Telegraph’s Richard Blackden reported on Google’s second-quarter profits jumping 36% to $2.51bn (£1.54bn) as they expanded into mobile (cell phone) and display advertising.

In the same month, Amazon reported quarterly sales up 51%, but net income down 8% from a year ago. They forecasted sales to continue to rise, citing strong continuing consumer interest in their Kindle eBook reader. BBC Business News reported Jeff Bezos, Amazon’s Chief Executive as saying: ‘Low prices, expanding selection, fast delivery and innovation are driving the fastest growth we’ve seen in over a decade.’

Operating costs were up, but so was their investment in cloud computing technology. The impact of cloud computing is just becoming apparent, so the internet giant should be sitting pretty in the long run.

Thinking Differently

It’s probably a given in the 21st century, that man is still at the dawn of the communication, data sharing/searching, networking, global/borderless trading opportunities of the internet. There is still a digital divide between the haves and have-nots, and education is not equal around the world, but increasingly positive aspects of net commercialisation outweighs negativity.

People might assume that the giants experiment, but basically have got it right, if sales/profits/jobs are coming on stream. The Daily Telegraph of 22 August 2011 carried an interview by David Jones, chief executive of Havas, the second-largest advertising group in the UK and fifth in the world. He told Andrew Cave, that “Facebook has got it all wrong’.

He acknowledged Facebook with 750m users was ‘doing very well’, but he felt ‘the actual revenue Facebook generates is not in line with its profile’. He said they use the old monetising model, going after advertising dollars rather than the new model, ‘creating clever new ways of making money through genuine retail transactions’.

Jones suggested Facebook should say to Starbucks, for instance: ‘for everybody who logs onto Facebook whilst at Starbucks and buys a coffee, would you give us 0.1% of a dollar?’ Facebook should then tell consumers that if 20,000 buy a Starbucks coffee today, they’ll get a 15% discount.

They could accumulate that across McDonalds, Burger King, KFC and a host of retail outlets where people could log onto Facebook by mobiles or screens provided in the shops. Suddenly, he reckoned, there is enormous potential for major revenue streams.

New Definitions

That is nothing to do with advertising. It’s linking retail, brands and technology. He believed that the old interruptive advertising will not be sufficient, when users have an incentive to engage in ‘collaborative consumption’. A good discount works wonders. He thought there will be real competition amongst vendors as customers click around for bargains in a particular product or geographical location.

David Jones is upbeat about the digital/social/commercial future. This century will be about non-government organisations, transparency, business and individuals ‘having great intentions and great execution’, which the last one didn’t have.

First published on Suite 101, 30 August 2011, but still relevant in many ways.

Image: Facebook Could Be Making Even More Money! – Maxo

Filed under: Articles at Suite 101

The British Policing Poisoned-Chalice Debate Begins

August 28th, 2012 | Add a Comment

How Much Equipment Should Police Deploy? - Edward Betts

Traditional bobby-on-the-beat policing died years ago under a tide of social engineering. Now, who’d be a cop? Is it a job few will now touch for any money?

The ‘Dixon of Dock Green’ (1950s TV police series) style of consensual policing, with jovial, kindly and trustworthy walking coppers keeping everyone safe, vanished long before August 2011’s riots. Some think problems began when the police ‘force’ became the police ‘service’.

News on just one day (21 August) from one national newspaper (The Sunday Telegraph) illustrates the problems faced by those policing contemporary Britain, the policed and the taxpayers paying for it.

All Bad News Stories

The paper reported the search for the new chief of the Metropolitan police as ‘in chaos’: government officials persuading officers to apply. The deadline was put back so others could be found after only one applied for the vacancy that arose following the resignation of Sir Paul Stephenson in the wake of the scandal over links between senior Met officers and News International.

There was a piece about Stephen House, Chief Constable of Strathclyde, who had suddenly become front-runner for the post, following his Community Initiative to Reduce Violence (CIRV) success in tackling Glasgow’s gang culture. Aggressive, outspoken policing was said to be the heart of his success in Scotland’s largest force. Would that be better received than American ‘super cop‘ and street gang expert Bill Bratton taking over, following success in New York and Los Angeles?

Jason Lewis reported that leading police officers have set up ‘a national masonic lodge where they can meet in secret, in defiance of fears about the secret society’s influence on the criminal justice system’. Without judging masons or individual officers’ desire to participate, the fact is that freemasonry sometimes undermines trust in the impartiality of police and judiciary.

Lewis reported in a separate story that over two hundred Met police officers and support staff have been caught ‘accessing the highly sensitive Police National Computer for their own ends’. The database holds names, personal descriptions of people, vehicles, property and crimes. The use of the computer to fight crime is controversial, but campaigners opposed to a big-brother surveillance society were alarmed at the abuse of supposedly secure systems.

There was a comment piece from Janet Daley about politicising riots. Either they were from a deep social malaise beginning in the 60s and rioters simply copied bankers’ and MPs’ greed; or what happened is: ‘the great tacit agreement that held civic life together’ has been blown apart. She said the unspoken confederacy and certainty between police, parents, teachers, judges and politicians was gone; all had to work to restore confidence.

Finally, the lead editorial called for the new Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police to ‘be open to reform’ after his two predecessors left under clouds of either political proximity or poor judgements. That’s a lot of policing stories for one edition of a paper.

The Problems

The Macpherson Report (1999) into the 1993 killing of black London teenager Stephen Lawrence by white boys, found the ‘institutionally racist’ Metropolitan Police guilty of incompetence. It provoked discussion about race relations and policing, and there were some changes in police procedures.

There are periodic claims of systemic corruption in the police, many catalogued with names and dates and quotes, outcomes from enquiries and information about what happened to individuals at Police Corruption, a campaigning website. Some of the cases are from the USA, but most are British-grown.

Police are sometimes criticised for the policy of investigating every report by anybody ‘offended’, however nonsensical the allegation, even leading to women breast-feeding being made to feel like criminals. This led in July 2008 to the then Labour government spelling out that mothers are protected under the Sexual Discrimination Act when breast-feeding in public places, whatever the baby’s age.

The penal system is perceived as too soft by many. A YouGov poll published in The Sunday Times (21 August) suggested 48% believed harsh sentences meted out to August rioters and looters are ‘about right’, but 31% said they were too soft. Yet not all judges are themselves innocent of human traits they encounter in their courts.

Deputy District Judge David Messenger called by police ‘the worst detainee they had dealt with’ was fined for behaving like a drunken lout and damaging a police cell (Daily Telegraph, 30 Sept 2003). Former Crown Court Judge Bruce Macmillan was fined and disqualified for drink-driving offences (BBC News, 12 November 2009). Judge Beatrice Bolton was fined for failing to keep a dog under control (JournalLive, 1 June 2011).

The Answers?

All the mishaps, misjudgements, corrupt few are the minority. Most citizens accept police in general do a difficult job well. Still, the Government has proposed measures to reform policing. The most controversial is locally-elected commissioners. The Eastern Daily Press ran a campaign against the very idea through August 2011, arguing: ‘if it ain’t broke (in Norfolk), don’t fix it’.

As riot dust settled and debate began in earnest about policing, David Stringer wrote in The Guardian that the cherished culture of British restraint (police didn’t fire a shot in the riots) and low-key, courteous approaches to problems were coming under pressure as budget cuts were confirmed.

He quoted policing and criminology expert/author Maurice Punch, who said Britain was ‘at a turning point’ as people asked what kind of policing do we want? The debate is urgent, with London’s 2012 Olympic Games less than a year away, and continuing threats from terrorists, cyber-criminals and future violent street outbreaks ever-present dangers.

Time is on nobody’s side. Yet decisions cannot be taken lightly, as the shape of policing for the next twenty years could be at stake. Are British cops too soft or too harsh? Do they have enough powers, or too many? Does Britain need dedicated riot squads? Water cannon and dyes? Curfews? More prisons? More arming of police? Should politicos direct and criticise police tactics?

Can police budgets be balanced and better deployment used? Does the nation need more consultations/consultants? More enquiries, even a Royal Commission? Are they managers’ way of dealing with a crisis? Is this to be kicked into the long grass and hope for the best?

The answers are more questions, but unless British people ask and discuss honestly and openly, things may not get better.

First published on Suite 101, 21 August 2011, as the riots died down and the enquiries began.

Image: How Much Equipment Should Police Deploy? – Edward Betts

Filed under: Articles at Suite 101

The Gruesome Appeal of Executions and Executioners in the Arts

August 27th, 2012 | Add a Comment

Tower of London: Nobles Were Beheaded Here - Sarah Q

Many popular books, films, songs and poetry have been inspired by people who (officially) take the lives of others, and the manner of their departures.

Shakespeare once said that nothing became a particular man in his life, except the leaving of it. Three hundred years ago, the public flocked to watch the entertainment of executions. Broadsheets of last words or narrative songs were best-sellers; souvenirs. So, artistic use of executions and executioners has been around for a long time.

Modern executioners’ hoods are for sale, for people who want to imagine or play games. Execution is the corollary of discussion over the merits or otherwise of the death penalty. How is it done? Public or private? Descriptions like ‘state-sanctioned murder’, ‘system sponsored killing’, or ‘offing the inconvenient’ convey strong feelings.

Public desire for revenge, for punishment that fits the crime is extremely powerful. When ePetitions were launched by the UK Parliament in August 2011, it’s telling that among the popular front runners, gathering many votes, was a demand for the return of capital punishment.

Literature’s Rich Seam

It’s in the arts that views for and against can be given full reign. Norman Mailer’s The Executioner’s Song (1979) followed the tragic career of Gary Gilmore, described as ‘an intractably violent product of America’s prisons’. He was famous for two reasons: robbing and killing two men in cold blood, and insisting on his right to die for his crime.

His protracted fight against what Good Reads described as ‘a system that seemed paradoxically intent on keeping him alive long after it had sentenced him to death’, was compelling. It illustrated the fascination of the process from court to firing squad, and won the Pulitzer Prize in 1980. Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood (1966, film 1967) also arose from criminal execution.

Novels concerned with executions/executioners include Charles Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities (1859) set in the French Revolution with its guillotine. Billy Budd (started 1888, subsequently revised in different versions; Benjamin Britten’s 1924 opera; stage play 1949; and film 1962) was about discipline aboard an 18th century ship. It was good versus evil with a naive young man hanged from the yardarm.

The Book of Daniel by E L Doctorow, A Perfect Evil by Alex Kava, Caleb Williams by William Godwin and Sleep Toward Heaven by Amanda Eyre Ward were on a list published by Library Thing. Coffin for King Charles: The Trial of Charles I by CV Wedgwood drew on the historical reality of the beheading of the monarch in 1649, and Nine Days a Queen, about the short life on Lady Jane Gray by Ann Rinaldi, also used fact.

Other titles included News From the Dead (Mary Hooper); The Pardon (James Grippando); A Perfect Execution (Tim Binding); The Hangman’s Hymn (PC Doherty); The Hanging Tree (VAC Gatrell) and The Last Face You’ll Ever See (Ivan Solotaroff). There was also The Executioner Always Chops Twice (Geoffrey Abbott) who also produced The Book of Execution: An Encyclopedia of Methods of Judicial Execution, What a Way to Go and Rack, Rope and Red Hot Pincers.

Other Art Forms

Goya’s painted masterpiece, Third of May 1808, is of an execution. The ‘Incredible String Band’ entitled their 1968 album, The Hangman’s Beautiful Daughter, and Sharyn McCrumb called her 1993 novel the same. The Hangman’s Daughter (2010) was a novel by Oliver Potzsch, while The Executioner’s Daughter (2000) was a work of fiction from Laura E. Williams.

Marjorie Blackman’s acclaimed racial-relationship series for young people Noughts and Crosses featured execution, with a thought-track stopped mid-sentence as a victim dropped. Another dystopian, speculative fiction with a hanging was Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale (1985, movie 1990, opera 2000)

Executions of The Day published top ten movie executions, from Schindler’s List (1993), Dead Man Walking (1995), Cromwell (1970), The Name of the Rose (1986) about burning for heresy, Braveheart (1995) and Sophie Scholl (2005) that used the actual guillotine which executed the real Sophie in 1943. The Passion of the Christ (2004) featured the crucifixion of Christ for real, while Monty Python’s Life of Brian (1979) lampooned it.

Apocalypto (2006) relished graphic beheadings. The Green Mile (1999) had three electric chair departures. And that’s without getting into horror or Once Upon a Time in the West (1968), Hang ‘em High (1968) and a host of western movie stringings up.

There was also a 1995 documentary, Executions, featuring beheading, stoning, shooting, electrocution, guillotining and chemical killing (gas chambers, lethal injections). Kill Bill (2003; 2004) and mafia films often used vigilante, semi-judicial execution. The Ring and The Book was a narrative dramatic poem by Robert Browning about a trial and failed death sentence appeal.

The Facts

British hangman, Albert Pierrepoint, (his family produced three hangmen) was portrayed in Executioner Pierrepoint, movies Let Him Have It (1991), 10 Rillington Place (1971) and Pierrepoint (2006). He was understandably fascinating, dispatching over 600 men and women, including Nazi war criminals, acid-bath murderer Haigh, simple minded Derek Bentley posthumously pardoned in 1998 and Ruth Ellis, the last woman hanged in Britain (1955).

Professor Daniel Jonah Goldhagen’s controversial Hitler’s Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust claimed Germans connived happily in the ‘Final Solution’ of extermination of the Jews. For him, it was a ‘black hat’ and ‘white hat’ issue, which also revealed continuing fascination with the last world war.

The actual Execution Protocol of America’s capital punishment by Stephen Trombley is available to buy. Jack Kevorkian, dubbed “Doctor Death’ because of his assisting dozens of suicides, wrote Prescription Medicide: The Goodness of Planned Death. Execution by suicide is perhaps a legitimate subsection of human behaviour, as is suicide by police shooting.

Public execution by elephant was in South, Southeast Asia and India a common method of execution. They were trained to dismember, crush and torture prisoners and kill quickly or slowly. When European travellers started arriving, their journals record their horror. These were unique literature and eye-witness accounts, but the practice was also used in ancient Rome, renowned for barbaric public spectacle.

Whatever the method and reason, the fact is, executions may enrich the arts in some form.

First published on Suite 101, 19 August 2011

Image: Tower of London: Nobles Were Beheaded Here – Sarah Q

Filed under: Articles at Suite 101

Zero Tolerance in Britain: Right Time for an American Solution?

August 15th, 2012 | Add a Comment

People Want Action Before Another Clean-Up - Alastair


As the British public demand action after the August Riots, is a one-size-fits-all idea from the USA the answer, or will it stoke future flames?

Indelible spray-dyeing, water cannon, closing social networks are hotly debated in the wake of England’s costly August 2011 riots, that led to almost 3000 arrests. Zero tolerance is now added to the arsenal of ideas.

Free Dictionary defines Zero Tolerance as the policy of applying ‘laws or penalties to minor code infringements in order to reinforce its overall importance and enhance deterrence’. Starting in 1980s’ USA as the ‘War on Drugs’, it was action against drugs and weapons.

Most US school districts employ zero tolerance extending to hate-speech, harassment, fighting, bullying and dress codes, supporters arguing it promotes safety/well-being of children and young people and sends a powerful message. Opponents point out that it’s inflexible, and common sense cannot be applied, so minor infractions have to be dealt with which are time consuming and encourage rebellion.

Federal aid is tied to adoption of zero policies which also include ‘three strikes and you’re out’ as a tagline. Schools not enforcing them risk civil lawsuits from victims of violence. It has been broached in small ways in the UK, but is now high on the agenda.

The Supercop Approach

Amidst blame, recriminations and finger-pointing in the aftermath of riots and looting, the causes take a lot of time and thought; people accept that. The biggest imperatives are quelling future unrest and strategies to prevent it recurring. Most people feel forces of law and order need strengthening.

Prime Minister David Cameron clashed with police in saying their tactics were misguided at the start of the riots in treating them as public order rather than criminality. With years of police seeing themselves, and being legislated to be, instruments of social engineering rather than a ‘force’, it was hardly surprising.

Cameron said he wanted US-style crime strategies (code for ‘zero tolerance’) on Britain’s streets. He invited former New York police chief who also dealt with 1992 Los Angeles riots, Bill Bratton, to share his crime-fighting methods. The broken windows approach or repairing vandalised property quickly, has already been taken to heart by thousands of people cleaning up their own streets after the destruction.

Some commentators observed that the sweeping broom is a more potent symbol than truncheons.

Ian Hanson, from Greater Manchester Police Federation called bringing in ‘Supercop’ Bratton ‘a slap in the face’ for British police. Sir Hugh Orde, Association of Chief Police Officers President, spoke against the move, claiming Britain ‘had no lessons to learn from gang-ridden America’.

Home Secretary Theresa May said she wanted ‘to listen to Mr Bratton’s experience’ among other advice from around Britain and the world. Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith outlined a hardline crackdown on criminal gangs, promising to make their lives ‘hell’ with police activity against them.

He suggested young people hanging out with gangs on streets late at night could be rounded up and taken to police stations for parents to collect. This reflects widespread public horror at the number of children involved in crime and rioting.

Too Draconian? Too Timid?

Civil liberties campaigners have expressed concerns about police harassment of known criminals, rounding up youngsters and pursuing minor offences relentlessly through courts. Widespread criminalising in Britain has not been popular, and Anti-Social Behaviour Orders (ASBOs) have backfired when seen as badges of honour by some youngsters.

Duncan Smith suggested a need to lure people away from gang activity; in effect, a massive cultural change. Education at academy-type schools where discipline, drug treatment and academic help have high priorities, opened the debate about how wide zero tolerance can and should go in Britain.

In the past decade, schools have adopted intolerance to race-hate offences, bullying, weapon carrying, drug activities and some dress codes. If the suppression is paralleled in the world outside school gates, then it has more effect within. In Scotland, for example, a charity, Zero Tolerance seeks to change the causes of men’s violence against women.

They say too often women experience violence from ‘men they are close to and/or who are in a position of power over them’. They believe it’s caused by gender inequality, and violence against women perpetuates the inequality. So already, the term and variations of its concepts are circulating in Britain.

The Other Perspective

Police-State.net is one of many websites warning that the west is slipping into police-run states in the name of combatting terrorism. Kelly Patricia O’Meara wrote an analysis of 2001’s Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act (or USA PATRIOT Act).

People demanded action after the September 11 terrorist atrocities in the US, but she said that ‘critics both left and right are saying it not only strips Americans of fundamental rights but does little or nothing to secure the nation from terrorist attack’. Ron Paul (Texas) was one of only three Republicans to vote against and was outraged by how opponents were stigmatised. He knew it undermined the Constitution, but was made to feel unpatriotic.

Paul’s main objection was how federal government can commit surveillance on all without proper warrants. The protection of the 4th Amendment against unreasonable searches and seizures was gone. Searches without warning, without explanation were legalised. It applied to any criminal activity, not simply terrorism.

Already in Britain, investigators can get information from internet use and phones without warrants and anti-terrorist legislation is used in minor crimes, tax collection and public service provisions. Gathering intelligence covers a huge range of police (and related authorities’) activities. Should the August 2011 failure of intelligence justify further loss of individual liberty to give authorities more powers?

Meanwhile, In Britain anger, sense of betrayal and failure, impotence and hopelessness, belonging to/excluded from communities are felt in different but strong ways by many: people from every race and background, rioters, looters, youngsters, unemployed, unskilled, morally-bankrupt, victims, families, public service workers and law-abiding residents.

So, is zero tolerance worth a try, even if it costs some liberty?

First published on Suite 101, 15 August 2011. One year on from the riots that provoked the article, republished on this site to be part of my archive.

Image: People Want Action Before Another Clean-Up – Alastair

Filed under: Articles at Suite 101

The British Stand-Up Is Today’s Fashionable, Must-Have Performer

August 13th, 2012 | Comments Off on The British Stand-Up Is Today’s Fashionable, Must-Have Performer

Stand-Up: Fashionable Performers - Alikhalid82

 
Alternative comedy is now mainstream centre stage, comedians are celebrities, humour is a popular leisure pursuit. Edinburgh is part of the explanation.

UK media is full of comics, people who’ve made it working a comedy crowd, arguably the hardest school of performance art. Successfully being funny on stage and screen seems to be sufficient to travel overseas being filmed in unusual/difficult/troubled places.

There are more comedy clubs, comedy on television, comedians making TV ads: it has definitely gone respectable. They host game shows (Alexander Armstrong: Pointless; Michael McIntyre: Britain’s Got Talent). Up-and-coming comedians, like Sarah Millican, appear on numerous shows, too (The One Show, The Marriage Ref). But are today’s practitioners funny?

Veteran comedy legend Ken Dodd told TV Times (August 2011) after 57 years of professional performing, he found modern comedy ‘aggressive and below the belt’. He felt his type of ‘optimistic observational’ comedy, where in a 3 hour show people forget cares and worries, doesn’t get the exposure it deserves. ‘The media are obsessed with the new kind of mirth, mostly satire’. His remarks echoed old-school clowns, Bob Mortimer and Vic Reeves: ‘today’s comics are either too serious or brutal’.

Throughout History

Not only is comedy personal (one man’s joke is another man’s tragedy), but it’s rooted in time and place. Watching old TV comedy reveals a chasm with today, leaving many wondering why they laughed years ago. In a more cynical age in transition as technology changes everything, new comedy will be different from old.

Performers haven’t always been celebrities. Plato in The Republican warned that imitating others on stage could only lead to their sins and faults insinuating into actors’ psyches. But that is the very nature of performing: imitating, copying, exaggerating, either in a totally absorbing (Stanislavskian) style, or slipping in and out of role (Brechtian) like into a coat.

Whether behind the mask of Greek and Roman drama, the greasepaint of Victorian theatre or the barebone/reality faces of now, the performer creates tragedy or comedy. That is the essence of performance. The medieval jester was kept to amuse the king or noble, but his humour wasn’t always welcomed or appropriate.

The Edinburgh Effect

The Edinburgh International Festival is the try-out for all sorts of performance, from comedy to dance, physical theatre to fusion. But comedy has particularly found a home in Edinburgh. The Edinburgh Comedy Awards, born in 1981, now sponsored by Fosters, but previously by Perrier and others have become ‘the oscars of comedy’. They’ve put many comedians from the League of Gentlemen to Al Murray on the cultural map.

Categories and prizes have grown over the years. 1981 winners were Cambridge Footlights (including Hugh Laurie, Stephen Fry and Emma Thompson). Dylan Moran, Frank Skinner, Steve Coogan, Jimmy Carr, Omid Djalili, Peter Kay, Eddie Izzard and Ross Noble are among those who have won or been nominated for awards, which became career launchpads.

American actress Sarah Bernhard said: ‘I don’t consider myself a comic but a performer. A comic tells bad jokes’. Some contemporary performers would agree, but most accept that Edinburgh is the live core of the comedy explosion. The Comedy on the Fringe is in its fourth year, an essential wing of the Edinburgh International Festival, yet with a life of its own.

The 2011 line-up stretched from household names to young rising stars. According to promoters: ‘You can quite literally watch great shows from the moment you wake until the time you eventually sleep. And even after 25 days, still have to do the same for another 4 months to see them all!’

Serious newspapers give many columns to comedy. The Daily Telegraph’s Mark Monahan selected favourites from the 2011 offerings: Canadian Glen Wool (No Man’s Land); two shows from Jack Whitehall (Back Chat with his dad, and Let’s Not Speak of This Again) and the Geordie late comer to comedy, Sarah Millican (Thoroughly Modern Millican) because ‘she makes it look so easy’.

He suggested Jeff Leach from Big Brother (A Leach on Society) with ‘his insalubrious private life’; Idiots of Ants (Model Citizens) ‘one of the most consistently lively, original, downright hilarious sketch shows going’, and Hannibal Beress (The Hannibal Montanabal Experience), ‘hip young writer’.

Monahan also recommended Mark Nelson (Guilty Pleasure), ‘more barbed wit and dark fodder’; Amateur Transplants (Adam Kay’s Smutty Songs) ‘irreverent reworkings of pop songs’; Michael Winslow (The Man of 10,000 Voices) with his ‘vocal gymnastics’; and The Noise Next Door, ‘three young improv merchants’.

Constantly Evolving

Rob Sharp in The Independent pointed out that 607 out of 2542 shows on the 2011 Edinburgh Fringe were free, the highest proportion ever. This reflected straitened economic times and the spirit of the event. The Free Fringe was founded in 1996 as a ‘counterpoint to the high hire costs charged by best known venues’.

Part of the Fringe is The Laughing Horse Free Festival. Performers are given minimal resources and ask audiences to pay what they think a show is worth. Free Fringe comedians include Robin Ince, Norman Lovett, Tim Key and John Hegley.

One established comedian who didn’t join the flock north to Edinburgh 2011, was Hal Cruttenden. He told The Telegraph (7 August 2011): ‘the comedy world is now so big that the majority of it stays home and cashes in on the work left behind’. He lined up five paying gigs, while in Edinburgh ‘comics will be losing on average ten grand this month’.

He reckoned with the rise of other UK venues and festivals (such as Camden Fringe Festival), he can make a good comedy living by staying home. The point is that performers will always go where gigs and new openings are, both to perform and work up new material. Without that, the art form withers, and the new popularity is to be welcomed.

First published on Suite 101, 12 August 2011

Image: Stand-Up: Fashionable Performers – Alikhalid82

 

Filed under: Articles at Suite 101

Recall of Parliament Is Action Being Seen to be Done

August 11th, 2012 | Add a Comment

Reflecting public fear about rampaging criminality, a one day recall of Parliament can only be a start in debating what action is needed next in Britain.

Governments do not bring back holidaying Members from frequently far-flung corners of the world, lightly. Account has to be taken of maintenance work scheduled for the recesses across the Palace of Westminster. The recess working programmes of staff are disrupted at a cost, as are pre-booked tours.

However, there are times when to do otherwise is to risk political scorn, and allow crises to deepen. People need to feel that their Parliamentary institution is taking matters seriously, and since 1948 it has been recalled 24 times. August 2011 is clearly another such occasion.

By the way, ‘recall’ should not be confused with voters having the right to ‘recall their elected representatives’. In the 2010-2011 Parliamentary session, backbencher Zac Goldsmith MP tabled a Private Members’ Bill calling for an MP who has been dishonest, broken promises or brought the office into disrepute, to be sacked and another election to take place. At present, voters have to wait for an MP to resign before getting another election.

Recall Procedure

An extra day was added to the summer term, 20 July 2011, when Parliament sat on to debate public confidence in British media in the light of the phone-hacking scandal, criminal investigations of corruption and perceived lack of integrity across sections of the media. The debate was entitled: ‘Public Confidence in the Media and Police’.

It was easy to add a day. To reopen for business mid-summer is harder. The Speaker under Standing Order No. 13 (passed in 1948) can only appoint a time to return when asked by the Government of the day. He or she must consider if a recall is to debate matters of ‘public interest’. The House of Lords is normally recalled by the Lord Speaker at the same time. There are similar arrangements in force in the devolved legislatures in Belfast, Cardiff and Edinburgh for recall.

Obviously MPs and peers on holiday will be aware of events, at home or abroad. Social media is active, even on the beaches. They will not be caught out, but may have to make hasty travel arrangements. Not all Members expressed joy at having to return, but several budget airlines reported a ‘scramble’ for seats on planes home. Since 1994 it has been that MPs’ expenses ‘wholly and exclusively attributable to the recall’ are legitimate and met from the public purse.

Previous Recalls

24 September 2002, both Houses were recalled to debate ‘Iraq and Weapons of Mass Destruction’. On 3 April 2002 it came back to debate presenting a ‘Humble Address to Her Majesty expressing the deep sympathies and condolences of this House on the death of Her Majesty, the Queen Mother’.

On 14 September, 4 and 8 October 2001, the Commons were recalled to debate ‘International Terrorism and Attacks in the USA’, while the Lords called their debate: ‘US Terrorist Attacks’. 2-3 September 1998 it returned to consider the Omagh Bomb: Criminal Justice (Terror and Conspiracy) Bill. In May 1995 it was over Bosnia; September 1992 about Government Economic Policy and UN Operations in Yugoslavia, Iraq, Somalia.

September 1998 it was the invasion of Kuwait and 3 and 14 April 1982, the Argentine invasion of the Falklands Islands. June 1974 it was Northern Ireland; January 1974, Fuel; and September 1971, Northern Ireland. May 1970 saw a recall to debate prorogation (the ending of a Session or term) of Parliament, followed by dissolution and a subsequent General Election.

1968 had two recalls, August for Czechoslovakia and Nigeria, January for the Labour Government’s Expenditure Cuts. The Berlin Crisis brought the House back in October 1961 for a week. September 1959 was for prorogation and dissolution. The Suez Crisis of 1956 was debated 12-14 September; October 1951, prorogation and dissolution. It was the Korean War, September 1950 and Devaluation of Sterling, September 1949. The recalls and their subjects chart part of the economic/military/political history of Britain since the last war.

The Political Outcome

As some calm returns and the crime wave peters out, the analysis begins in earnest. It will go deep into every aspect of our legal, education and economic policies, and will be hotly debated. Meanwhile all Party front benchers are currently making similar horror noises at the lawlessness, violence, mindless damage and criminality of riots, although there are dissenting voices about Parliamentary response.

Some left-wing blogs have described the recall as ‘gesture politics’, coming on top of criticism that the Prime Minister, Leader of the Opposition, Chancellor of the Exchequer among others were away on holiday when the crisis broke. Whether politicians should take breaks with their families is a different issue.

The fact is that Parliament should be where Government is held to account/forced to defend policies and MPs get a say too. Recall is the only way during a recess. If there was only Government by press statement, people would soon complain, and rightly.

First published on Suite 101, 11 August 2011, as the riots raged across various cities in England.

Image: Parliament’s Recall Doesn’t Suit All – GraceKelly

Filed under: Articles at Suite 101

Bringing Common Sense to the Common Fisheries Policy

August 10th, 2012 | Add a Comment

A campaign to change failed rules which control deep-sea fishing is a study in the power of television, celebrity and natural justice.

Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, chef, writer, broadcaster and campaigner, is a contemporary ‘celebrity’. He has built a reputation for seasonal, ethically produced food. His River Cottage TV series and recipe books won awards, and he’s Patron of the National Farmers’ Retail and Markets Association.

In the 2000s he became angry about the vagaries of the effects of the EU Common Fisheries Policy (CFP), whereby tons of perfectly good fish were being thrown overboard, because it was illegal to land them. The loss of quality food and environmental damage done to the seabed was an affront to common sense.

The Regulatory Imperative

Labour politician Nye Bevan described Britain as ‘an island of coal surrounded by a sea of fish’. The rules of ‘common resource’ and ‘equal access’ to all member states would soon change the face of British fishing forever, although under the terms of the Treaty of Rome (and subsequent treaties), there was some doubt as to the legality of this applied to fishing.

Christopher Booker and Richard North explained in their book The Great Deception (2003) that when negotiations began in 1970 to admit Britain to what became the European Union, a revision of the international law of the sea would give the waters of applicant nations (Britain, Ireland, Denmark and Norway) 90% of western Europe’s fish, 80% of that in British waters.

Despite governmental political games, industry objections about danger of French boats clearing fish from British waters and point-blank refusal by Norway to make their fisheries their entry price, Britain’s Prime Minister Heath surrendered fisheries to join. January 1973, the UK became part of the club all main political party leaders had aspired to for years.

The Common Fisheries Policy was a theoretical concept to manage fish stocks under pressure, and ensure all member states could fish. Britain had to accept that, even when a massive Spanish fleet joined too. Skulduggery, betrayal, incompetence, ignorance and ideological fanaticism were among insults flung by those opposed to Britain’s loss of sovereignty.

Quotas and Discards

The CFP (sister to the Common Agricultural Policy that subsidised lakes of wine and mountains of butter that couldn’t be sold) has been through a number of changes. As fish stocks of popular species declined (though much scientific evidence is disputed), measures became more absurd. Days-at-sea limits, paying to decommission fishing boats and allocating tradable species quotas to individual countries always favoured those nations who flouted rules.

Britain normally applied rules with an enthusiastic earnestness that won no friends in seaside communities. One policy that stayed was discarding everything above the given species or a species that wasn’t on quota. Over half of the total North Sea catch had to be dumped, Scottish fishermen wasted £40m of fish annually and UN Agricultural Organisation estimated 1.3m tons of fish and marine animals (13% of all catches) were destroyed.

As Britain’s deep-sea fishing capability declined through EU rules and bankruptcies, it became a symbol of her ambiguous relationship with her European ‘partners’. To take just one example of a vanished fleet. Lowestoft, once England’s premier east coast fishing port: from late 1800s to the early 1960s, there were so many boats, a person could walk deck by deck on trawlers right across the harbour. By early 2000s, there was no deepwater fleet left.

Building a Bandwagon

Fearnley-Whittingstall, having learned all this, filmed a journey round the industrial end of British fishing, and found that, in his words, things ‘are not just bad, they’re mad’. He met fishermen, marine conservationists, politicians, supermarket bosses and the fish-eating public, and was so shocked by what he discovered, that he built a major campaign, a coalition of opinion, to raise awareness and demand change to the laws.

The programmes aired on Channel 4 in January 2011, with a progress report follow-up in August 2011. Hugh’s Fish Fight was a snappy title, and some clever PR ploys, like an interactive display in London’s Selfridges store allowing people to text support and see their names instantly displayed, soon gathered thousands of signed up people.

Prince Charles was happy to be seen lending his support. Faced with the gathering momentum of public anger, Members of Parliament were quick to accept the need for a debate in the Commons, which led to the government funding a six month study into what would happen if discards were ended.

This was followed with an open air display outside the EU building in Brussels in full view of MEPs and officials, again with the instant sign-up facility. 700,000 names mainly from the UK, grew as people from other EU nations came on board. It was good marketing and excellent television, partly because discard rules were blatantly indefensible.

In July 2011 the European Commission, led by Fisheries and Maritime Commissioner Maria Damanaki, published proposals for a totally new CFP, which included banning discards, labelled by Heidi Blake of the Daily Telegraph (28 Feb 2011) ‘a bizarre consequence’ of the quota system.

Keeping It Rolling

With the labyrinthine process of EU Commission, Parliament and Council of Ministers, it’ll be another 18 months before proposals become law. That’s a further year and half that Fearnley-Whittingstall has vowed to keep up pressure for reform.

He also urges people to help. Keep badgering politicians, but also rediscover a taste for less popular, nutritious and cheaper fish. Less cod, salmon, haddock and plaice; more dab, flounder, coley and pouting.

His TV profile has already ensured all major British producers will sell tins of only environmentally-sustainable tuna. His Fish Fight has attracted support from celebrities like Stephen Fry, Ricky Gervais, Jamie Oliver and Jeremy Paxman, who said: ‘if discards are conservation, then I’m the Mad Hatter’.

Despite worries about enforcing a new system where all catches are counted against quota and fishing stops when limits are reached, Spanish objections and fear of CCTV cameras on boats, this campaign has won the argument and almost the whole battle.

First published on Suite 101, 9 August 2011

Image: Traditional Fish and Chips – Steven Lilley

Filed under: Articles at Suite 101

Reading ‘The Riot Act’ May Not Be Enough to Quell the Flames

August 9th, 2012 | 1 Comment

 

Would a New Riot Act Help? - Bryan Tong Minh

 
The August 2011 riots in London and other cities, have led to calls for troops, curfews, banning social media and a new Riot Act.

To ‘read someone The Riot Act’ has come to mean an authoritative scolding to overcome troublesome children, youths or adults. Three hundred years ago, as BBC Radio 4 pointed out only days before the Summer 2011 riots took hold in Britain, it meant a far more serious consequence. Hanging was the punishment for insurrection.

The Riot Act was a law that came into force in August 1715 which permitted local authorities to declare a group of twelve or more persons ‘unlawfully, riotously and tumultuously assembled’ and order them to disperse or face punishment. The full title was: ‘An Act for preventing tumults and riotous assemblies, and for the more speedy and effectual punishing the rioters’.

While recriminations and blame for the causes of the riots (unemployment, deprivation, spending cuts, motiveless young people, social networking, criminals and anarchists) are bandied about as people look for an end to the August chaos, some wonder about the ancient ‘Riot Act’.

Is It Needed Now?

A Mayor, bailiff or Justice of the Peace could make a proclamation in a precise form of words: ‘Our Sovereign Lord the King chargeth and commandeth all persons, being assembled, immediately to disperse themselves, and peaceably to depart to their habitations, or to their lawful business, upon the pains contained in the act made in the first year of King George, for preventing tumults and riotous assemblies. God Save the King!’

If a group failed to disperse within an hour of the reading, they were guilty of felony and ‘without benefit of clergy’ could be punished by death. Force could be used to ensure dispersal; anybody assisting was indemnified from legal consequences. To cause or begin to cause damage to places of religious worship,houses, barns and stables was the felony.

There was a 12 month limitation on prosecutions. It was a broad-brush solution, and later (1819 Peterloo Massacre; anti-Trades Unions actions) it became a political device. It gradually slid into disuse, the last times being 1919 and 1929. The Act was repealed in 1973, as the death penalty had been abolished (1965).

However, some people have started calling for a new act in 2011, feeling that the Public Order Act (1986) with a statutory offence of riot, is inadequate. While a minority want the death penalty back, it’s feeling impotence in the face of mindless life-threatening destruction that leads the majority to demand the forces of law and order strengthening.

Some Theory of Crowd Behaviour

In 1994, David D. Haddock, Professor of Law & Economics, and Daniel D. Polsby, Professor of Law, Northwestern University published Understanding Riots. Although US-biased and out of date in specifics, it had lessons that may need to be learned in Britain. They catalogued the conventional wisdom on riot causes: a catalyst (police shooting a man) creates social rage (racism, poverty, lack of economic opportunity, family breakdown, television and cultural disorientation).

They accepted that these elements are part of the story, yet social conditions are constantly present, riots are episodic. Sometimes mob actions can be triggered by good news (like sports fans who rampage when their team has won); ‘they’re having a party’.

A crowd is not an incipient riot, or every big sports event would turn into violence. The daily criminal activities in each corner of the country do not amount to an orgy of theft, or ‘recreational looting’ as has been coined. Riots are coordinated acts of many; there’s a leadership in ‘the ecology of a mob’.

Certainly the speed of social media means groups can be directed, as was seen in the ‘student fees’ protests of December 2010. Haddock and Polsby felt that ‘Schelling Incidents’ play in riots. These don’t tell people what to do; they tell people what others will probably do.

Thomas Schelling wrote The Strategy of Conflict (1960): ‘It is the essence of mob formation that potential members have to know not only where and when to meet but just when to act so that they act in concert’.

In this respect, TV and social media have provided coverage of incidents, in effect, telling others which social life focal points to go or where police forces are concentrated. ‘Overt leadership can be identified and eliminated by authority’, and it’s this angle that may lead to an end of the current wave.

The authors described police inadequacy becoming impotence as inevitable. For a time, anarchy rules. Some police responses themselves trigger further escalation. They felt ‘a significant number of the crowd’s members must expect and desire that the crowd will become riotous’. There has to be a critical mass within the crowd who make accurate judgments about the riotous desires and intentions of other members of the crowd.

Role of the Entrepreneur

Finally, the professors argued that there must be a catalyst or entrepreneur to get started on rioting (or looting), prepared to be taken out early, but preferring to hide identity. Crowd mentality, sheep-like, then takes over. The majority of people wait for somebody else to start before following.

As to how to stop a riot, the findings pointed out twin constraints on authorities. One, constitutional law preventing drastic responses; two, financial, as modern urban police forces will always be aware of their budgets. Most people obey laws and are keen to be respected (whatever community they live in), but if either probability of catching offenders rises dramatically, or consequences are enhanced, then rioting will diminish, they felt.

There seems little enthusiasm for calling out the military to patrol and clear the streets. Experiences in Northern Ireland and Iraq have shown how that is a mixed blessing. But new thinking is demanded. Premier David Cameron returned from his holiday to take charge and come up with new ideas for halting it.

The first step was to recall Parliament from its summer recess. He said: ‘It will allow MPs to stand together in condemnation of these crimes and to stand together in determination to rebuild these communities’.

Just as in the darkest days of the last war, the government started to plan the peace, so rebuilding has to be planned for now.

First published on Suite 101, 9 August 2011. Republished on the anniversary of the riots.

Image: Would a New Riot Act Help? – Bryan Tong Minh

Filed under: Articles at Suite 101

« Previous Page
Next Page »