Martin is a member of the panel of leading Conservative thinkers who contribute regular articles for Conservative Home's online think tank CentreRight.com. Martin was asked to write regular articles on Islamic extremism and terrorism. To view Martin's articles there click the icon.

Speeches

(Conservative Party Conference October 2006 - featured on BBC News 24)

This summer David Cameron said that the present Labour government were not doing enough to combat Islamic extremism and terrorism at home and abroad. He was right! Because Labour has been deliberately appeasing parts of the agenda of a number of Islamist groups in the UK in an attempt to hold onto its share of the Muslim vote which has significantly haemorrhaged because of an ill conceived war in Iraq.

Organisations with a significant Islamist influence within them have realised that they are not going to achieve an Islamic state in Britain overnight, so they have adopted a deliberate strategy of seeking to align British law with Islamic sharia law, either by pushing for changes to parliamentary law or by taking test cases to the courts.

The most important part of sharia is blasphemy against Muhammad. It can include any criticism of Muhammad or even the Qur'an and in many Islamic countries, such as Pakistan, where I used to work, it carries an automatic death penalty.

Now was it really pure coincidence that straight after the 2005 general election when Labour saw its share of the Muslim vote collapse from its normally rock solid 85% down to 70% largely due to an ill considered war in Iraq, when it lost safe Labour seats such as Rochdale and Hornsey and Wood Green to the Lib-Dems, not to mention George Galloway winning Bethnal Green; was it mere coincidence that immediately after that election - Labour announced incitement to religious hatred legislation - widely viewed by Islamic organisations as the 'Islamic blasphemy law' that they had been campaigning for since the Rushdie affair 18 long years before?

And when John Prescott and Ruth Kelly met with the leaders of some o these Islamic organisations immediately after the Heathrow terrorist arrests in August, they were asked for two things - Islamic festivals to become bank holidays and a partial implementation of sharia law in the UK! and Bless her naive little cotton socks - a couple of weeks later Ruth Kelly set up a commission to look into implementing one of those!

Now I've lived in two Islamic countries - I've been an aid worker in Pakistan and Afghanistan, I've also studied Islamic theology as part of my Ph.D.- and this is what an Islamic state with Sharia law actually means. Under the traditional interpretation of Islamic law

- only Muslims can be part of the government - non Muslims can be civil servants, but not part of government.

there is a compulsory death penalty for blasphemy against Muhammad, which can include any criticism of Muhammad or the Qur'an.

- the legal testimony of a Muslim is equal to that of two non Muslims.

- and the legal testimony of a man is equal to that of two women.

- while the death penalty exists for any Muslim who changes his religion - such as by becoming a Christian.

There is no way that this agenda is compatible with freedom and democracy - and we need to expose Labour's deliberate appeasement of parts of this Islamist agenda.

Articles and letters

A glimmer of hope in Afghanistan

British forces are primarily in Afghanistan to prevent Afghanistan becoming a safe haven and training area from which attacks on the West can be launched by Islamist terrorists, including, but by no means restricted to, al Qaeda.

In broad terms, in order to achieve that aim, they must train and hand over control of the country to Afghan security forces. For Afghan security forces to be able to do that requires a stable independent Afghan government. 'Independent' meaning not seen to be merely a puppet government placed and held in power by western governments. For that to happen any Afghan government has to be able to raise sufficient tax revenue to fund is own administration, including at least the pay packets of its own military.

At the moment economically Afghanistan is a very long way from being in that position. Senior civil servants and judges have had to drive taxis on their days off just to meet basic living costs. Afghans are fantastic at developing small scale enterprises employing a handful of people, but the country lacks major industries. Consequently, the government has only minuscule amounts of tax revenue coming in.

That is why the discovery of quite how vast Afghanistan’s potential mineral resources are is so incredibly important. Surveys by US geologists suggest the country may have one trillion dollars of mineral reserves. Afghanistan has always known it had significant mineral resources, the country has had a ministry of mines and industry for many years. It has long been known that it had reserves of copper and iron. The country has also been famous for its lapis lazuli, a deep cobalt blue stone, possibly even supplied to King Solomon, while other gemstones such as tourmaline and aquamarine are found in its Hindu Kush mountains. However, it now appears that it may have some of the world’s largest reserves of iron and copper and may rival Bolivia as the world’s largest supplier of lithium, as well as having gold and other rare metals. It is the vast extent of ore deposits such as these that gives just a glimmer of hope for Afghanistan’s long term economic future. A future that could potentially allow the Afghan government to in at least some measure become much more independent of the West than it currently is; a future that could allow the government to actually do something for its own people in terms of financing its own schools, hospitals and roads – as well as military.

It is this aspect that provides the real glimmer of hope. Ask Afghans in the provinces what they feel about the various governments they have had over the last 50 years and occasionally someone will say that the ‘Daud’ government was good. Daud was the king’s cousin who in 1973 overthrew the monarchy creating a republic with himself as the prime minister. What people remember him for is not his regicide, but the fact that he did things to improve life in the provinces – such as building roads where they had not existed before. In the long term it is the ability of an Afghan government both to be seen by its citizens as independent of foreign control – and that includes independent of both Pakistan and Iran as well as the West – and to be seen to be actually doing something that helps the lives of at least some of its ordinary people, it is these which will win hearts and minds and stand at least a credible chance of creating political stability in Afghanistan.

However, the road to this point will be no easy one. The Taliban will seek to hijack and control any significant profitable activity – just as they did with the poppy trade. Afghanistan will require significant foreign investment, however, the public face of mining operations needs to be very clearly Afghan. Equally, security for the mines must be provided by Afghan security forces, as any western military presence would give credibility to a well rehearsed Islamist claim that western powers ‘occupy’ Islamic countries to steal their wealth. Corruption, which is endemic in the whole region will be another huge issue. Nor should we forget that the Pashtuns of southern Afghanistan, where much of the gold reserves appear to be traditionally fight over three things – in Pushtu Zan, Zar and Zamin – women, gold and land.

Nonetheless, the discovery of these large reserves of minerals does create at least a glimmer of hope that economic, and ultimately political, stability can come to Afghanistan. That in itself will not defeat Islamist terrorists driven by an ideology that tells them they must ‘invite’ the world to submit to Islamic government and shariah and seek to impose these by means of violent jihad on all who decline their invitation. However, it can potentially create a situation where there is a stable, independent Afghan government, that understands it is in its own economic and political interests not to tolerate terrorists intent on exporting their own version of radical Islamism to other countries. It can potentially create a situation, which, as I have previously argued on Centre Right, would allow the West to encourage more liberal influences to be nurtured particularly in Kabul and other urban areas in the hope that such influences, not least in terms of western style schooling (in contrast to the alternative Islamic maktub and madrassa system which the Taliban emerged from), may slowly begin to permeate out to the rest of the country, something that is a realistic political aim in the medium term for British foreign policy towards Afghanistan.

Centre Right 15^th June 2010

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The Big Society: Time to deregulate sea defence

Last week former Environment Secretary John Gummer observed that spending on sea defence is unfortunately vulnerable to public spending cuts.

Now, a strong case can be made for protecting sea defence from any spending cuts – it has for years been woefully underfunded. Despite being an island nation we spend less than 0.1% of all public spending on sea defence. Moreover, two of the 3 UK regions most vulnerable to coastal erosion (the South and East) receive the lowest amounts of all public spending per person. Eastern England which includes Mr Gummer’s former constituency of Suffolk Coastal receives the lowest amount of public spending anywhere in the UK (18% below average) despite having not only huge needs for sea defence, which Mr Gummer most ably championed, but also a percentage of elderly people well above the national average and a worse transport infrastructure than any other region (where else in England is two hours drive from the nearest motorway and an hour from the nearest dual carriageway?).

John Gummer is right of course though. The interest alone on the debt run up by the previous government is currently £43 billion a year, which is more than 50 times the total UK budget for sea defence. In such circumstances even the minuscule amounts we currently spend on sea defence are clearly vulnerable.

Yet, if we must have cuts to sea defence and I am certainly not advocating that we do, then herein lies an opportunity. Put simply, it is an opportunity to allow local people to undertake small scale works to defend the coast themselves. In short it is an opportunity to create the ‘Big Society’ that was a central themes of the Conservative manifesto.

However, there are currently two obstacles to this happening, the policies of Natural England and the Environment Agency.

Natural England has sought to prevent local people on for example, the North Suffolk coast from defending their property from the coastal erosion. Their basis for doing so is an argument that some cliffs should be allowed to naturally erode! Natural England’s aim here is not an attempt to protect the present state of the landscape. Rather, their argument is that allowing cliffs to erode may actually advance science as hitherto hidden fossils may come to light. Natural England’s value judgement that possible future scientific discoveries are more important than protecting people’s homes is perverse. By the same logic we should perhaps not undertake repairs to, say, damage caused to Westminster Bridge by river erosion as by collapsing it might reveal remains of the original Roman site. However, most fundamentally, this is a type of policy decision that should properly be taken by ministers, not by a quango.

The Environment Agency (EA) also currently presents a formidable obstacle to allowing local people to undertaking their own small scale sea defence schemes. The EA has permissive powers allowing it to undertake sea defence work, but has no statutory duty actually requiring it to do so. However, it can refuse permission for local people to undertake their own sea defence schemes, thereby preventing the type of ‘Big Society’ approach that was central to the Conservative manifesto. For example, on the North Suffolk coast close to where I live a local landowner has come up with an environmentally sensitive scheme to protect his land from coastal erosion. The family who are losing 16 acres of farmland a year to the sea are prepared to spend £200,000 of their own money on the scheme. However, the Environment Agency have refused them permission to defend their own land from the sea.

The underlying reason for this is that is that the Environment Agency works on the ‘assumption’ that certain areas of coastline must be allowed to erode in order to provide sediment for beaches further down the coast. It is on the basis of this assumption that they have refused permission to a number of property owners, such as the family I have referred to above, who want to defend or even maintain sea defences on their own land. This assumption was most unfortunately given a degree of legal recognition in the 2010 Flood and Water Management Act that was hurriedly passed just before the election was called. Section 38 of this gives a specific legal right for the Environment Agency to actually create flooding or coastal erosion. This is a badly thought out section of legislation that needs to be changed, not least because, the Environment Agency's assumption, that stretches of the coast must be allowed to erode, is contradicted by a body of scientific research going back more than 50 years. This research shows that the overwhelming majority of beach sediment actually comes, not from coastal erosion, but from the weathering and erosion of inland landscapes, with the resulting sediment being carried down rivers to the sea. In fact, even on the most rapidly eroding coasts no more than 5% of beach material comes from erosion of nearby cliffs. As one textbook on coastal geomorphology puts it:

"The most obvious answer to the question as to the source of coastal sediments would be - coastal erosion. Many early texts suggested that cliff erosion resulted in sediments which were moved along-shore to fill in bays and estuaries - thus smoothing the coastline. Such a simple direct mechanism is rarely encountered. In fact coastal erosion is responsible for an almost insignificant proportion of the total input of marine sediments. Inman (1960), for instance, suggested that even in the temperate zone where wave energy is highest, less than 5% of beach sediments directly result from cliff erosion. This is a conclusion supported by Valentin (1954) who shows that, despite rapid erosion of the Holderness coast in Eastern England, amounting to over 1.5m/year, less than 3% of the resultant material was contributed to adjacent beaches. Emery and Macmillan (1978) estimated that an average erosion rate of 5cm/year from the entire cliff coastline of the world - some 50,000km, would provide only 0.04 per cent of sediment contributed to oceans by rivers. In fact rivers supply over 90% of the total marine sediment input..." (J. Pethick 'An Introduction to Coastal Geomorphology' London:Edward Arnold,1984:68)

The shingle beaches that are a prominent feature of the Suffolk and Norfolk coastline provide a good illustration of this. The relatively small amounts of flint found in local cliffs are completely inadequate to create these large shingle beaches in which the predominant rock type is flint.

It is therefore clear that the whole basis on which the Environment Agency has objected to many sea defence schemes lacks adequate scientific validity. It is essential that the Environment Agency takes a good hard look at what the scientific literature actually says on the origins of coastal sediments and allows people to take reasonable steps to defend their stretch of coastline.

Some sea defence schemes will of course still need at least some regulation. For example, any scheme that interferes with the movement of sediment to another part of the coast – such as groynes that trap longshore drift (the zig zag movement of sand and shingle up and down the beach by breaking waves), or structures that interfere with offshore currents which also transport sediment.

However, there are many small scale schemes that do not fit into these categories. These include:

1. Maintenance of existing coastal flood defences such as mud banks, many of which, particularly in estuaries the Environment Agency are planning to abandon under ‘managed retreat’ policies.

2. Creation of new small scale hard engineering sea defences. Such as placing gabions (wire baskets filled with rocks) at the foot of eroding cliffs 3. Soft engineering schemes such as planting marram grass to encourage sand dune formation.

It is these sort of schemes that the government should be actively encouraging local people to undertake. This is the ‘Big Society’ we want to encourage – local communities seeking to help themselves, rather than simply relying on the government to do everything for them.

There will of course always be a need for the government to undertake larger scale sea defence works. Although, as I have argued before, this could almost certainly be done more efficiently and with greater local accountability if most sea defence funding was channelled through local councils, rather than through the Environment Agency. There is also a need to give the government a statutory duty to defend at least some areas of the coast such as major towns from erosion and flooding. However, at a time of public spending restraint, it is essential that we encourage local self help schemes.

To facilitate and encourage the ‘Big Society’ approach to sea defence the new government could:

1. Give landowners a right to maintain sea and river flood defences on their own land.

2. Create a presumption in favour of local people being allowed to undertake small scale sea defence schemes providing that they do not interfere with the movement of sediment to other parts of the coast and of course that they obtain planning permission from the local council in the normal way.

3. Examine ways in which tax relief can be granted to landowners and local communities involved in undertaking their own small scale sea defence schemes.

4. Revise existing shoreline management plans (SMPs) and estuarine strategies so that the existing four options (advance the line, hold the line, no active intervention and managed retreat) are clearly stated to refer only to the actions of central and local government and do not in themselves restrict the possibilities of action being taken either by coastal landowners or local communities living near the coastal and estuaries. This would give local communities the possibility of reversing deeply unpopular 'managed retreat' policies that have been effectively imposed on them by the Environment Agency.

5. Consider setting up a small scale academic research institute for coastal geomorphology along the lines of the British Geological Survey. This could probably be started with as few as half a dozen scientific staff. Its aim would be to undertake research and provide independent scientific advice to coastal communities and others on the type of small scale sea defence schemes that are effective.

Since at least Roman times communities living around the British coast have sought to defend their local area against the sea. In doing so they quite naturally created what we now call ‘the Big Society’. It is time to allow them to do so again!

Centre Right 17th May 2010

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Allow local people to defend the coast

John Gummer is unfortunately correct in suggesting that spending on sea defence is vulnerable to public spending cuts. The interest alone on the debt run up by the previous government is currently £43 billion a year, which is approximately 50 times the total UK budget for sea defence. In such circumstances it is essential that local people are allowed to take reasonable steps to defend the coast themselves.

The biggest obstacle to this is that the Environment Agency works on the assumption that certain areas must be allowed to erode in order to provide sediment for beaches further down the coast. This unproven assumption is contradicted by a body of scientific research going back more than 50 years. This shows that the overwhelming majority of beach sediment actually comes from weathering and erosion of inland rocks and is then carried by rivers to the sea. Even on the most rapidly eroding coasts no more than 5% of beach material comes from erosion of nearby cliffs. Norfolk and Suffolk’s shingle beaches provide a good illustration of this. The relatively small amounts of flint found in local cliffs are completely inadequate to create our large shingle beaches which area predominantly flint.

It is therefore essential that the Environment Agency recognises this and works on the presumption that people should in principle be allowed to take reasonable steps to defend their stretch of coastline. This is something people in Suffolk and Norfolk have done for more than two thousand years.

Eastern Daily Press 17th May 2010

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Parliament MUST complete investigations against defeated MPs

The possibility of a hung parliament has raised a real possibility that MPs who are currently being investigated for serious abuses of parliamentary expenses – could have those investigations dropped if they lose their seats on May 6th.

This week I submitted a complaint against my constituency MP and Labour government minister Bob Blizzard (Waveney) to Andrew Walker, the Director General of Resource at the House of Commons. Mr Walker has for the last few months at the request of the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards been investigating two previous complaints I made that Bob Blizzard had repeatedly used his £10,000 p.a.

Parliamentary Communications Allowance to publicise attacks on Conservative controlled Waveney District and Suffolk County Councils and even encouraged people to vote against them. Both of which are of course in clear breach of the most explicit prohibitions in the Commons rule book which repeatedly and categorically states that the Communications Allowance cannot be used for any form of party political campaigning.

The third complaint that I made this week was that Mr Blizzard , a government minister and whip responsible for ensuring that Labour MPs keep the parliamentary rules (!), appeared to be using his parliamentary expenses to employ a local Labour councillor as his ‘Constituency Political Secretary’. The use of parliamentary staffing allowances for any form of party political or non parliamentary work is most explicitly forbidden in the principles set out in the Green Book.

However, the response to my complaint from Mr Walker’s office was that whilst the complaint could be investigated after the election

"As you will be aware, there are currently no Members of Parliament and therefore I will not at this point be able to take your complaint further."

The implication is that the parliamentary authorities intend to drop any ongoing investigations against MPs who are not re-elected on May 6.

However, this would mean that it would then be quite possible for MPs such as Bob Blizzard, if they are defeated on May 6, to have all the expenses investigations against them dropped, but for them to then stand again a few months later in a second general election resulting from a hung parliament – as if they had a clean sheet, with local voters being none the wiser.

This general election has in many people’s eyes quite rightly been about cleaning up parliament. So, now would be a very good time for us to take the lead in insisting that investigations into MPs expenses must be completed – even if they are defeated on May 6. The real possibility of a hung parliament makes that absolutely essential.

Centre Right 24^th April 2010

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NOW 3 Labour Ministers caught 'red handed' using parliamentary expenses for Labour Party campaigning

Yesterday I revealed that two Labour Ministers had been (mis)using parliamentary expenses for Labour Party campaigning.

Now make that three Labour ministers caught doing so just hours after the Labour Party launched its election manifesto telling us all how quickly and decisively the present Labour government had acted to clean up the parliamentary expenses scandal. Although it is noteworthy that Gordon Brown himself broke the rules by launching Labour's manifesto at an NHS hospital.

Pensions minister, Anglea Eagle joins the sorry ranks of Transport minister Sadiq Khan and Labour whip/Deputy Minister for the East of England Bob Blizzard in having had been caught using parliamentary expenses for Labour Party campaigning.

Miss Eagle is reported to have used House of Commons stationary and prepaid envelopes to write unsolicited letters to voters in her Merseyside constituency on the very day Gordon Brown called the general election.

Parliamentary rules specifically forbid the use of House of Commons stationary for any unsolicited letters, as well as strictly forbidding their use for party political purposes or to help MPs gain re election. Yet Miss Eagle even sent a letter to the home of a former voter who had been dead for five years, something that has been reported to have caused significant distress to the man’s widow.

Not a very satisfactory start to an election that was supposed to be about cleaning up parliament...

Centre Right 14^th April 2010

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Two Labour ministers caught 'red handed' using parliamentary expenses for campaigning

As an aid worker one of the things you become acutely aware of is government corruption – such as government ministers diverting tax payers money for their own party political campaigning. But for it to happen in 21^st century Britain should be profoundly shocking to all of us.

In their manifesto launched yesterday Labour claimed (section 9:2)

"We acted swiftly to clean up politics …And we will take further measures to restore trust in our politics. We face a deep crisis of trust in politics following the parliamentary expenses scandal. Faith in our political institutions was seriously eroded by the abuses of the expenses system. Only radical change can begin to renew our democracy."

The tragedy is that even before the print was dry on this section of Labour’s manifesto, at least two Labour government ministers had been caught ‘red handed’ (mis)using parliamentary expenses for party political campaigning.

Transport minister, Sadiq Khan is reported to have sent out hundreds of unsolicited letters to voters in his marginal Tooting, South London constituency days before parliament was dissolved for the general election. The letters on House of Commons stationary and sent using parliamentary prepaid envelopes detail his achievements as their MP and told voters how to contact him during the general election.

The House of Commons rule book ‘The Communications Allowance and the use of House stationary’ repeatedly states that such parliamentary stationary must not be used ‘for the benefit of a political party or supporting the return of any person to public office’ However, Mr Khan has previous form for misusing expenses having earlier this year had to apologise and repay £2,500 for breaking these very same rules.

Similarly Labour whip and Deputy Minister for the East of England Bob Blizzard, MP for Waveney in Suffolk, is similarly currently under investigation by the parliamentary authorities relating to his use of MPs’ £10,000 per year Parliamentary Communications Allowance as a result of a complaint I made in June 2009. For two years following the introduction of the Communications Allowance in 2007 Mr Blizzard repeatedly used these tax payer funded parliamentary expenses for party political campaigning and attacks on political opponents. These included repeated party political campaigns against Conservative controlled Suffolk County Council and Waveney District Council, including encouraging constituents to vote against them in local elections.

The House of Commons rules governing the use of MPs’ parliamentary Communications Allowance very explicitly forbid its use for any form of party political campaigning or attacks on political opponents. This is in fact the main theme of these rules, and is explicitly repeated no less than 32 times in the 38 page rule book produced by the parliamentary authorities. Mr Blizzard was himself present in the Commons when these rules governing MPs use of the Parliamentary Communications Allowance were debated in 2007 and so cannot reasonably claim to be ignorant of them. However, like his fellow Labour Minister Sadiq Khan, Mr Blizzard also has previous form having recently been ordered by the Legg Enquiry to repay nearly £4,000 of over claimed second homes allowances.

The present Labour government is at least partly responsible for creating the culture that led to these two ministers misusing parliamentary expenses for party political campaigning. It was this Labour government that in 2007 brought in a £10,000 per year MPs’ Communications Allowance which many Labour MPs were reported as talking about as ‘save our seats’ fund. This was despite a commitment in Labour’s 2005 manifesto that “campaigning activity must always be funded by parties from their own resources” (p.111). The actual rules governing the use of the Communications Allowance do in fact forbid its use for party political campaigning. However, by introducing it the government help create a culture of MPs using taxpayer funded parliamentary expenses to promote themselves. To this extent at least the present Labour government must take responsibility for the misuse of parliamentary expenses for party political campaigning that these two of their own ministers have been caught doing.

This particular form of parliamentary expenses abuse is potentially one of the most serious yet. For government ministers such as Sadiq Khan and Bob Blizzard to divert tax payers’ money for their own party political and re-election campaigns is the sort of thing that happens in corrupt third world countries – it should be as far removed from British democracy as it is possible to be.

Centre Right 13th April 2010

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Speedboat attacks on British ports: we need a new paradigm for counter terrorism

Security minister Lord West has announced that he is concerned that al-Qaeda terrorists could launch a radiological dirty bomb on London.

This announcement is not in itself new. As I observed on Centre Right last November, one of the major justifications for our current military engagement in Afghanistan is that there is clear evidence that the Taliban have already obtained nuclear materials and hence have the potential to create a radiological ‘dirty bomb’.

However, Lord West went further by highlighting the possibility of a radiological or Mumbai style attack launched either against London or another UK port from speedboats. He observed that hundreds of thousands of small boats arrived in Britain unchecked every year and that the agencies responsible for guarding the coastline did not know “with any clarity what is going on around our coasts”.

What is needed in the face of such threats is a paradigm change in the way we approach counter terrorism. Lord West’s comments illustrate the failure of our present approach. He is rightly concerned that the Maritime and Coastguard Agency (MCA) simply do not know about every small vessel entering British waters or heading for UK ports. However, as I revealed on Conservative Home recently, the MCA are at present considering closing one of only two main coastguard cordination centres on the East Coast of England...

The basic problem is that the government's approach to counter terrorism relies far to heavily on, to put it simply, ‘leaving it to the security services’. What is needed is a paradigm shift so that all government departments assess the impact of their activities on counter terrorism.

To illustrate the point, yesterday the Maritime and Coastguard Agency concluded a consultation on draft regulations concerning oil tankers in UK territorial waters. The consultation documents stated that the draft regulations had been checked against 12 interdepartmental impact tests ranging from carbon assessment to gender equality, race equality, human rights and rural proofing etc.….but counter terrorism wasn’t on the list…despite there having been specific threats against British oil tankers in European waters.

A fundamental principle of security planning is to make oneself less than of a target, or at least a more difficult target, than others. That is why every government department should at the very least be required to undertake a counter terrorism impact assessment for each of its activities. This is the sort of paradigm shift that a future Conservative government needs to make to combat the terrorist threat we face.

The fact that, as Lord West observed, small boats can enter British waters and sail up the Thames or head for any other port without the Maritime and Coastguard Agency knowing about them highlights the urgency of this issue.

Centre Right 23^rd March 2010

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CONSERVATIVE HOME EXCLUSIVE: Government plan to close main coastguard station on East Coast

According to a well placed source within the Maritime and Coastguard Agency (MCA) discussions are currently taking place with a view to closing one of only two Maritime Rescue Coordination Centres (MRCC) on the East coast between the Thames and the Scottish border. The plans currently being discussed are apparently to either close the main coastguard station at Great Yarmouth on the Norfolk/Suffolk border or to relocate it 70 miles inland to Cambridge by 2013.

In response to a freedom of information request I submitted in January the head of organisational development at the MCA admitted that as far as Great Yarmouth MRCC was concerned “future provision will be the subject of full consultation with all relevant stakeholders” and that this future consultation process would take place before June 2013. Further confirmation of this closure plan has come from the government’s announcement that it plans to close the HMRC office in Great Yarmouth which shares the same offices as the Coastguard Maritime Rescue and Coordination Centre. Local Conservative candidate Brandon Lewis who has already been campaigning against the closure of the HMRC office with the loss of 125 local jobs commented:

"This would be a devastating blow for Great Yarmouth. More government agency jobs would be moved away from an area that desperately needs secure jobs in addition to those in the traditional tourist sector. Another link with the town’s proud maritime heritage that goes back centuries would be lost for good.”

When this news becomes known there are also likely to many people with very real concerns about the impact this will have on safety at sea. No matter how sophisticated satellite and electronic communications equipment is, there is simply no substitute for local coastguard officers with local knowledge of the coast and personal relationships with the local volunteer lifeboat and search and rescue crews they have to call upon.

It was in this very area that in 1978 one of the worst environmental disasters on the UK coast happened when the Greek oil tanker Eleni V was hit in fog by a bulk ore carrier, sending 5,000 tonnes of heavy fuel oil into the sea. Oil from the resulting slick which is still buried under the sands of the Norfolk and Suffolk coasts, had a devastating effect on the local tourist industry and cost local councils a small fortune to clean up. Today there are vastly more ships in the area than then. As I outlined on Conservative Home recently, these include 30-40 oil tankers, by far the largest concentration of tankers anywhere in UK waters, which are now anchored off the North Suffolk coast.

Peter Aldous, Conservative Candidate for Waveney, which includes this part of the Suffolk coast and the nearby port of Lowestoft commented on the proposed coastguard closure plan:

“A move or closure should be fought against; it would compromise safety and security and jobs would be lost at a time we don’t want any more bad news on the jobs front.”

The government’s plan to either close this main Coastguard rescue centre or relocate it inland to Cambridge is consistent with the government’s agenda of replacing local services with regional ones in East Anglia. This has not only included a two year attempt to replace local district councils in Norfolk and Suffolk with large unitary authorities, it has also directly impacted emergency services on which many people in Norfolk and Suffolk depend for their lives. So far this has included the removal of key hospital services such as emergency heart treatment from local hospitals to what are perceived to be regional centres such as Papworth in Cambridgeshire, a move which an outstanding campaign led by Ipswich Conservative candidate Ben Gummer has demonstrated will almost certainly cost lives. Similarly, if Labour win the general election local fire and rescue services in Norfolk and Suffolk will lose their own local control rooms where staff have detailed local knowledge. These will be replaced in 2011 by a new ‘central’ control centre in Cambridge for fire services from as far afield as Luton and Peterborugh. Not unnaturally, this has raised fears of fire crews being sent to the wrong locations, particularly as many villages even in the same area of Norfolk or Suffolk have similar names. The Conservative Green paper on localism has pledged to reverse Labour’s regional agenda, including scrapping the regional control centres for the fire service. That is a commitment that now clearly needs to be extended to the main coastguard rescue centres that those who live near, work or visit the sea depend on.

People’s safety must not be sacrificed to the present Labour government’s agenda of replacing local services with regional ones. Many people who live on, or visit the East Anglian coast will very rightly fear that closing the main coastguard rescue centre, one of only two between the Thames and the Scottish border is cutting corners with safety at sea. A party political agenda must never be put above people's safety.

Centre Right 1^st March 2010

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Terrorism risk posed by tankers off the East Anglian coast

Since the 9/11 attacks in 2001 and more specifically since the London 7/7 attacks in 2005, the UK has been slowly coming to terms with being a major terrorist target. However, whilst ‘climate change’ is a theme being taken up across virtually all government departments, the same is not yet true of counter terrorism. Yet the threat of terrorism potentially affects almost every sphere of government. Major international sporting events now have specific terrorist threats against them. For example, the Hockey World Cup and Commonwealth Games both due to take place in India in March and October respectively have both received very specific threats from an affiliate of al-Qaeda. In short, we cannot assume that anything will be immune from the threat of Islamist terrorism. It is therefore somewhat odd to say the least that the government have not made preventing terrorism a cross departmental responsibility in the way that they have made tackling 'climate change'.

One illustration of the present government’s lack of joined up thinking on preventing terrorism is the large number of oil tankers that for the last year have been anchoring off the East Anglian coast as a result of a series of government decisions or more recently lack of decisions about them.

This fleet of tankers numbering 30-40 at any given time and including some of the world’s largest supertankers has in the last 12 months become one of the highest concentrations of oil tankers in the western world (research by the Daily Mail last year showed that even UK oil ports normally have only 4-6 tankers anchored offshore - see map). The issue only came to light last summer when Suffolk Coastal MP John Gummer asked the government why so many tankers were anchoring off the North Suffolk coast in his constituency. It subsequently transpired that the government had, without any local consultation, secretly made an agreement with oil companies that this would be the one place in UK waters where ship to ship oil transfers would be allowed offshore. This has led to it becoming the international location for tankers from across the world to transfer Russian oil to supertankers that are too large to enter the Baltic. In response, Mr Gummer very rightly raised serious concerns - the Suffolk coast happens to be an area of outstanding natural beauty (AONB) as well as being home to internationally important nature sites and is heavily dependent on tourism, all of which were potentially threatened by any oil spillage. There has followed a series of government ministers saying that they were moving ‘quickly’ to ban the practice. These included Transport Secretary Lord Adonis, who 'hoped' it might be banned before Christmas 2009 and Deputy Minister for the East of England Bob Blizzard MP, off whose Waveney constituency some of the tankers are anchored. Mr Blizzard recently announced that legislation would be laid before parliament ‘as early as May’, which for anyone with the slightest knowledge of the electoral process means ‘not in the lifetime of this parliament’. This week the government finally started a six week ‘consultation’ on banning these offshore oil transfers…before it drafts a statutory order which on current timescales is unlikely to come into force until 1st October…

However, as well as the environmental concerns that John Gummer has so rightly highlighted, there is also a significant security issue raised by having the largest concentration of tankers in the western world anchored just off our shores.

Since 9/11 al-Qaeda and its ideological associates have made very specific threats against the oil industry. This is partly because Islamists tend to regard western use of Middle Eastern oil reserves as a particular grievance. For example, Bin Laden’s ‘Message to the Americans’ of 6th October 2002 stated:

“You steal our wealth and oil at paltry prices because of your international influence and military threats. This theft is indeed the biggest theft ever witnessed by mankind in the history of the world.”

However, more importantly the economic impact of the 9/11 attacks led a number of Islamists to focus part of their strategy on causing maximum economic damage to the West. Bin Laden in particular realised that oil has an immense potential as a weapon of economic warfare. In a December 2004 speech he urged his followers to engage in suicide attacks against oil targets:

“Mujahidin be patient and think of the hereafter, for this path in life requires sacrifices, maybe with your life…Remember too that the biggest reason for our enemies’ control over our lands is to steal our oil, so give everything you can to stop the greatest theft of oil in history from the current and future generations in collusion with the agents and the foreigners, oil,…which is the basis of all industry, has gone down in price many times. After it was going for $40 a barrel two decades ago, in the last decade it went for as little as $9, while its price today should be at least $100 at the very least. So keep on struggling, do not make it easy for them, and focus your operations on it…”

Whilst oil installations particularly in Saudi Arabia and Yemen have been a focus of Islamist attacks, the ships which carry 60% of the world’s oil supply have also been specifically targeted. A number of planned terrorist attacks on tankers have been thwarted by US and other forces. However, in October 2002 the French supertanker Limburg carrying almost 400,000 barrels of oil was attacked off the coast of Aden (Yemen) by a suicide boat, similar to the one that had attacked the USS Cole in Aden almost exactly two years earlier.

Significantly there have also been specific threats against British tankers close to European waters. In June 2002 the Moroccan government arrested a group of al-Qaeda operatives suspected of plotting attacks on US and British tankers in the Straits of Gibraltar.

The intention of such attacks is not primarily physical damage, but economic impact. A few months before the planned attacks on British and US tankers off Gibraltar an online jihadist article appeared about the advantages of bombing tankers which stated:

"it is well known that the American economy will not be able to endure whatsoever the rise in oil prices."

A fundamental principle of security planning is to make oneself less of a target, or at least a more difficult target to hit, than others. Terrorists always look for weak spots. Allowing the greatest concentration of oil tankers in the western world, including some of the world's largest supertankers, to anchor off our coast doesn’t quite seem to qualify as making us less of a target…

Astonishingly, it is our own government that has actually caused this concentration of tankers from around the world off the Suffolk coast by specifically designating this as the one place in the UK where offshore ship to ship oil transfers would be allowed. Both this and the government’s continued dragging of its heels over when it will finally ban this practice does not simply indicate a degree of incompetence. Perhaps more significantly, it also indicates the government’s real state of thinking about preventing terrorism. Whilst tackling climate change is now a cross departmental responsibility, it would appear that the same degree of priority has yet be given to preventing terrorism.

What this situation illustrates is that the UK needs a government with a whole new paradigm in the way it thinks about preventing terrorism.

Centre Right 18^th February 2010

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Government ‘Flooding bill’ is a serious threat to the Suffolk coastline

The EADT is absolutely right to highlight the potential risk to areas of the Suffolk coast where defences are not maintained, such as the Slaughden area immediately south of Aldeburgh. Here only a thin strip of beach separates the sea from the Alde/Ore estuary. However, should the sea be allowed to breach through then it is likely that the entire estuary would enter the sea at that point. In that case approximately 8 miles of the estuary to the south of this, including the Orford river frontage, would silt up and eventually become salt marsh. This is exactly what happened in the late thirteenth century when the Blyth estuary broke through between Walberswick and Southwold. This directly led the collapse of the port of Dunwich where the Blyth had previously entered the sea and created what are now the Dingle marshes.

Needless to say, if this happened to the Alde/Ore estuary today it would similarly have enormous economic and environmental consequences for both Orford and Aldeburgh. People are therefore absolutely right to be concerned about the lack of guaranteed protection for this area beyond the immediate present in the new shoreline management plan.

However, in practice, it is the Environment Agency rather than local councils that have by far the greatest influence on shoreline management plans. It is the Environment Agency that decides where the overwhelming majority of spending on sea defence goes. It is therefore particularly unfortunate that the Environment Agency has a serious conflict of interest in this respect. Under UK law it has no specific legal duty to do anything to defend people’s homes and livelihoods from coastal erosion or flooding. However, under EU law when wildlife habitats are lost to erosion it is required to create new habitats, such as by allowing land to flood in order to create salt marsh.

This conflict of interest poses a potential threat to many areas of the Suffolk coast, including the Aldeburgh-Slaughden area. However, this threat will become significantly greater if the present government succeeds in pushing its new Floods bill through parliament before the general election. Clause 38 of this bill gives a new power to the Environment Agency to actually create both flooding and coastal erosion to previously protected areas if it considers this to be ‘in the interests of nature conservation’. The bill gives no right of appeal against this for anyone affected by it. This clause is a piece of legislation that is ill thought out, unnecessary and poses a very real threat to large areas of the Suffolk coastline. I would urge readers to write the Environment Secretary, Hiliary Benn MP (30 - 34 Albert Embankment, London, SE1 7TL) to express their grave concern about it.

East Anglian Daily Times 8th Feb 2010

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The British and US governments must stop undermining President Karzai

Afghanistan needs a strong government, one that will prevent groups such as al-Qaeda using the country as a base from which to plan and launch terrorist attacks and preferably one that is prepared to slowly and gradually liberalise the country.

Few would disagree with that. Yet the reality is that the West, particularly Britain and the USA have repeatedly undermined the standing of President Kazai in the eyes of his own people. This week’s London conference on Afghanistan organised by Gordon Brown is just one such example of this.

Yet Hamid Karzai is a unique man on the Afghan political scene. Head of the important popalzai clan of the Pushtuns from which the Afghan royal family traditionally came, he is also Cambridge educated. He bridges the huge gap not merely between the Pushtun tribes and the Farsi speakers of the North and West of Afghanistan, but is also a man who understands the Western world. Even more significantly, in 2001 he was almost unique among Afghan political leaders in not having blood on his hands. Whilst other mujahaddin leaders had overseen atrocities committed against rival groups during the Soviet occupation, Karzai had been in the West mounting a diplomatic mission to bolster support for the Afghan resistance.

Yet President Karzai has been undermined by both the British and US governments:

1. The withdrawal of necessary military and intelligence support far too soon after the Taliban were ‘ousted’ from Kabul in 2001. This was due to the false assumption by the US and UK governments that the Taliban were ‘finished’, when in reality they were regrouping and re-establishing their hold on significant parts of rural Afghanistan. As a result huge amounts of western military and intelligence resources planned for Afghanistan were hurriedly ‘reallocated’ to Iraq following its occupation in 2003. These included 75% of all the predator drones that were so important in the fight against the Taliban, and the CIA's postponement of an $80 million plan to set up a new Afghanistan intelligence service. The British government was no less at fault with Defence Secretary John Reid publicly stating that he hoped the British troops he was sending to Helmand in 2006 would leave the country ‘without a single shot being fired’. So, the most immediate answer to the question Tony Blair this week posed to the Iraq Inquiry, about what the world would be like today if we hadn’t invaded Iraq – is that Afghanistan might now be a safer place.

2. President Karzai’s authority among his own people is seriously undermined by the fact that ordinary Afghans do not perceive him to be in control of western military activity happening in his own country. This situation has been exacerbated by what is seen by some as an over reliance on air strikes against the Taliban in order to minimise coalition casualties on the ground. However, whatever the truth of this, the reality is that every time a coalition air strike mistakenly targets civilians President Karzai has to face some very uncomfortable questions from yet another tribal delegation as to why this is happening, further diminishing his authority.

3. The campaign against the ‘corruption’ of the Karzai government. The fever pitch this reached during last year’s presidential election massively undermined the authority of the Afghan president amongst his own people in a country where honour is the most devastating thing possible to lose. The reality is that Afghanistan has always had huge problems with corruption. When Afghan judges and senior civil servants drive taxis on their day off because their salary is only $50 a month – not enough for a week’s rent - then of course there will be corruption. The truth is that virtually every country in that region has huge problems with corruption, while electoral fraud is a similarly widespread problem across the region. Yet the castigating of President Karzai for corruption and electoral fraud, not merely by the western press, but also with demands from President Obama and Gordon Brown for second round elections, showed very clearly to ordinary afghan people that they had a president who was not fully in control of his own country.

4. This, to Afghan eyes, humiliating spectacle of their own president being forced to be subservient to the US and the British governments continued this week with the London conference on Afghanistan 'organised by Gordon Brown'. The latter phrase says it all, it should have been President Karzai organising it, after all it's his country, but it is doubtful if leaders such Gordon Brown would have turned up to such a summit. At this summit, billed by some international officials as the ‘save Gordon Brown show’, President Karzai made the case for Afghanistan needing foreign help for at least 15 more years. Meanwhile Gordon Brown simultaneously tried to get his pre election message across that at least 5 Afghan provinces ‘would’ be handed over to Afghan control this year, a target NATO commanders consider to be 'very demanding', but which Mr Brown believes will be helped by a revamped programme attempting to bribe the Taliban to defect. The latter, incidentally is likely to be dangerous and ineffective for the reasons I outlined when the original programme was proposed last year.

Somehow western leaders just do not seem to get it. They do not get it that until Afghanistan is seen by its own people to have a president who is king in his own house, who is not seen to be subservient to the USA and the UK, until then it will always be unstable and prone to Taliban resurgence and potentially at least a haven for terrorism.

Afghanistan will need western support, including military support for a significant period of time, but that support must be much more backroom and discrete. Afghan leadership should never be undermined in the way it has been this week in order to create favourable pre election press releases in the UK.

Centre Right 30th January 2010.

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Government has broken its promise on tankers

It is disappointing that the government has now backed out of the personal undertaking that Transport Secretary Lord Adonis gave to Suffolk Coastal MP John Gummer to ban offshore oil transfers ‘quickly’- potentially as early as Christmas.

The existence of foreign tankers from countries such as Libya transferring Russian oil to larger tankers off our coastline is entirely a situation of the government’s own making. A few years ago the present government voluntarily made an agreement with the tanker companies that “the preferred location” for such oil transfers would be the area between Southwold and Lowestoft. It is disturbing that the government entirely failed to consult local people before making this agreement with the tanker companies. So far no apology has been given for this. Indeed, the existence of this permission only came to light last summer when John Gummer MP raised concerns about the number of tankers anchoring off our coast.

Last week Waveney MP Bob Blizzard announced that the government expects to ban these offshore oil transfers ‘as early as May’. However, as an MP Mr Blizzard knows full well that electoral law requires the present parliament to be dissolved no later than the first half of May and a general election called. It therefore seems that despite previous assurances the present government have no intention of banning these offshore oil transfers. Many of us living on the coast simply do not understand why the government is not taking action now to protect our beautiful, but fragile coastline and the 4,000 or so tourism jobs that it directly supports. The present government created this problem, it is reasonable to expect them to sort it out while they are still in power. However, in the light of Mr Blizzard’s statement it would seem that our best hope of protecting these from a potential oil spill is to wait for an incoming Conservative government to take action.

Lowestoft and Southwold Journal 22nd January 2010

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A new Conservative government must reverse managed retreat policies around our coastline.

Earlier this month Hilary Benn the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs lectured farmers on the need for them to produce more food in the UK, in order to combat climate change and feed a growing population. I am sure I was not the only one to be struck by the irony of that. Mr Benn is responsible for the Environment Agency whose ‘managed retreat’ policies propose abandoning to the sea thousands of acres of farmland that have for centuries been defended or even reclaimed from the sea.

Now, a think tank linked to the Royal Institute of British Architects has suggested applying the government’s ‘managed retreat’ policies even to UK cities, such as Hull and Portsmouth, as a possible response to rising sea levels. Their report suggested allowing parts of large urban areas on the UK coast to flood, while preserving their historic centres – so that they would become ‘like Venice’.

That so respected a body as the RIBA should suggest a partial abandonment of sea defences around cities shows quite how strongly the government’s deeply flawed 'managed retreat' option for sea defence has taken hold. The underlying reason for this is not that most of the areas currently under threat of 'managed retreat' are technically difficult to defend, although cost is certainly a factor in many instances. For an island nation it is shocking to think that we spend less than 0.1% of government spending on sea defence. However, the most fundamental reason is that neither the Environment Agency nor any other government body has any statutory duty to defend the British coast. Instead, the Environment Agency have what are termed permissive powers. In other words they are permitted to interfere in decisions about what sort of sea defences are allowed, but they do not actually have to do anything themselves.

A future Conservative government needs to approach this issue with much more joined up thinking than the present government. I have argued elsewhere on Centre Right that much of the sea defence funding that DEFRA channels through the Environment Agency would be better spent through local councils who are genuinely accountable to local people. However, regardless of who undertakes sea defence work, it is vital that the government creates a statutory duty to defend at least some parts of our coast. This should include not only urban areas, but also land that previous generations have reclaimed from the sea.

At the moment we are in the perverse situation where the government is seeking to impose a statutory duty on future governments to stem future climate change in order to combat, amongst other things, the increased flood risk from sea level rise. However, the government has not imposed on itself a statutory duty to defend the coast against flooding and erosion.

This is despite sea levels having been slowly rising since we began systematically recording them 150 years ago (see the above chart from the UK's Proudman Oceanographic Laboratory).

This should clearly be a priority for a new Conservative government to sort out.

Centre Right 15th January 2010

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Islamists make up their own rules

This week seven Islamists refused to follow court procedure by standing up when the judge entered court. The seven were accused of shouting abuse at soldiers of the Royal Anglian Regiment during a home coming parade on the regiment's return from Iraq last March. The abuse included:

"British solders, murderers," "British solders, baby killers.," "British solders go to hell," British soldiers burn in hell," "Baby killers and rapists all of you" and "British solders, you will pay."

Appearing in court this week the seven refused to stand as the judge entered the court room, claiming that their religion only allowed them to stand up for Allah.

Now I have read the entire Qur’an, large parts of the vast number of Hadith, as well as Islamic commentaries and so forth and I have to confess that I have never come across that one. Nor, I suspect, have the vast majority of ordinary British Muslims, most of whom come from cultural backgrounds that place a far greater emphasis on honour and respect than is common elsewhere in Britain - and there is much in that respect that some of the less polite members of British society could learn from them!

Now, the reason why so few people have ever come across this claim is that one of the fundamental beliefs of Islamism is, to simplify things just slightly, that you can make up the rules yourself about what is and isn’t ‘Islamic’.

Classical Islam fixed the interpretations (ijtihad) of the Qur’an in medieval times and most Islamic theological schools are based on rote learning of those interpretations. However, Islamists, whether in Afghanistan or in the UK, claim the right to reopen the door of Qur’anic interpretation (ijtihad) and come up with their own interpretations. In theological terms this is the essence of Islamism.

Now to be fair, Islamic liberals have also reopened the door of interpretation (ijtihad), although they do so in order to make Islam compatible with western liberal values such as freedom of speech and religion. Islamists however, create their own interpretations of the Qur’an as a means of achieving their ultimate political goal. That goal is to impose Islamic government and law (sharia) on Muslim and non Muslim alike in all areas of the world that are not currently subject to it.

So, when these seven Islamists refused to stand and respect the judge, they were not basing their actions on some widely practised, deeply rooted Islamic belief. Rather, they were essentially creating new rules to suit their own agenda. That agenda appears to involve creating a legal precedent that Muslims do not have to stand for judges sitting in British courts, a legal system Islamists reject as ‘man made law’. Moreover, their now highly publicised claim that to do so is ‘unislamic’, will they hope, put pressure on other Muslims to follow suit, thereby furthering their agenda of Islamising British society.

Unfortunately by allowing these Islamists to avoid standing when she enters court the judge would appear to have given into that agenda hook, line and sinker.

Unless and until the government and judiciary realise that making up your own rules about what is and isn't 'Islamic' is a fundamental tenet of Islamism, they will continue to appease Islamists such as these.

Centre Right 9^th January 2010

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Government minister tells farmers to grow more, while abandoning thousands of acres of Suffolk and Norfolk farmland to the sea.

This week government minister Hilary Benn lectured farmers on the need for them to produce more food. Mr Benn also happens to be the cabinet minister responsible for the Environment Agency, whose ‘managed retreat’ policies propose abandoning thousands of acres of Suffolk and Norfolk farmland to the sea. When the present Labour government were elected in 1997 they promised us ‘joined up government’. Sadly, it would seem that more than 12 years later we are still waiting for that to happen.

East Anglian Daily Times January 7th 2010

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Taliban weapons found by RAF Regiment from Honington

Ian Sinclair (EDP, Dec 4) is correct in thinking that some of the Taliban weapons seized by the RAF Regiment are very old. As an aid worker in Afghanistan until a few years ago, I encountered Afghans even carrying muskets, weapons that presumably dated from at least the Second Anglo Afghan war (1878-80). However, we should not let that lull us into a false sense of security. The Taliban also have some very advanced weapons. One thing that seems to have been forgotten recently is that part of our original justification for sending soldiers to Afghanistan was the possibility that the Taliban were seeking to acquire chemical weapons and nuclear materials. They would then have the possibility of creating a radioactive ‘dirty bomb’ i.e. one that scattered radioactivity with conventional explosive. Unlike the ‘never found’ Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, there is considerable evidence that the Taliban have actually acquired these. In 2001, coalition forces found canisters of both uranium and cyanide at Kandahar airport, while Royal Anglian soldiers serving in Afghanistan were later targeted with Anthrax.

The present government have been very poor at explaining to the public why we are fighting in Afghanistan. However, there is the real possibility that chemical and nuclear material gathered by the Taliban could be used by other Islamist terrorists to mount an attack on the UK.

Eastern Daily Press Tuesday December 8th 2009

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The government has questions to answer about flood defence

In 1947 the UK suffered devastating floods – caused by a combination of heavy snowfall and deep freeze, followed by warmer weather melting the snow at the same time as torrential rains slowly moved across the country. The ensuing floods left large parts of the UK paralysed for several weeks.

Two years ago an analysis was made of the likely impact if floods of a similar magnitude, however caused, were to occur today. In theory, there should have been a significantly reduced impact – as the Conservative governments of Eden and Macmillan invested heavily in flood defences following the 1947 floods and subsequent 1953 North Sea floods. However, the authors found great difficulty in assessing how different the impact of modern flooding would be compared to that of 1947. The reason for their difficulty was quite astonishing. The government does not keep a national record of where flood defences exist.

"No national database is available which contains the type, height, design level, and maintenance conditions of U.K. river flood defences even for main rivers."

(1947 UK Floods: 60 Year perspective p8)

If there is no national database of flood defences it also follows that the government has no national record of the state of repair of those flood defences. Although given the wholly inadequate levels of funding there are certainly some issues there, particularly in rural areas.

Most significantly however, it is clear that if the government has no national record of either where flood defences exist or their state of repair – then any claim by the government that they have a credible flood defence strategy is clearly nonsense.

What we have instead is a piecemeal approach to both river and coastal flooding. This has been primarily driven by the amount of money allocated by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, i.e. Gordon Brown for most of the last 12 years, rather than based on any coherent national strategy of what is actually needed to provide a reasonable level of protection.

The government is planning a new flooding bill to tidy up flooding legislation – one of the recommendations of Sir Michael Pitt's review of the 2007 floods. However, what is most urgently needed is for the government to have a strategy based on accurate local knowledge not only of which areas are likely to flood, but also of where existing flood defences are - and equally importantly where they are not - and their condition. Without this basic information the government cannot claim to have a credible national flood prevention strategy.

Centre Right 23rd November 2009

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Withdrawing from Afghanistan would be like appeasing Hitler

Standing around our village war memorial on Sunday I was struck by how few WW2 veterans were now able to be there. With them is literally dying out a living memory of why we fought the second war, the Gestapo, what happened to the Jews and the gypsies and everyone else who didn’t fit in with Hitler’s radical ideology.
At the same time it also struck me that very few who read the western press have any real understanding of what life under the Taliban was really like before they were pushed form power by the western intervention after 9/11.

Life under the Taliban: I lived in Jalalabad, Afghanistan as an aid worker during the time that the Taliban ruled most of Afghanistan. It was a brutal totalitarian dictatorship. People lived in daily fear of the religious police known as the ‘vice and virtue’ police. When they appeared people froze with fear, just as those living under Nazi rule must have frozen at appearance of the Gestapo. The traffic was stopped every day at the Islamic prayer times, at which point the Taliban who patrolled the streets with lengths of plastic hose pipe whipped anyone found not praying. Girls schools were closed, women were banned from being out on the streets without a male relative, which literally meant a death sentence for the thousands of widows whose husbands and sons had been killed in 20 years of fighting – they couldn’t even go out to beg. Those who tried to were savagely beaten up by the Taliban. Others suffered far worse fates. Captured soldiers from the various mujahaddin groups that the Taliban had seized power from were given a stark choice - either join the Taliban or walk through minefields as human mine clearers; There were reports of large scale ethnic cleansing, particularly of the Hazara population; while non Muslim Afghans – chiefly Hindu and Sikh shopkeepers in cities such as Kabul and Jalalabad, were forced to wear yellow cloth badges in public – not dissimilar to the star of David that the Nazis forced the Jews to wear. The few remaining Jews left in the country, remnants of an ancient community there, were imprisoned and tortured by the Taliban in an attempt to force them to convert to Islam. While any Afghan who dared to leave Islam suffered a more immediate fate. Just outside Jalalabad where I lived at the time, the Taliban searched a man’s house and found a Bible. He was immediately taken outside and hanged. He courageously maintained his Christian faith to the end. There were many stories of atrocities, but I can vouch for the truth of this one as a colleague carefully questioned several Afghans who had witnessed it to establish its truth.

Why we are fighting in Afghanistan:

That was not all that was going on under the Taliban in Afghanistan. In 1996 the Taliban had invited Osama bin Laden there to fulfil his dream of creating the world’s first truly Islamist state. Their ideology was both totaliterian and expansionist, even more so than that of Hitler’s Third Reich. Afghanistan as a truly Islamist state was to be the base from which jihad attacks would be launched as part of a Islamic holy war to impose Islamic government and sharia law on the rest of the world. This plan quickly began to be put into action. In February 1998 bin Laden now resident in Afghanistan issued a fatwa calling for a jihad to kill ‘the Americans and their allies – civilian and military’. In August that year al Qaeda bombed the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania; then in September 2000 suicide bombers directed by al Qaeda attacked the USS Cole in Aden; A year later came the 9/11 attacks on America. All these were planned from al Qaeda’s safe haven in Afghanistan. In fact, after 9/11 US forces found a video in an al Qaeda house near Jalalabad in which Bin Laden boasted about the attack on the World Trade Centre that he was about to mount. This was but one of many major attacks on the West that Bin Laden and al Qaeda planned from the safe haven the Taliban gave them in Afghanistan. We are fighting in Afghanistan to prevent the Taliban and al Qaeda and other radical Islamist groups establishing a radical Islamist state there from which to launch jihad attacks on the rest of the world.

The specific threat to the UK: The success of the 9/11 attack enabled al Qaeda to undergo a major transformation. Instead of spending years planning a small number of terrorist spectaculars against the West, al Qaeda became an inspirational force, inspiring, training and ultimately franchising terrorist attacks. Young radical Muslims who now came to al Qaeda seeking bin Laden’s approval for their schemes. Al Qaeda changed form being a small organisation to being an inspiration for a movement that while global in reach, is still centred on bin Laden and the Pakistan-Afghanistan border region where the Taliban gave him sanctuary. It was to this region that Shehzad Tanweer and Mohammed Sidique Khan two of the 7/7 London bombers came.

The cost of appeasement:

If we appease the Taliban andother Islamist terrorist groups by withdrawing from Afghanistan now, the consequences will be severe:
a) The Taliban will take over again in Afghanistan with all the harsh cruelty and brutality they had before.

b) Afghanistan will once again become a radical Islamist state – that not only al Qaeda, but also other radical Islamist groups would use it as a base to launch terrorist attacks on West – and those attacks would increase both in scale and in numbers. Britain would almost certainly be a particular target.

c) The threat of nuclear terrorism. There has long been evidence that nuclear material form the former Soviet Union has for some years been passing through Afghanistan. During the 2001 western military intervention in Afghanistan canisters of uranium were found at an al Qaeda base near Kandahar airport. Access to such materials would have given al Qaeda the capacity to use a dirty radioactive bomb (i.e. spreading radioactive contamination by means of a conventional explosive) against a western city. There is also evidence that both al Qaeda and the Taliban have access to materials necessary for using chemical and biological materials in terrorism, as was demonstrated by an attempt a few years ago to use Anthrax against Royal Anglian soldiers in Afghanistan.

d) The threat of a nuclear armed Islamist state in Pakistan.If Afghanistan falls to the Taliban again, then Taliban fighters and weapons will flow across the border to the Pakistani Taliban. This will make it much more difficult to prevent the Pakistani Taliban gaining control of the North West Frontier Province and ultimately even of Pakistan itself. The prospect of a nuclear armed Islamist state run by the Taliban would create the unpalatable possibilities of nuclear blackmail against other states or even nuclear war.

e) Withdrawal from Afghanistan would also give Islamist movements worldwide a massive propaganda boost.They would proclaim to the Islamic world that they had defeated the might of a superpower and now nothing would seem impossible to their jihadist followers. They would now announce that it was now a realistic possibility that radical Islam could be imposed on the rest of the world. It would give a massive boost to the recruitment of thousands more jihadists and lead to a huge increase in terrorist financing.

f) Political blackmail by non violent Islamist groups in the UK. These groups share the same ultimate goals as violent Islamists – the creation of Britain as an Islamic state with Islamic government and sharia imposed on both Muslim and non Muslim alike. They have simply adopted a different political strategy to achieve that end. Their strategy is to push test cases through the courts and lobby for changes in parliamentary law so that British law is increasingly aligned and 'compliant' with sharia. Their political strategy also involves a certain degree of political blackmail. They insist that unless their demands are appeased for more and more sharia compliant legislation, then it is ‘inevitable’ that more young British Muslims will go to train in Afghanistan and Pakistan and return to commit terrorist acts in the UK. A classic example of this sort of political blackmail occurred in August 2006 when the security services disrupted a plot to bomb planes flying from Heathrow to North America, a plot that had the potential to kill 5,000 people. When Communities Secretary Ruth Kelly and Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott met leaders of key Islamic organisations the next day, they were presented with a demand for implementation of sharia relating to family law in the UK. (And just in case anyone thinks this sounds benign, the sections of sharia dealing with family law give significantly lesser inheritance rights to women, give automatic custody of children to fathers, while any woman who leaves Islam for another faith can automatically be divorced, loseher children and even the right to see them). Once such concessions to Islamist ideology are given, the threat of terrorism doesn’t go away, there is just a new demand for more concessions. The only way to deal with such political blackmail is not to give into it, but to tackle the threat of terrorism on the ground. That includes tackling it with military action in the Pakistan-Afghanistan region, which has become an inspirational and training centre for Islamist attacks on the UK. If we withdraw from Afghanistan, it would not stop this at all, in fact it would most likely increase the influence of that area for radicalised British Muslims. That would leave as our only options either enduring ever more terrorist attacks or more and more appeasement of the demands of these Islamist groups for a step by step implementation of sharia in the UK. Right now we are at the stage where such groups are demanding the implementation of shariafor financial dealings (which the present government has already appeased) and for family law. However, if we did withdraw form Afghanistan then how long might it be before Islamist councillors in an area with a Muslim majority population demand a local implementation of sharia within their area…?

We cannot afford stop fighting than the Taliban any more than we could afford to stop fighting the Nazis while they remained undefeated in World War Two.

Centre Right 11^th November 2009

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The future cost to Britain of Labour's flirtation with shari'a finance

Understanding Shari’a Finance: The Muslim Challenge to Western Economics by Patrick Sookhdeo (McClean,VA: Isaac Publishing,2008).

This is a further volume in Dr Patrick Sookhdeo’s excellent series of books on Islamism specifically written to inform non specialists, particularly those involved in the development of political policy.

Reading this book I could not help but be reminded of the words of the Abdul A’la Mawdudi (1903-79), the leading Islamist writer in the Indian sub continent:

The truth is that Islam is a revolutionary ideology which seeks to alter the social order of the entire world and rebuild it in conformity with its own tenets and ideals...Islam wishes to do away with all states and governments which are opposed to the ideology and programme of Islam. The purpose of Islam is to set up a state on the basis of this ideology and programme…regardless of the rule of which nation is undermined in the process of the establishment of an ideological Islamic state. Islam requires the earth - not just a portion, but the entire planet. (Chapter 1 Jihad in Islam – translated by Khurshid Ahmed, published by UK Islamic Mission 1997).

Mawdudi went on say that:

As soon as the Ummah of Islam (i.e. Muslim community) seizes state power, it will outlaw all forms of business transacted on the basis of usury or interest; it will not permit gambling; it will curb all forms of business and financial dealings which contravene Islamic law. (Chapter 4 Jihad in Islam).

Patrick Sookhdeo’s book Understanding Shari’a Finance: The Muslim Challenge to Western Economics begins by quoting Timur Kuran, a Muslim scholar and Professor of Economics and Political Science at Duke University, who states that Shari’a finance is an ‘invented tradition’ that does not go back to Muhammad’s day. In this book Dr Sookhdeo demonstrates how shari’a finance has in fact been specifically developed in recent years by radical Islamists as means of bringing increasing areas of society, in both Muslim majority and Western countries, under Islamist control.

The basis of Shari’a finance is the Qur’an’s prohibition of what is in Arabic termed riba in Q2:275. Throughout Islamic history there has been debate as to whether riba means the charging of extortionate interest, or, as modern Islamists insist, amounts to a total ban on all forms of interest. Sookhdeo demonstrates that there is ample historical precedent going back to the Abbasid Caliphs (successors of Muhammad as leaders of the Sunni Muslim community) for it being regarded as legitimate to charge interest at up to 7% and within the later Ottoman empire up to 10% or even on occasions 15%. While even in the last 20 years both al-Azhar University in Egypt, the main centre of Sunni Islamic learning and successive Grand Muftis of Egypt have ruled that fixed rates of bank interest are lawful under shari’a.

Prior to the 1970s and 1980s Islamic banks operating on shari’a principles simply did not exist in most Muslim countries. In fact, only in Iran, Pakistan and Sudan has there been any general attempt to islamicise banking activities. Even in Saudi Arabia as recently as 2005 only 30% of bank assets were classified as shari’a compliant. Simlarly, Islamic banks were not created in Muslim majority countries such Jordan until 1978, in Turkey until 1983, Indonesia until 1992 and Syria until 2007. While Oman even now quite specifically refuses to license Islamic banking.

Patrick Sookhdeo traces the origins of ‘Islamic economics’ back to the radical Pakistani Islamist Abdul A’la Mawdudi who argued that Islam encompasses all areas of life including economics. Islamic economics was specifically created to be a vehicle to help establish Islamic law in society and state, until, in Mawdudi’s words ‘the Ummah of Islam seizes state power'. One of Mawdudi’s disciples, Khurshid Ahmed, an economist who was also a leader of Jam’at-i-Islami in Pakistan was sent to the UK to further this vision. It is he who has largely been responsible for the creation of the concept of shari’a finance in recent years. Ahmed stated that

‘Resurgent Islam represents a new approach – that is, to strive to reconstruct the economy and society in accordance with Islamic ideals and values’

‘It is a direct demand of the Ummah’s (i.e. Muslim community’s) position as khalifah (i.e. exercising political domination over non Muslims) that its dependence upon the non Muslim world in all essentials must be changed to a state of economic independence, self respect and gradual building up of strength and power' (Studies in Islamic Economics, 1982).

At first the creation of Islamic economics was a theoretical exercise, but the oil wealth generated in the 1970s allowed the creation of modern shari’a financial institutions beginning with the establishment of the Islamic Development Bank by the Oganisation of Islamic Conference in 1974, followed by a 1977 conference in Saudi Arabia which established shari’a economics as an academic discipline.

In addition to shari’a finance being essentially a creation of radical Islamists designed to foist their own agenda on others, Patrick Sookhdeo identifies a number of other dangers and vulnerabilities relating to sharia finance:

1. Shar’ia finance is based on creating alternatives to interest based financial products, these include various combinations of lease/purchase arrangements that are designed to fulfil the role of traditional mortgages and profit and loss accounts based on short term commercial investments and discretionary bonuses that are designed to be broadly analogous to deposit accounts. However, Sookhdeo observes that even Islamic countries have experienced extreme difficulty in regulating financial institutions that do not overtly use interest. In particular, the use of discretionary bonuses accompanied by large scale fund transfers makes them extremely vulnerable to both fraud and money laundering. This was illustrated by a large scale financial crises that hit Egypt in the 1980s due to massive corruption flourishing in self styled ‘Islamic companies’.

2. These arrangements also make shari’a finance particularly vulnerable to being used for terrorist financing. This was one of the reasons why, in the 12 month period following the 9/11 attacks, the US government found it necessary to blacklist 180 Islamic financial institutions and charities including some of the most ‘reputable’ Islamic banks such as the al Taqwa Islamic Bank and the Dallah el Baraka Group. Patrick Sookhdeo quotes Professor Mahmoud El Gamal, the US Treasury’s principal advisor on Islamic Economics, as stating that:

‘To the extent that shari’a arbitrage Islamic financial practice utilizes the same tools as criminal finance, the industry may be vulnerable to abuse…the current modus operandi of Shari’a arbitrage Islamic financing is too dangerous …the three stages of development of an Islamic financial product bear a striking resemblance to methods used by money launderers and terrorist financiers.’

3. The structure of Islamic financial institutions effectively places them outside of government control, as the board of directors are subject to direction by a council of international shari’a experts whose sole concern is obedience to the Qur’an and Hadith over and above any man made regulatory framework.

4. There are only a small number of international shari’a experts sitting on the shari’a panels of the UK financial institutions currently involved in providing Islamic financial products (Barclays, HSBC Amanah Finance, Institute of Islamic Banking and Insurance, Islamic Bank of Britain, West Bromwich Building Society and Yorkshire Building Society). However, a number of these shari’a experts sitting on the supervisory panels of multiple institutions have strong links to radical Islamic movements and organisations such as the Muslim Brotherhood and Saudi Wahhabi-Salfism. Sookhdeo specifically identifies at least one such Islamist scholar who elsewhere has urged that Muslims should wage an aggressive military jihad against the West.

5. Islamic banks pay zakat, which is a 2.5% tithe on assets owned for more than year instituted by Muhammad to provide both for those in need and for jihad. Whilst the zakat system itself is used for many good, charitable purposes, the author cites a UN security Council report that zakat has enabled al-Qaeda to receive between US$300 and $500 million over a decade from wealthy businessmen and bankers representing about 20% of Saudi GNP through a web of charities and companies acting as fronts with the notable use of Islamic banks.

It should therefore be a matter of much concern that the present UK government has progressively legislated to allow the operation of shari’a finance in the UK. In 2003 the Bank of England changed the rules on stamp duty to recognise sharia’ compliant mortgages and stated that they no longer had any objections to the introduction of shari’a complaint financial products into the UK market; In 2005 the government passed legislation to facilitate the creation of Islamic financial transactions and retail banking services; In 2006 the Financial Services Authority examined the possibility of issuing a regulatory framework to support the issue of Islamic bonds in London, meanwhile Stephen Timms, the Chief Secretary to the Treasury claimed that the government was making good progress towards removing the legal and tax hurdles to the development of shari’a complaint financial products and Ed Balls, then Economic Secretary to the Treasury promised the government would remove any tax barriers that impede the issue of sukkuk Islamic bonds. Meanwhile, Gordon Brown who as Chancellor had overseen the whole process stated that he wanted to make London the natural home for global Islamic funds,

These changes in government policy directly led to the emergence of shari'a finance in the UK with the Islamic Bank of Britain being formed in 2004 and mainstream banks such as HSBC and Lloyds rushing to copy them.

However, the reality was that before the government took these steps there very little demand for shari’a complaint financial products from British Muslims. A 2004 study by Loughborough University found that 75% of British Muslims were indifferent to Shari’a finance. They found that only 5% of British Muslims said they would never use interest based financial products, while even amongst the 25% of British Muslims who showed some degree of interest in shari’a finance, the overwhelming majority were till then quite happy to use interest based finance.

By actively encouraging the development of shari’a finance in the UK, the government has subjected the vast majority of ordinary Muslims to a significant amount of community pressure from radicals to follow a specifically Islamist approach to finance, when previously they were quite happy with interest based traditional western finance.

The author draws two conclusions:

1. 'Shari’a finance is a politically driven Islamist invention masked in religious idiom. It is clear that the Islamist movement have artificially generated the need and demand for shari’a finance.’

2. 'The support given by the government and financial sector to shari’a finance in Britain is aimed more at attracting investment from the huge pool of money in the oil rich Middle East than in satisfying local Muslim demand, which is being used simply as a pious cover.’

Reading this, the question one can only ask is ‘What will be the long term cost to Britain of the present Labour government’s flirtation with Islamist finance?’ Given Mawdudi's comments quoted at the start of this review, we ignore this at our peril.

Centre Right 27^th October 2009

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Encourage marriage: lessons from Pakistan

One of the greatest long term social challenges facing the next Conservative government will be gently to encourage people towards changes in culture and thinking that are more beneficial and less harmful to society as a whole. Encouraging marriage is a particular case in point.

Melancthon is absolutely right that the cost of wedding services puts some people off getting married.

The cost of weddings is actually a problem in many countries and a lot has to with social expectations and obligations. You are expected to have a certain standard of event and some people, often including distant relatives you haven’t seen for years, expect to be invited. Well, if you think weddings are expensive in white British society – spare a thought for our friends from Asian cultures – many of them are expected to invite literally hundreds of people to wedding receptions and the weddings often go on for three days or more, something that is financially crippling for many families. When I lived in Pakistan, some of my Pakistani friends told me that many years earlier the Pakistani government had for a number of years actually banned wedding receptions – all you could have was a cup of tea and piece of cake after the wedding. Sounds draconian, but according to my Pakistani friends it was incredibly popular – because it set people free from a whole series of social obligations which often led to many poor people particularly being in crippling debt.

No one would suggest that we follow exactly the same policy in England, but perhaps we can encourage people towards marriage both by means of economic nudges and by measures that lower the cost of weddings.

Two possibilities for a future Conservative government would be:

1. A marriage grant – say £500 per couple, not to pay for, but just to nudge people towards, the idea that getting married is a good thing.

2. Being able to offset the cost of a wedding reception against income tax – provided that the total cost of the reception before tax did not exceed say, £2000. That would have a similar effect to approach previously tried in Pakistan. i.e. it would reduce the cost of weddings by effectively pruning down some of the social obligations, such as having to invite large numbers, that raise the cost of weddings to amounts that are simply unaffordable for many people.

The first would cost approximately £57 million. The second would cost approximately £100 million (based on a marriage rate of approximately 230,000 per year). But given that:

Only 6% of married couples split up by the time their first child is 5 years old, compared to 52% of cohabiting couples splitting by the time their first child is five years; And children whose mum and dad split up are 75% more likely to give up on school and leave school with few or no qualifications, are approximately twice as likely to experience adverse outcomes on a whole range of measures including behaviour problems and engaging in crime, mental health problems, become sexually active at an earlier age, turning to drugs, smoking and heavy drinking….

Given the cost that just some of these impose on society, spending £157 million a year nudging people towards marriage – could well be an investment that will actually reduce public spending in the medium term.

Centre Right 17th October 2009

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Government should ban ship to ship oil transfers off the Suffolk coast - now!

Last week Waveney MP Bob Blizzard announced that next spring the government will introduce a new law banning ship to ship oil transfers off the Suffolk coast. It is welcome that Mr Blizzard has finally said something on this issue. However, as there are only 5 weeks between the start of spring and the very last date on which parliament must be dissolved for a general election, there is no realistic possibility of any law introduced then becoming law. It is therefore hard to see this government announcement as being anything other than what is commonly called ‘spin’.

These oil transfers have already been banned off the Dorset coast and the shipping minister could ban them here next week if he chose to do so.

Journal readers may be interested to know that in the meantime the equipment for containing any oil spill is kept by the government at 3 locations – Milford Haven in South Wales, Huddersfield in West Yorkshire and Perth in Scotland. As such, with tankers anchored only a few miles off Kessingland and Southwold, there is no realistic possibility of any oil spill being contained before it reached our beaches. I have written to the shipping minister twice raising this issue since August, but so far have not received any reply.

The majority of the North Suffolk coastline where these oil transfers take place is both a site of special scientific interest (SSSI) and an area of outstanding natural beauty (AONB). Those of us living on the coast are simply baffled as to why the government are allowing the transfer of Russian oil to tankers bound for other countries to threaten both our beautiful coastline and our local tourism business which brings more than £65 million to the local economy and supports one in eight local jobs.

Lowestoft and Southwold Journal 5th October 2009

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A Conservative approach to sea defence

Approximately half of the coastline of England and Wales is made of rocks that make the coastline vulnerable to coastal erosion (various types of sandstone and clays, chalk and limestone). This is roughly the area from South Devon eastwards, including most of the south coast and the entire east coast of England. Sea defence is a hugely important local issue in many of these areas. Nearly 2/3 of constituencies along it are Conservative controlled and many of the rest are seats we need to win. While even on the west coast of England and Wales, there are many low lying areas that are subject to coastal flooding. So this is a serious issue that a future Conservative government should have a clear well thought policy on.

There are also important principles of conservatism, such as localism and community – allowing people to act on behalf of their own community, rather than restricting some activities to the government, that we should be seeking to apply in developing a much clearer and more coherent approach to sea defence policy than the present government is doing.

Six principles for future sea defence policy

1. There should be a presumption in favour of landowners being allowed to build their own sea defences – as they have done for at least a thousand years. Regulation is principally needed a) where defences interfere with longshore drift of sediment and so could adversely affect erosion rates in other areas; and b) where proposed sea defences have a significantly adverse affect on the visual appearance of the coast. However, where neither of these apply, landowners should not have to face a lengthy application process to build basic sea defence structures such as clay banks to protect their land.

2. County councils, rather than district councils, to be designated as the key local authority responsible for sea defence. This would enable allow local councils to employ specialist sea defence staff, rather than simply relying on employing costly engineering consultancy firms. Equally importantly, it would enable much of the DEFRA funding currently channelled through the Environment Agency to be devolved to elected local councils. A forthcoming Conservative green paper will advocate devolving powers from unelected quangos to elected local councils. The Environment Agency would be an excellent example to start with.

3. Joined up government: The impact of climate change means that sea levels are already rising, something that increases Britain’s vulnerability to both coastal flooding and to more extensive coastal erosion. Moreover, as it takes up to 100 years for atmospheric carbon to break down, it is almost inevitable that sea levels will rise still further even with significant reductions in carbon emissions. Yet, the present government currently only spends around 0.1% of public spending on sea defence. To put this into context, this is enough to build just 10 miles of sea wall. Whilst there is no question that public spending will have to be cut in the immediate future, there is an urgent need to give relatively greater weight to sea defence spending if we are not to find ourselves in a few years times facing significantly greater expenditure. We should not forget that the 1953 North Sea storm surge affected not just coastal areas, but also flooded huge areas of the Norfolk, Suffolk, and Cambridgeshire up to 30 miles inland. 307 people drowned, 30,000 had to be evacuated, while 24,000 homes were destroyed with total damage estimated at between £30 and £50 million (in 1953 prices). The present urgency of giving greater priority to sea defence was well illustrated in November 2007when a similar North Sea storm surge was only a few centimetres short of over topping existing flood defences in East Anglia.

4. Given that we are an island nation, it is extraordinary that we invest at best minuscule amounts on research relating to defence against coastal erosion. Although we do have a government funded oceanographic laboratory predicting storm surges, we have no scientific institute that brings together both scientists specialising in coastal erosion (coastal geomorphologists) and engineering specialists who design flood and erosion defences.

A future Conservative government should make it priority to set up such a specialist agency to conduct specialist research on sea defence that would avoid the present expensive reliance on engineering consultancy firms. Such companies whilst being at excellent at engineering do not necessarily have the wide ranging expert knowledge of coastal processes that scientists specialising in coastal geomorphology have. The task of such an institute would be firstly, to undertake research and to develop experimental schemes, such as the use of offshore reefs at Sea Palling in Norfolk (pictured) and secondly, to advise local councils on which types of defences against coastal erosion do not in principle harm other parts of the coast downdrift.

In the medium term the establishment of such an institute might actually reduce the relative cost of protecting a given length of coast. This is because there are currently quite a number of examples of poor value sea defence schemes that are largely, or in some cases totally, ineffective because their designers clearly lacked an adequate understanding of the totality of coastal processes.

For example, on the East Anglian coast where I live, one can see examples of new rock groynes costing tens, if not hundreds of thousands of pounds that are largely ineffective at building up the beach because they are either too close together or too long (as waves refract to no more than 10-15 degrees when they approach the coast any greater angle between the low water mark and the seaward end of the next groyne will render them totally ineffective at trapping longshore drift and building up the beach). In other places, sediment has been dredged from the sea bed close to an eroding beach in order to replenish the beach before the summer tourist season starts. In doing so, offshore bars that are frequently built up in the winter months are destroyed, resulting in larger waves breaking closer inshore and eroding the beach.

5. Tighter regulation of offshore dredging close to the coast. As the effects of dredging on coastal erosion normally only become apparent when it is too late, dredging companies should be required to demonstrate that dredging in a particular area will provide a ‘public benefit’ before being licensed to dredge. This will effectively limit dredging to areas where deposition of sediment is clearly taking place and potentially causing a problem to shipping – as for example at the entrance to ports and estuaries. Sea bed dredging of sediment for the construction industry has been demonstrated to be a significant cause of coastal erosion in some locations. The classic example of this was the village of Hallsands in Devon, which in 1917 literally fell into the sea, as a result of sea bed dredging up the coast over the previous 20 years.

6. There is a strong case for including the value of residential property in assessments of economic value undertaken for shoreline management plans (SMPs). At the moment, homeowners whose houses are ‘lost’ to the sea receive no government compensation. Consequently, residential areas are assessed as having little or no economic value, which then provides a justification for ‘managed retreat’ policies on the grounds that the area’s lack of economic importance means that spending on sea defence cannot be justified. Realistically, in the current economic climate, a policy of the government compulsorily purchasing/compensating owners of at risk properties will have to be a medium term aim. However, as an immediate interim measure, the government should at least take responsibility for the cost of demolition of any property at risk of falling into the sea. The effect of including this small cost of around £2-3,000 per house in the economic benefit calculations made in shoreline management plans would be very substantial. For example, a village of 330 houses, currently given a ‘zero’ economic value in SMP calculations would then acquire a minimum economic value of £1 million – which would justify sea defence spending up to this level.

For an island nation this is a really important issue and in many areas near the coast a really important local issue. It’s time we came up with a much more coherent policy than the present government.

Conservative Home's Centre Right 12th September 2009

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The Taliban are not the only threat to peace in Afghanistan

This week the BBC obtained a rare video clip of Afghan warlord Gubadddin Hekmatyar leader of the notorious Hezb-i-Islami group. The appearance was hugely significant, not simply because Hezb-i-islami was the most brutal and radical of all the Afghan mujahaddin groups, but also because a number of other recent events, including terrorist attacks that Hez-i-islami have claimed responsibility for, suggest that he may be seeking to stage a come back. If so, it could potentially lead to a new front to the east and north of Kabul that coalition forces would have to fight.

Who is Hekmatyar and his Hezb-i-Islami faction?

Hekmatyar was one of the leaders of the original student Islamist movement in Kabul in the early 1970s and led most of the student demonstrations between 1965 and 1972. It was this student Islamist movement that was largely responsible for the initial spread of radical Islamism in Afghanistan.

However, the movement split over its response to the overthrow of the Afghan monarchy in 1974 when the King’s cousin Daud, with the assistance of the Communist Peoples Democratic Party of Afghanistan, seized power creating a republic. Within the Student Islamist movement, the more ‘moderate’ elements and Persian speakers led by Burhanuddin Rabbani (who later became Afghan president) planned to infiltrate the army until the country was ready for an Islamist revolution, while the radicals led by Hekmatyar and others attempted to start military uprisings. This split eventually formalised in 1976-77 into the Jamat-i-Islami party led by Rabbani whose most famous military commander was Ahmed Shah Massoud and the Hezb-i-Islami party led by Hekmatyer. These two parties each came to have their own quite distinct ethos.

Rabbani and Jamat-i-Islami pursued a policy of seeking the broadest possible coalition of all Muslims – a strategy he had learnt from the Muslim Brotherhood while studying at Egypt’s al-Azhar University. Jamat-i-Islami eventually formed the major component of the Northern Alliance that with the aid of western forces swept the Taliban from power after 9/11. Nonetheless, both Rabbani and Jamat-i-Islami were radical by traditional Afghan standards, Rabbani having translated the Egyptian radical Islamist Sayyed Qutb’s Milestones into Persian.

However, Hekmtayar and Hezb-i-Islami were not only more extreme, but also more narrow in their radicalism than Jamat-i-Islami. In fact, Hezb-i-Islami came to use the medieval Islamic concept of takfir quite freely to declare less radical groups, including Jamat-i-Islami, to be ‘non Muslims’ so that jihad could ‘legitimately’ be fought against them under the terms of sharia. The Hezb split again in 1979 with the more extreme radicalised group staying with Hekmatyar. (The more ‘moderate’ group were still fairly extreme and are now commonly referred to as the 'Haqani' after their current leader Jallaluddin Haqani. They are now allied with al Qaeda in fighting Afghan government and coalition forces).

Hekmatyar and Hezb-i-Islami’s record

During the war against the Soviet invaders Hezb-i-Islami became a by word amongst aid workers not just for extreme fundamentalism, but also for extreme brutality, butchery and extra judicial killings. Hezb-i-Islami were believed to be behind the murder of western aid workers and journalists, as well as acid attacks on women who worked as teachers in refugee schools. They were well known not just for extorting money at their roadside checkpoints, but also for brutally torturing people. In fact, in 2005 a former Hezb-i-Islami commander at Sarobi made legal history in the UK by being the first person to be convicted of torture in a British court, having been granted political asylum in Britain in 1998 claiming that his life was in danger from the Taliban (quite why our government thinks it should allow such people into the UK is simply beyond me). As an aid worker I had to negotiate with senior Hezb-i-Islami officials for permission to work in areas they controlled. On one occasion I was invited to have lunch with Hekmatyar who was visiting the area that day, I diplomatically gave our excuses, seeing nothing positive that could come out of such a meeting and knowing that as westerners we were putting ourselves in grave danger just meeting Hekmatyar.

When the Soviet Union withdrew from Afghanistan in 1989 the rivalry between the different mujahaddin groups, particularly between Jamat-i-Islami and Hekmatyar’s Hezb-i-Islami led to some of the bloodiest fighting of the war. In summer 1992 Hekmatyar turned down the post of prime minister in a coalition government with Rabbani as president, wanting to be president himself. However, he lacked sufficient men to take Kabul in a ground attack and so, in an attempt to create dissatisfaction with the government of President Rabbani, Hekmatyar instead chose to fire large numbers of artillery rounds and rockets into the city indiscriminately at civilian targets on a daily basis. His actions resulted in a total breakdown of both law and order and sanitation in the city, as well as large areas of Kabul literally being reduced to ruins. Estimates of the number of civilian deaths during those months vary wildly, but there were literally of thousands of civilians killed and tens of thousands wounded.

Hekmatyar opposed the US led invasion in late 2001 and when the Northern Alliance forces drove the Taliban out of Kabul and the surrounding region, Hezb-i-Islami retreated to their traditional strongholds – parts of Laghman and Parwan, Baghlan and Kapsia provinces to the north of Kabul and Laghman to the east Hekmatyar himself went into temporary exile in Iran, before forming an alliance with the Taliban and al Qaeda in November 2002 and initially mounting some significant attacks on coalition forces. However, in 2007 he put out a statement announcing that he was ending his alliance with the Taliban.

Why Hekmatyar and Hezb-i-Islami is a serious threat

Since his return form exile in Iran seven years ago, little has been seen or heard directly from Hekmatyar, that is why it may be particularly significant that he is suddenly seeking to make himself known: In April 2008 Hezb-i-Islami claimed responsibility for an assassination attempt on President Karzai; in August 2008 they claimed responsibility for killing 10 French soldiers in Sarobi, an hour’s drive east of Kabul on the Jalalabad road; In October, they were blamed by the Taliban for the shooting of two DHL workers in Kabul, one of them British; At the end of December they claimed responsibility for the car bombing of a US convoy entering the provincial governor’s compound in Charikar to the North of Kabul, a new development in an area of Afghanistan that had until then been relatively peaceful; Not long after that, Hekmatyar broke his customary silence to give an interview published on the Afghan internet site Afghan Voice; now he has broken his silence again to give the videoed answers to questions submitted by Associated Press that the BBC have just broadcast. In these he stated:

“If international forces continue the war we will have no alternative but to fight, all they have achieved in the past 8 years is carrying coffins”.

In May this year it was rumoured that Barack Obama’s new US government was seeking to bring Hezb-i-Islami into President Karzai’s coalition government. However, this is not a group to bring into a coalition, it is led by a man who wants power for himself at all costs and will use extreme brutality to achieve it. This man is evil, it may not be politically correct to say that, and I do not say it lightly, but on some occasions it simply needs to be said. The actions of some one who has acted with such brutality, including murdering thousands of innocent civilians speak for themselves.

Hezb-i-Islami is not strong in terms of numbers, at its greatest extent it is probably no more than a few thousand men. However, it does have the potential to, and the track record for, causing untold carnage and suffering in Afghanistan. Hekmatyar’s record is one of using extreme brutality and savagery – including deliberate targeting of large numbers of civilians when he lacks the military strength to achieve his ambitions.

The danger Hezb-i-Islami poses is that its heartlands lie not in the south of Afghanistan, where coalition forces are currently involved in fighting, but to the north of Kabul – Baghlan province, Ghorband in Parwan province, Kapsia province and to the east – Laghman province which lies to the north of the Kabul-Jalalabad road. These are areas where Hezb-i-Islami commanders became battle hardened ambushing the Soviets. Not only could an increase in terrorist attacks in these regions stretch already thinly spread coalition forces, it could also disrupt the main overland supply route between Kabul and Pakistan – the Grand Trunk Road which runs from Peshawar in Pakistan, through the Khyber Pass to Jalalabad and on to Kabul. This threat is particularly severe, as Hezb-i-Islami has strongholds in Kapsia at the Kabul end of the road, Laghman - to the West of Jalalabad near the road's mid point and there are still many Hezb-i-Islami members in the area around Peshawar in Pakistan who have now settled in what were once refugee camps.

Hekmatyar, having fallen out with the Taliban, may well now be hoping that coalition forces will at least occupy, if not severely weaken the Taliban, leaving a vacuum that he hopes to fill. Whilst no one can predict exactly when he will make his move, the signs now begin to look as if they may be the first rumblings that could foreshadow a later eruption.

Just the very possibility that a new front could open up in a different part of Afghanistan that would require additional coalition forces, perhaps puts into context some of the debate that has happened in the last week about how long we will be fighting in Afghanistan for.

Make no mistake, the Taliban were and are brutal – I know I lived in Afghanistan when they were in charge – but even their brutality and the amount of carnage they caused to the civilian population of Afghanistan did not sink to the depths that Hezb-i-Islami inflicted and are still capable of inflicting on Afghanistan. That is one more reason why the British government needs to be much firmer in its resolve to give wholehearted support to the military campaign our armed services are fighting on our behalf in Afghanistan.

Conservative Home's Centre Right 22nd August 2009

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The Defence Secretary MUST resign over his attack on the head of the army

General Sir David Richards, recently said that the Army’s role in Afghanistan may need to go on for several decades. Yesterday Bob Ainsworth, the Defence Secretary on BBC's Andrew Marr Show explicitly referred to that professional assessment by the new head of army as ‘ludicrous’ and stated that British troops might begin to be pulled back from front line fighting…in the next 12 months. For the Defence Secretary to openly reject the best professional military advice at a time while we are fighting a major conflict is frankly alarming.

Even more concerning is the timing of this pull back of British troops – within the next 12 months, which just happens to be when the present government has to call an election. Let’s not forget that two years ago Gordon Brown announced a similar pull back of troops from Iraq…immediately before he decided to call off the general election.

For the Defence Secretary to make these comments on the weekend that the death toll of British troops passed the 200 mark is deeply offensive to the hundreds of British troops who have been wounded and the relatives of those who have died.

Instead of his extraordinary behaviour - going on television to publicly insult the head of the army and doing what many people could be forgiven for thinking was playing politics with soldiers lives; Instead of that, the Defence Secretary should be seeking to work with opposition parties to explain clearly to the public why fighting in Afghanistan is essential to our security. Generating that public support is the very least that soldiers on the front line should be able to expect from the Defence Secretary.

However, as the government is not making the case clearly – let’s just remind ourselves why we are fighting in Afghanistan:

1. We are fighting in Afghanistan because radical Islamists such as Bin Laden are attempting to create a radical Islamist state from which they can launch jihad attacks on the West, with the ultimate aim of subjecting the whole world, Muslim and non Muslim alike to Islamic law and government. Bin Laden first tried to do this in Sudan, then when he was expelled, the Taliban were inspired by his vision to invite him and his followers to relocate to Afghanistan. The reality of that threat was demonstrated by detailed plans found in Afghanistan after 9/11, including the locations of all US nuclear power stations.

2. We are fighting in Afghanistan because there is clear evidence both that nuclear materials from the former Soviet Union have been trafficked through Afghanistan and that the Taliban have already gained access to some of these, thereby creating the potential for radical Islamists to create at least a dirty radioactive bomb (i.e. scattering radioactive material by means of a conventional explosive).

3. We are fighting in Afghanistan because a Taliban inspired movement is also seeking to take over neighbouring Pakistan. Should they succeed, we would be faced with the world’s first ever nuclear armed radical Islamist state, who would undoubtedly use at least nuclear blackmail in pursuit of their avowed aim of imposing their own version of Islamic law and government on the rest of the world.

4. We are fighting in Afghanistan because the overwhelming majority of all Islamist terrorist attacks planned against the UK and UK citizens either originate or their perpetrators receive training in either Afghanistan or the Afghanistan/Pakistan border region. So far nearly 150 British citizens have died in terrorist attacks linked to this region (9/11, Bali 2002 and London 7/7) and hundreds more have been seriously injured. That is why it is entirely in the British national interest that we do all we can help the governments of both Afghanistan and Pakistan create stable countries with strong law enforcement that will effectively crack down on these training camps.

There are admittedly other reasons that the government have given for our presence in Afghanistan – combating the drug trade and aid and reconstruction – as a former aid worker in Afghanistan I certainly am not decrying those efforts, but these must always be quite subordinate to the central purpose for which our armed services are fighting in Afghanistan. It is the job of the Defence Secretary to publicly explain to the British public why our servicemen are fighting in Afghanistan and to encourage full public support for them.

Not only has Bob Ainsworth clearly failed to do this, he has gone against the professional military advice of the head of the army, indicating that the government wants troops pulled back from the front line in the next 12 months i.e. in the lead up to the next general election and even gone on television to mock the head of the army's contrary advice as 'ludicrous'.

For a defence secretary to act in this way when British forces are paying the ultimate sacrifice - fighting, being disabled and dying in Afghanistan is a most serious dereliction of duty and misuse of his position. That is why Bob Ainsworth must resign as Defence Secretary immediately before his party political pantomime act puts British lives even further at risk in Afghanistan.

Centre Right 17th August 2009

STOP PRESS: the day after this article was published the Daily Mail also called for the Defence Secretary to be replaced. reporting that senior military officers had privately complained to MPs on the Defence select committee that the Defence Secretary 'is directly undermining the war effort by talking about reducing the number of troops when it is patently obvious that we need to increase them...'

Click to read the Daily Mail article: Ministers in plot to 'smear' Army chief Dannatt as generals call for 'Bungling Bob' to be replaced

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The reason Islamists could infiltrate British security services

Patrick Mercer MP, is absolutely right to call for a government enquiry into how al-Qaeda sympathisers who had attended training camps in Pakistan were recruited to the security services – and more importantly whether any similar infiltration attempts have gone undetected.

In their recruitment of new staff after the 7/7 London bombings the security services have been potentially vulnerable to infiltration because they appear to have used an inaccurate and far to narrow a definition of what an Islamist extremist actually is. No matter how rigorous the security services' vetting procedures have been, if their fundamental definition of what constitutes an extremist is wrong, then potentially at least, security may have been compromised and the organisation infiltrated.

Time after time following 9/11, 7/7 and later terrorist plots, government statements about ‘extremists’ clearly indicate that the government have meant ‘extreme’ in relation to what they have sometimes openly called ‘mainstream Islam’, rather than meaning ‘extreme’ in terms of the distance of these views from mainstream British values. This in turn has led to a frequently repeated assertion by government ministers and others that ‘Islam has nothing to do with terrorism’. The latter led to the government’s official narrative report on the 7/7 London bombings presenting the most extraordinary conclusion, namely that the security services simply didn’t know what motivated four British young men to commit a major terrorist atrocity in London.

This was a conclusion that frankly shocked a number of us who had undertaken detailed academic study of Islam and pointed to a dangerous unawareness of the way the Qur’an and Hadith have been interpreted since the earliest times of Islamic history. Since its earliest days Islam has had a very strong doctrine of political domination of non Muslims i.e. imposing Islamic government and law on them, which is to be achieved by means of military jihad where non Muslims refuse to submit to it. (See for example Q9:29, which urges Muslims to fight those who do not believe in Islam until they submit and pay the jizya tax imposed on non Muslims in an Islamic state, a text which is interpreted in both classical i.e. medieval, Islamic commentaries and by modern Islamist writers such as Mawdudi as being a command to either engage in or support military jihad to impose Islamic government). Had the security services understood that this teaching is deeply embedded in Islamic history and theology, they would not have been at a loss to understand what motivated four British young men to bomb London in the summer of 2005. Of course, it must also be said that throughout Islamic history many other Muslims have instead emphasised a range of much more peaceful and devotional interpretations of Islam. These include the vast majority of British Muslims who have family origins in the Indian subcontinent. There, following the failure of military jihad against the British in 1856 (aka ‘the Indian mutiny’), Indian ulema (Islamic leaders) made a conscious decision to abandon jihad and instead concentrate on the devotional aspects of Islam. This stance led to a longstanding tradition of peaceful, devotional Islam among British Muslims, until the radicalisation of a significant minority of Muslim youth following the Rushdie affair.

The existence of these twin paths throughout Islamic history, both the violent and the peaceful, means that one can be well within the bounds of historical ‘mainstream Islam’ and still advocate support for violent jihad against non Muslims. So, when the government and the security services have defined Islamic extremists as people who are ‘extreme’ or even ‘deviant’ from ‘mainstream’ Islamic teaching – then their very definition of ‘extremism’ potentially excludes a significant number of those who claim that they only follow ‘mainstream Islam’ as taught in major Islamic centres such as Saudi Arabia and Egypt etc.

Consequently, when after the 7/7 London bombings the security services actively sought to recruit intelligence officers from among young people in the British Muslim community, they had a huge potential security blindspot. Basically, if the security services’ fundamental definition of what constitutes an Islamist extremist was flawed, as the official report into the 7/7 London bombings suggests that it was, then no matter how rigorous the vetting procedures may have been, there is a real possibility that Britain’s security services may well have been infiltrated by Islamists.

That is why these 6 cases highlighted by Patrick Mercer are likely to have occurred. It is also the most likely reason why in 2007 8 police officers and civilian staff working for the Met and other forces were discovered by MI5 to have suspected links to Islamist extremist groups.

This is why it is so absolutely important that the government investigation Patrick Mercer has called for, into potential infiltration of the security services, does actually happen. The Home Secretary MUST instigate an immediate enquiry and it must not only investigate whether infiltration has happened, it must also investigate why it has happened.

Centre Right 1st August 2009

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To combat the racist vote: a future Conservative government should replace Labour's promotion of 'diversity' with Conservative 'equality for all'

(Context: written immediately after the June 2009 elections, when two MEPs from a racist party were elected)

Last year I argued on Centre Right that the repeated assertions by Liberal-Left public figures that Islam has nothing at all to do with violence, would in the light of continued terrorist outrages ultimately lead disillusioned voters to believe the twisted half truths of racist political parties. Last week’s election results now raise a very real question as to whether we are now reaching the point of it becoming too late to prevent the rise of this sort of racism in Britain.

It is simply no use Labour ministers blaming stay at home Labour voters for the election of two MEPs from a racist party. Two leading academic researchers have recently said that a sophisticated strategy is now needed to win back voters who both agree with the policies of the racist party concerned and have lost all faith in what the mainstream parties have to offer.

Part of that strategy needs to be a recognition that a significant part of the blame lies with Labour's deeply flawed policy agenda of actively promoting 'diversity' in society coupled with the popular perception that certain groups are more favoured by the government than others. In a free society we rightly tolerate diversity, however, active promotion of it by the government is something quite different altogether. So, here are three reasons why government should NOT promote diversity:

1. It undermines community cohesion. As if to illustrate the point, only last week, a government minister told parliament that Muslim "communities and other groups have the option to use religious councils or any other system of alternative dispute resolution". Whilst the minister's statement certainly promotes 'diversity', it also significantly undermines community cohesion, not to mention leaving Muslim women under pressure to accept a legal system (sharia) that gives them significantly lesser legal rights than men. Equally, the giving of government funding to Islamic groups such as the MCB, may well promote 'diversity', but it is effectively treating Muslims as a separate community, rather than primarily as individual citizens. The government simply does not seem able to get its collective head around the fact that you simply cannot create community cohesion by promoting diversity! The latter creates a more fragmented society. Community cohesion is its exact opposite. It is about people focusing together on what they have in common, around a set of shared values - and that includes equality for all under one system of law.

2. Some lifestyle choices produce better results for society than others. Marriage is a classic example. In a free society people are free to chose the relationships they enter into, but having married parents unquestionably produces better results for children than other family structures. Only 8% of married parents split up by the time their first child is 5 years old, compared to 25% of those who married after the birth of their child and 52% of those who simply live together. Shocking figures when you consider that a 1998 report from the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, which looked at more than 200 UK research studies of the effects of family break up. This found that children whose parents have split up are at significantly greater risk of: having behavioural problems, leaving school with few or no qualifications, becoming sexually active at a younger age, suffering depression, and turning to drugs, smoking and heavy drinking. This is both a social and an economic cost that the rest of society quite literally pays the price for. Equally, I would argue that there are aspects of sharia that simply do not produce good results for society and these include aspects of Islamic family law that Islamist groups have been pressing the government to make enforceable in the UK.

3. The damage done by the present Labour government's promotion of diversity is made more toxic still by the politically correct way this policy is often implemented. Groups perceived to have been the victims of past 'oppression' are given a special protected status that seeks to prohibit any criticism of their ideology. Ever wondered why the government only talks about Islamophobia (fear or hatred of the ideology) rather than Muslimophobia (fear or hatred of the people)? The government sponsored promotion of diversity also gives special consideration to the funding of groups given this privileged status by political correctness. Ever wondered why the present government provides subsidies for training courses in Islamic theology, but not for those in Christian or Jewish or any other sort of theology? Admittedly there is also an element of appeasement here in the face of threats of violence. Moreover, regardless of whether the actual details of this are widely known or not, it is undeniable that it all lends credence to a strong perception, particularly among many white working class young people that some groups get a better deal from the government than they do. That is the breeding ground of the vote for white racist candidates that we have just seen. It didn't just happen because Labour voters stayed at home. It happened more fundamentally because the active promotion of 'diversity' by the present Labour government created the perception that some groups were being treated differently from others.

Until this perverse promotion of diversity is not only replaced by a government policy of promoting equality for all, but is actually widely seen to be treating everyone as equal, we will face the national shame of the likes of Nick Griffin being elected to public office. As with other aspects of Britain's broken society, it will take the medium if not the long term to repair the damage that these Labour policies have already done to our society. But the cost of neglecting to do so could well be a very significant rise of racial and religious tension in Britain. No responsible government can allow that to happen.

Centre Right 11^th June 2009

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An open letter to Alan Duncan

As Conservative Home reported on Monday, Alan’s Duncan on BBC called Miss California a ‘bitch’ and joked that if she was found murdered he would be responsible because she disagreed with gay marriage…

Dear Mr Duncan,

Many people in our party and also outside it hold you in high esteem. You have risen to hold high office in the shadow cabinet. It is one of the virtues of our party that although we hold to certain core values, such as freedom of speech, the party is by no means intolerant of those who hold a range of opinions on other issues. It was therefore deeply disappointing to hear your comments made on BBC about Miss California (Carrie Prejean) who had been called a b****** and a c*** by one of the Miss USA judges simply because when asked about her views on gay marriage she politely stated her honest and deeply held belief that “I believe that a marriage should be between a man and a woman, no offence to anybody out there”. The very gracious way that she responded both to that question and to the subsequent abuse from the judge who asked her the question set a standard for the rest of us to follow.

Alan we all know that you personally disagree with her. However, the manner in which you expressed your disagreement with her comments caused very deep offence to many people, including many whom the Conservative Party will be asking to vote for them in the next few weeks.

Mr Duncan, you called the lady a ‘bitch’ and joked that she should be murdered because of her deeply held beliefs that ‘marriage is something that is between a man and a woman’. A few weeks ago Stonewall circulated a briefing note to MPs citing a rap song with lyrics suggesting that gay people should be murdered. They cited it as an example of the sort of comment, however intended, that should be criminalised. I have no doubt whatsoever that as a gay man you would have found such a song deeply offensive. Would it therefore be too much to hope that reflecting on this might help you in turn to understand how deeply offensive your comments were to those who, out of religious or moral convictions, disagree with your own views on gay marriage?

Those of us involved in politics know that at times we all make mistakes, we say something that was inappropriate, something that offends those we did not mean to hurt or abuse. However, it is how we respond to that situation afterwards that shows our true character. Boris made his famous Liverpool comment, but responded by apologising, saying how stunned he was by the offence he had caused. No one thought the worse of him for it, in fact it raised him in many people’s esteem, it showed him to be the greater man. Alan, for the sake of those you’ve hurt, it’s time to do a Boris…

Centre Right April 2009

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St. George's Day: Labour have squandered what Churchill fought to defend

To mark St George’s Day 1933 Winston Churchill made a broadcast speech entitled ‘England’, edited excerpts of which I have reproduced below, (courtesy of the Royal Society of St George to whom Churchill made the speech). Read today, his comments are a sobering verdict on the present government who have undermined and even discarded values that Churchill believed were indisputably integral (though not exclusive!) to ‘England’. Churchill began by speaking about the legend of St George and the dragon:

"I have been wondering what would have happened to him and his story if he had lived now-a-days. St George would have arrived in Cappadocia accompanied, not by a horse, but by a secretariat. He would have been armed, not with a lance, but with some flexible formulas. He would, of course have been welcomed by the local branch of the League of Nations, and, encouraged by them, he would have proposed a conference with the dragon. He would have made a trade agreement with the dragon and would certainly have lent him a lot of money raised from the Cappadocian taxpayers. The question of the maiden’s release, which is very important in the story, would no doubt have been referred to Geneva. It being understood that the dragon reserved all his rights in the meantime. Finally, St George would have been photographed with the dragon, inset the maiden."

Churchill continued:

"We ought not on these occasions to allow our thoughts to exalt England at the expense of our fellow countrymen in these islands. But there are a few things I will venture to say to you about England. They are spoken in no invidious sense. Here, it never occurs to anyone that the banks would close their doors on their depositors; here it never occurs to anyone to question the fairness of the courts of law and justice; here no one would dream of persecuting his fellow subject, man or woman, on account of their race or religion; here, everyone, except the criminals, looks upon the policeman as the friend and servant of the public; here we provide for poverty and misfortune with more compassion, and more substantial provision, in spite of all our burdens, than any other great country; here we assert the rights of the citizen against the state; or criticise the government of the day, without failing in our duty to the crown. This England, this mighty London in which we are gathered is still the financial centre of the world. From the Admiralty building, half a mile away, orders can be sent to a fleet, which though much smaller than it used to be, or that it ought to be is still unsurpassed on the seas..."

Churchill’s warnings, delivered in 1933 against appeasement of those who are hostile to the historic values our country is based upon, are a beacon that subsequent governments ignore at their peril. Yet today we have a government that has repeatedly appeased aggressors overseas. For example, When in July 2006 the Iranian backed terrorist group Hezbollah invaded Northern Israel, kidnapping Israeli soldiers, our government’s response was to call for a ‘ceasefire’ when Israel responded with military action. It was therefore sad, but hardly surprising that only eight months later Iran repeated the operation, this time kidnapping 15 British sailors and marines patrolling Iraqi waters. Again our government’s response could hardly be termed ‘robust’. Perhaps that should not surprise us when we have a Foreign Secretary who publicly praised the Islamist terrorist group Hamas in one of his very first public statements on appointment.

However, it is not merely overseas that our government has appeased Islamist extremists. In our name, they have given government funding to Islamist groups in the UK, whose ultimate aim is the same as those of Islamist terrorists overseas – the alignment of British law with sharia and the eventual creation of an Islamic government in Britain. Meanwhile, many of the very values that Churchill spoke of as being unquestionably central to our national identity have been repeatedly undermined, if not disregarded by the present Labour government

In Churchill’s England no one thought of persecuting a man on account of his religion. Yet only this month the government has on a 3 line whip pushed through the Commons, the abolition of the ‘Free Speech’ clause that guaranteed Christian ministers a modicum of protection to call ‘sin’ what the Bible and the church historically have always called ‘sin’, something that is fundamental to freedom of religion.

Churchill also described England as a place where “no one questions the fairness of the courts of law and justice”. Yet, today we have a government that has allowed the extradition of bank managers accused of fraud to a foreign country under anti terrorism legislation without any legal evidence being presented to a British court.

In England today, no longer does everyone except the criminal look on the policeman as the friend and servant of the public. Innocent men and women may be arrested and held without trial for a whole month, a concession negotiated down by the Conservatives from the 3 months the government tried to impose. Meanwhile many of our public spirited citizens no longer feel able to deal with troublemakers on their own, fearing, with some justification it must be said, that the police are as likely to arrest them as the troublemakers.

Churchill confidently spoke of an England where in his day “we assert the rights of the citizen against the state” and where the government could be criticised without fear. Yet under this present Labour government we have seen a government department recently instigate the first arrest of an opposition politician for doing his job since Britain became a democracy.

Winston Churchill in this speech made in 1933, towards the end of the Great Depression, described England as a place where “it would hardly occur to anyone that the banks would close their doors against their depositors”. Yet today we have a Prime Minister who as Chancellor chose to ignore the strongest advice of the governor of the Bank of England and stripped the Bank of England of some of its historic powers of regulating the banks,. In its stead he set up a wholly inadequate system of bank regulation that allowed the first run on a British bank for nearly one and half centuries, something that did not even happen during the Great Depression.

Churchill also spoke of London as “the financial centre of the world”. Yet today major international companies are looking to relocate to other countries, rather than stay in a country whose government since coming to power in 1997 has already taken an extra one trillion pounds in real terms out of the economy with more than 100 new taxes. While at the same time the inheritance of five years of prudent economic growth under the last Conservative government has been frittered away in a ‘spend now pay later' splurge of borrowing that left the country with a huge budget deficit even before recession happened. While now in recession, the government has run up what the International Monetary Fund has officially noted is the largest budget deficit in British history. Little wonder then that major international organisations such as the OECD have declared that that Britain is worse placed than any other G7 country to weather the recession.

Astonishingly, the government embarked on this spending spree with taxpayers money at the same time that it demanded major cuts in the budget of our armed forces. We should remember that Churchill spoke out against defence cuts in the 1930s when Britain was not yet fighting a war. Yet the present Labour government has cut all of our armed forces, including even the infantry, at a time when they are already massively overstretched fighting not one, but two major conflicts. Not content with that the government is now proposing to cut the number of Territorial Army soldiers, many of them already fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan, by almost a third, cuts that could leave the TA unable to fulfil even a civil defence role in a national emergency.

Churchill could speak of a country whose navy was unsurpassed upon the seas. Yet under the present government the Royal Navy’s fleet of frigates and destroyers that protects more than 90% of our imported trade has been cut by more than a third. While senior officers have warned that further planned cuts will turn Britain's once-proud Navy into nothing more than a coastal defence force, all at a time when the first sea lord has said that more ships are needed to protect the high seas against terrorism and piracy.

Significantly, Churchill concluded his St George’s Day speech by drawing attention to those who in peacetime have “squandered” the very values that we as a nation have fought so hard to defend:

"Historians have noticed all down the centuries, one peculiarity of the English people which has struck them most, and that is, that we have always thrown away after every victory, the greater part of the advantages gained in the scuffle. The worst difficulties from which we suffer do not come from without, they come from within. They do not come from the cottages of the wages earners. They come from a peculiar type of brainy people, always to be found in our country, who, though they do nothing help, take much from its strength. Our difficulties come from a mood of unwarrantable self abasement into which we have been cast by a powerful section of our own intellectuals. The come from the acceptance of defeatist doctrines by a large proportion of our politicians. We are told to believe that patriotism is worn out, except where paying income tax is concerned. But what have they found to put in its place? Nothing but a vague internationalism; a squalid materialism and the promise of a Utopia….Nothing can save England if England will not save herself. If we have lost our place and our capacity to guide, if we have lost our faith in ourselves, then indeed our story is told. If, while foreign nations are everyday asserting a more aggressive, a more militant nationalism, either by trade or by arms, while we remain paralysed by our own theories. If that be so, then deprived of the sovereignty of the seas, loaded with debt and taxation, our commerce shut out by foreign tariffs and quotas, England would sink to the level of a fifth rate power. Never should we accept such a fate for our country."

When he became Prime Minister, Churchill restored hope to a nation demoralised by economic hardship and gave it a rightful sense of national pride in its historic values and freedoms at time when these were threatened by tyranny. Mrs Thatcher similarly restored hope and prosperity to our country at a time when many others openly spoke of simply ‘managing the decline of British industry', and she restored a rightful sense of national pride when she led us as a nation in facing down the tyranny of a foreign invasion of a territory whose people unequivocally wanted to remain British. That is exactly what David Cameron and the next Conservative government must set out to do in the face of the all the dangers, including economic and security challenges that confront our country, restoring hope and a rightful pride in our national identity, including its historic values and freedoms.

Centre Right 23rd April 2009

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Home Secretary advocates free speech for Islamists the same day as government restricts free speech for Christians

At 0810 on Tuesday morning Jacqui Smith went on Radio 4's Today programme to explain the government's new counter terrorism strategy. The Home Secretary was at pains to emphasise that non violent Islamist groups must be allowed freedom of speech. Ms Smith told listeners:

"I've been very clear that one of the important values we have in this country is free speech. People should be able to say what they believe, but they shouldn't necessarily do that without challenge. An argument we're making is not that these views become illegal, but that we as government, citizens and others will challenge the views of those who seek to undermine our shared values."

At 17.41 that same day, less than ten hours later, the government used a 3 line whip to force through the Commons the abolition of the 'Free Speech' clause that the House of Lords last year made the government insert into the Criminal Justice and Immigration Act. The 'Free Speech' clause essentially sought to ensure that whilst stirring up hatred against people who were homosexual would become criminalised, free discussion of the morality of homosexual practice (i.e. beliefs about sexual ethics) would not be. In particular, it sought to protect Christian ministers from being prosecuted for simply stating what the Church has for the last two thousand years held to be the teaching of Scripture, that sexual relationships outside of hetrosexual marriage are in the Bible's words 'sinful'.

The government is seeking to abolish this 'Free Speech' clause for purely ideological reasons. In fact, the 2008 Criminal Justice and Immigration Act has not even technically become law yet. During Tuesday's Commons debate, the government argued that the 'Free Speech' clause would no longer be necessary as the Attorney General would draw up prosecution guidelines for the police and the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS). However, as Conservative MP Gerald Howarth pointed out to the house, the existing CPS guidelines on prosecution refer to 'dislike' of the 'perceived lifestyle' of lesbian and gay people and as such, he observed, we could be faced with a situation where anyone who expresses a dislike for this kind of behaviour would face criminal prosecution.

Now let me make it clear that I wholeheartedly agree that it should be a criminal offence to incite someone else to threaten another human being. It does not matter whether the victim is a Christian, a Muslim, a Jew, a homosexual or even dare I say it...the former chairman of a bailed out bank! They are first and foremost human beings and as such deserving of dignity, respect and protection from malicious threats. As such, I would support seeking to criminalise, for example, rap songs that say "hang lesbians with a long piece of rope" (an example cited by the gay rights lobbying group Stonewall) precisely because it is stirring up hatred that threatens people. However, in pushing through the abolition of the 'Free Speech' clause on a 3 line whip, the government, staunchly supported by the Liberal-Democrats have moved from protecting people to protecting a belief system (that 'homosexual practice is morally good'). In doing so, they have exposed Christian ministers, some of the most upright and charitable of our citizens to the risk of imprisonment for simply referring to sexual relationships outside of hetrosexual marriage as 'sin', something that the Christian Church has understood to be the clear teaching of Scripture since the time of Christ.

It is therefore tragically ironic that on the very same day that the government pushed through this legislation, the Home Secretary Jacqui Smith should go on Radio 4 to emphasise that we should protect freedom of speech for radical Islamists in Britain.

Now imagine that you live in a terraced house in the inner city. On one side of you lives a radical Islamist. This man advocates the introduction of sharia into Britain, a legal system that gives the legal testimony of non Muslims and women only half the weight of that of a Muslim man and imposes the death penalty on any Muslim man who embraces another faith - as it also does on any Muslim or non Muslim alike who says anything perceived to be critical of Muhammad. If that man is your neighbour, then the Home Secretary has gone on prime time radio this week to emphasise to you that this is a free country and this man has an absolute right to spread his views, no matter how offensive, or incompatible with a free democratic society those views may be.

Now suppose that on the other side of your terraced house lives a Christian minister. Perhaps, as is the case with a number of Christian ministers, he has fled to the UK because as a Christian there were threats to his life in his own country. Here is a man who cares deeply for the community that he now serves here and has dedicated his life to teaching from the Bible and helping to mend broken lives. However, this man will now risk being sent to prison if he dares to suggest that sexual relationships outside of hetrosexual marriage are, according to both the Bible and the historic teaching of the Christian Church, 'sin'.

This is the muddle that the government has got itself into because it has moved from protecting people, which is the proper function of government in a free society, to trying to protect an idea or belief (that 'homosexual practice is morally good') from criticism, something that actually undermines the whole basis of a free society.

A free democratic society can only exist where there is freedom to debate and to criticise other people's views and beliefs. I dare say that this article will stimulate a fair amount of debate and criticism, not all of which will be by any means sympathetic to what I have said! Indeed some may even be deeply hurtful. But the freedom to have that debate is the essence of a free society. Neither I, nor gay rights activists, nor Muslims, Christians or anyone else has any right in a free society to have their beliefs and practices protected by the crimminal law from criticism.

In the light of this it is now essential that the House of Lords fulfils its constitutional function as the guardian of the nation's freedoms in the face of a government that is trampling on historic British rights. The Lords must work to ensure that fundamental British rights such as freedom of speech, including the right to criticise others' beliefs and practices, are upheld. If we do not tenaciously hold onto historic core British values, such as freedom of speech and freedom of religion, then we undermine the very ground we claim to hold in the face of Islamist extremists who want to take these freedoms from us.

Centre Right 28^th March 2009

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Bribing the Taliban will only prolong the fighting...

Advisers to President Obama are reportedly split over whether the US should try to bribe moderate elements in the Taliban to defect.

It is certainly true that many Afghans joined the various mujhaddin factions and later the Taliban because the offered a pay packet - in a country where aid agencies are the largest employers and often the only ones offering a living wage.

However, history tells us that bribery can never provide a lasting solution to 'the Afghan problem' as local people call it. Neither can it provide President Obama with his desired exit strategy from Afghanistan. In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries the British colonial administration pursued a similar policy in the tribal areas between what is now the North West Frontier Province of Pakistan (NWFP) and what in 1895 became the border of Afghanistan. The Pushtun (Pathan) tribes were given muwajib - an 'allowance' to live peacefully. They accepted the allowance, then a year or so later rose up against the government until they received another allowance...!

Sir Olaf Caroe, the last British governor of the North West Frontier before independence summed up the failure of this policy in his book The Pathans saying:

'...the first payment might be made, and the general atmosphere of good-will would seem to promise a perpetual peace. It was hardly ever so.' (page 349).

In fact, one of the major reasons that the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) on the Afghan border of Pakistan are now a haven for elements of the Taliban and possibly al-Qaeda results from the historic failure of this British policy, which left the tribal areas largely a law unto themselves.

It must be remembered that the Taliban are a predominately Pustun (Pathan) group. Many of the perceived 'moderates' are in fact former commanders of various mujahaddin groups that the Taliban bribed to defect to them. That is how the Taliban won most of their battles - prior to the western military intervention after 9/11. In fact, the history of the last 20 years or so of fighting in Afghanistan has been marked by commanders of various factions switching sides before major battles in order to secure their own political power and wealth. As such any attempt to bribe what are perceived to be 'moderate' Taliban leaders would simply create temporary allegiances of convenience and loyalty to the highest bidder among warlords. Bribery cannot create lasting peace in Afghanistan. It can only re-create the situation that kept the fighting between different Afghan factions going for far too many years to the destruction of the one of the most proud and hospitable peoples in the world.

Centre Right 23rd March 2009

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Britain's broken society: Suffolk rapist aged 8

Suffolk police have revealed that an 8 year old boy in a rural area of Suffolk raped a girl aged under 10. The also recorded the case of another 8 year old boy who sexually assaulted a girl under 13. Both were among 24 very young children that Suffolk Police were unable to prosecute because they were below the age of criminal responsibility.

When such serious sexual offences are committed by very young children in one of the most rural and socially unspoilt areas of Britain we should ask ourselves some serious questions about quite how broken some parts of our society have become. Unfortunately, at the moment we have a prime minister in Gordon Brown who, whenever the issue is raised, simply insists that society 'isn't broken'.

Rebuilding Britain's broken society will be as important a task for a future Conservative government as rebuilding an economy, that many at the time believed to be in terminal decline, was for the last Conservative government. A key feature of this will be the need to sensitively address the premature sexualisation of children, whether by the advertising industry, or even some of the government's own policies. Many of us seriously question whether the government, in the form of what has been renamed the Department for Children, Schools and Families, should be seeking to impose its writ specifically on children and families. However, if there is any value at all in having a government department for children - then it surely must be to protect childhood.

Centre Right 17^th March 2009

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3 Cheers from Suffolk!

Today the Conservative Party launched its Green paper on Local government - making it local instead of being largely controlled by directives from the government in London. Amongst other things it promises to scrap forced mergers of local councils to larger unitary councils - such as those affecting Suffolk. Thank goodness!

We've had 3 unitary proposals forced on us - all of which put the historic Suffolk town of Lowestoft into Norfolk. These proposals resulted directly from Bob Blizzard, the local Labour MP for Waveney trying to create a 'safe' Labour unitary council encompassing both Great Yarmouth (Norfolk) and Lowestoft (Suffolk) - and one rather suspects he hoped the constituency boundary might later follow this change! No one except the Labour Party want this. Thank goodness we now have a Conservative policy that states (page 20)

"In particular, we will stop the unitary restructuring plans for Norfolk, Suffolk and Devon, where recent delays following legal challenges mean the process will not have reached a conclusion prior to the next general election."

3 cheers from Suffolk!

Conservative Home 17th February 2009

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The Archbishop should speak up for justice not sharia

The Archbishop of Canterbury Dr Rowan Williams has used the anniversary of his sharia speech to defend the views he advocated then - that Islamic law (sharia) should be implemented in the UK for issues such as family law. Dr Williams argued that implementing parts of sharia would be similar to the Jewish Beth Din arbitration courts that have operated for some time and subsequent debate focused on the question of whether the 1996 Arbitration Act could be used by sharia courts.

Subsequently, and as a direct result of Dr Williams comments, some of the UK Islamist organisations that operate what they term 'sharia courts' have started to claim that their actions are legally binding under the Arbitration Act. Their claim is that they have, by this route, in effect introduced sharia into the UK legal system. This is a situation that as far as I am aware has yet to be tested in the courts.

However, whilst only some of the UK 'sharia courts' currently claim that their decisions are legally binding, no one should be in any doubt that many of the decision made by these sharia courts are profoundly at odds with fundamental principles of British law. Whilst much has written about the discrimination faced by women divorced under sharia the issues of inheritance and child custody, which are equally central parts of Islamic family law, similarly highlight the discrimination against women inherent in Islamic law.

Last year the Nuneaton Muslim Arbitration Tribunal, which claims that its decisions are legally binding, was reported to have settled an inheritance dispute by applying the provisions of sharia that two brothers should receive double the inheritance of each of their sisters - notice that this was a 'disputed' inheritance, not a mutual agreement by the sisters to receive half of what their brothers received.

Similarly, the East London based Islamic Sharia Council states that divorced men have an absolute right to child custody once a child is seven years old - and a divorced mother is required to surrender a child to its father once it reaches this age.

These are fundamental issues of justice and equality. Should such decisions by sharia arbitration tribunals ever be proved to have legal standing in the UK, there may well be many more women and children who will suffer grave injustice. It is regrettable that Dr Williams has reaffirmed his earlier comments on sharia rather than humbly listening to the very pertinent criticisms that were made at the time in respect of what sharia actually entails. As a committed Christian myself I find it equally regrettable that the archbishop of Canterbury appears to be more influenced by liberal ideas about the desirability of promoting 'diversity' in society, however much injustice is inherent in that 'diversity', rather than by the clear teaching of the Bible that Christians should seek to pursue justice - particularly for women who no longer have husbands and for children (Proverbs 31:8-9; James 1:27 etc).

Centre Right 16th February 2009

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Aid agencies need to work harder at avoiding political bias

Now that the dust has begun to settle on the BBC's refusal to air the Disaster's Emergency Committee (DEC)'s Gaza appeal, it is time in the cool light of day to take a good hard look at the issue of political bias.

The spat between the BBC and the DEC should never have happened. The modern Aid agency movement was set up in the aftermath of war, Save The Children was set up in 1919 to relieve the suffering at the end of the first world war, OXFAM in 1942 and CARE in 1945. Moreover, aid agencies always work within a political context. Aid workers have to make local contacts and get local permission to work. Sometimes this is with groups that it would be wholly inappropriate for western governments to negotiate with. As an aid worker in Afghanistan I had to negotiate with radical Islamist groups such as the Taliban and the notorious Hezb-i-Islami party of Gulbadin Hekmatyer in order to be allowed to travel to areas that they controlled access to. However, anyone who has worked in such areas is acutely aware that whoever is seen by the local people as introducing or facilitating the entry of aid workers to an area will get an enormous amount of political kudos from the aid work. It is often a very difficult task for aid agencies to avoid increasing the political influence of some rather unpleasant political groups. For example, in going to an area in Afghanistan where no other aid agencies were then working, I had to negotiate hard for my agency to be allowed to travel there without being accompanied by Hezb-i-Islami soldiers.

The situation in Gaza is particularly difficult for aid agencies as Hamas very deliberately and successfully used aid projects as a means of gaining power in the 2005 elections. Whilst Hamas' share of the vote for the nationally decided seats remained at almost exactly the same level as it had been in previous elections, it won by winning an unexpectedly large number of locally decided seats. This was achieved by local Hamas candidates deliberately pursuing a long term strategy of starting local humanitarian projects - often funded by western sources, as a means of increasing their personal vote. Many Palestinians who had voted for local Hamas candidates were then shocked when a succession of local seat wins led to Hamas winning the overall election.

In any distribution of aid Hamas will be looking to ensure that the distribution of aid increases its own political influence with the local population. Aid agencies will have to make tough choices in this situation. But we should never forget that aid agencies are different from governments. They exist for one purpose only - to relieve suffering. That is what they will do and provided that is all they seek to do, the rest of us should hold back from criticism, even if we don't like some of the political consequences.

However, hard choice on the field are one thing. It is quite another when aid agencies back in the safety of the west start lobbying for policies that cannot be justified simply in terms of the need to deliver aid effectively, but are aligned with left wing political ideology. Tim Montgomorie recently drew attention to one such action during the war in Gaza. The public affairs departments of a number of DEC agencies called on the EU to halt closer ties Israel until a comprehensive ceasefire was agreed - i.e. placing the blame squarely on Israel for the fighting, a stance which fundamentally undermined the very political neutrality that aid agencies need in order to operate on the ground.

The problem is not with the work that aid agencies do on the ground, much of which is outstanding and done in incredibly difficult contexts. It is with some of their public affairs and campaign departments that work out of offices in the west. I came across this a couple of years ago when shortly after the Lebanon war I met with the UK head of public affairs and the campaign manager for one of the world's largest aid agencies. When I briefly explained the main ideology of Hezbollah, it was immediately clear that they had no concept at all of this, even though during the Lebanon war they had, on behalf of this aid agency, lobbied the British government to pressurise Israel to agree an immediate ceasefire. Neither of them had any long term experience of aid work on the ground. However, they did tell me that they were both 'passionate' members of the Labour Party and at least one had been a full time party worker for a Labour MP. My one reassurance was that having a few months earlier discussed similar issues with senior international figures in that aid agency, it was clear to me that their actions were not representative of the aid agency as a whole.

This is unfortunately by no means an isolated case. When I returned from Afghanistan 3 and half years ago I was shocked to see one of the DEC agencies run a campaign against 'Free Trade'. Given that in the nineteenth century Britain introduced free trade by abolishing the protectionist corn laws in order to lower the price of food to prevent mass starvation in Ireland, this seems an almost bizarre argument. The aid agency's advertisement's claimed that 27 million people in the developing world, including a million in Bangladesh and Sri Lanka alone would lose their livelihoods as a result of free trade allowing the export of western made clothing to developing countries. The campaign may well have been run with the best of motives, but ultimately it owed more to left wing political ideology than to any real understanding of how the economies of developing countries actually work in practice. Any one who had actually lived in a developing country would know that western made clothing imports rarely if ever compete with locally made clothes, for the simple reason that they are at least 5 if not 10 times more expensive, a function of much higher wage rates in the west and the exchange rate in developing countries. For example, in Pakistan one can buy a locally made western style shirt (so similar to western ones that it may even have a forged 'Beneton' label on it!) for around £1-50. However, a similar shirt genuinely imported from the west will cost at least 10 times as much. They simply have a different niche in the local market.

There will always be actions that aid agencies take on the ground when trying to relieve desperate suffering, whose political ramifications we may not always find terribly palatable - having to deal with Hamas is clearly one of those. When this happens the rest of us need to respect the integrity of the aid agency's motivation and the very difficult decisions they have to make as non governmental organisations in seeking to relieve human suffering. As such it was simply not the BBC's call to say that it wasn't convinced that the all the aid would get through to the ordinary people in Gaza - and so wouldn't broadcast the DEC appeal. The BBC clearly overstepped the mark in this respect.

However, now that the heat is beginning to go out of the furore over the BBC's refusal to broadcast the DEC Gaza appeal, it is time for large agencies - including some of those that make up the Disasters Emergency Committee to take a long hard look at their campaigning and public affairs departments. There is no question that a future Conservative government will listen very carefully to aid agencies. Whilst in opposition the Conservative Party has probably spent more time specifically eliciting the views of aid agencies that any other political party - both through its shadow ministerial team and it policy commission on international development. It has deliberately sought to listen to the best expert advice on how to bring about real and sustainable development. However, aid agencies really do need to do a lot better than simply lobby for policies developed by former researchers for Labour MPs who have no actual field experience of implementing aid and development programmes. Policies which sometimes seem more aligned with left wing political ideology than any real understanding of the issues facing developing countries.

Aid agencies need to understand that governments don't need to hear from professional political lobbyists - if they want to hear a left wing opinion they can just listen to Labour MPs! But, as David Cameron showed by setting up the International Development Policy Commission, at least in the case of a Conservative government, they do want to hear from those with professional and first hand experience of implementing aid and development programmes on the ground.

As a first step towards helping aid agencies make this sea change in the type of people they recruit for their public affairs and campaign departments, a future Conservative government could require all lobbying submissions from aid agencies to state the evidential basis for each proposal they lobby for - whether field experience of the person writing the submission or professional development studies.

Aid agencies have an incredibly important task to do and as such it is essential that they urgently address this issue. If one good thing comes out of the spat between the aid agencies and the BBC, this could be it.

Centre Right 29^th January 2009

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3 reasons why Hamas cannot be treated as an equal of Israel

The trouble with calling for a 'truce' between Israel and Hamas as Foreign Secretary David Milliband and numerous non governmental organisations now have is...the underlying assumption that if Israel and Palestinian groups such as Hamas can simply be made to talk to each other, then the whole squabble can be solved.

However, there are 3 reasons which fundamentally prevent that ever happening and at least the first two are deeply grounded in Hamas' very raison d'etre:

1. Domination: Islamist groups exist to create an Islamic government with Islamic law (sharia) imposed not merely on Muslim majority areas, but ultimately on the whole world, including Israel. Islamic theology held both by Islamist and historically by Sunni theologians holds that it has been divinely decreed that the whole world should be subjected to Islamic government and law (not the view of a great many ordinary British Muslims who understand Islam primarily in devotional rather than political terms). Therefore once an area has at any time in past history been subjected to Islamic government, it then become an act of 'defensive' jihad to fight to reimpose Islamic rule on that area. Palestinian Islamist groups such as al-Jihad and Hamas therefore see their actions in firing indiscriminately into Israeli towns as an act of divinely commanded defence, restoring Islamic government and sharia over an area where it once held sway.

2. Deception: Hamas have very different concepts of 'truth' and 'treaty' from the western world. Lying is not necessarily regarded as 'bad' if it gains one a strategic advantage. There is an Hadith (Islamic tradition traced back to Muhammad) which states that it is permissible to lie to reconcile friends, to any woman and in jihad. The concept of 'truce' used by Islamist groups such as Hamas largely reflects the last of these. When Hamas broke their truce with Israel on 19th December, it was not a treaty in the western sense of the term, but what is termed in Islamic theology hudna (a temporary truce before war is recommenced). It is based on the sunna (example) of Muhammad who agreed a peace treaty known as 'the treaty of Hudabiya' with the pagan Quraish tribe who then controlled Mecca. Muhammad then dispensed with the 'treaty' a year later when he had become strong enough to take Mecca by force. The concept of Hudabiya is so widely known in the Middle East that even a predominately nationalist leader like Yasser Arafat is reported to have silenced the criticisms of the Arab press when he signed the peace accord by simply saying 'well brothers, let's just say this is Hudabiya'.

3. Dehumanisation: Hamas is an extremist Islamist organisation. It is extreme not just in relation to western norms of freedom and democracy as all islamist organisations are, but also in relation to mainstream Islam. Put simply, it does not regard Jews as genuine human beings, but as merely having the appearance of being human, a situation somewhat similar to the Nazi ideology that referred to the Jews and Slavs as being untermenschen (sub human beings). As such Hamas believes that any Jews, including civilians, women and children are a legitimate target for bombings. Hamas base this on a twisted interpretation of a few verses in the Qur'an (Q2:65-66). These narrate a story that some ancient Jews did not keep the sabbath and as a punishment were turned into apes by God. Islamic scholars have historically tended to interpret this as simply referring to one small group of Jews in ancient history. However, Hamas interpret these verses as meaning that all Jews alive today are actually apes and merely have the appearance of being human - and as such are a legitimate target for suicide bombings and indiscriminate rocket attacks etc.

These three aspects - an ideology of expansionist domination of others; deception - deliberately breaking treaties and promises once a strategic military advantage has been built up; and dehumanisation - treating other racial or religious groups such as the Jews as being sub human were defining characteristics of Nazi Germany. When this is considered carefully, the calls for a 'ceasefire' by British Foreign Secretary David Milliband and others - a call directed primarily at Israel - is naive in the extreme. In fact, Mr Milliband's calls for a 'ceasefire' starts to bear an ominous resemblance to Neville Chamberlain's 1938 declaration of 'peace in our time' after his Munich meeting with Hitler, a declaration that ultimately contributed to an horrific world war.

Today the world stands at a crossroads. There is no question that the current fighting is causing immense suffering to many people, particularly Palestinians, many of whom simply want to be allowed to get on with their family lives, as so many ordinary people in war zones do. However, the alternative to Israel's actions is not peace. Hamas and Israel are not two school boys fighting in the playground who just need the headmaster - be that Barak Obama or anyone else - to get them to listen to each other and live in peace. That whole paradigm of 'peacemaking' may have worked elsewhere, but it simply will not work with Hamas any more than it did in 1938 with Hitler. It won't work because Hamas, like the Nazis holds to an expansionist totalitarian ideology.

The alternative to Israel's current military action against Hamas is likely as not another Middle East war in a couple of years’ time. By this time Iran may well have acquired nuclear weapons and on past form is likely to prompt its allies Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas - whom it is bankrolling in the south - to attack Israel again. The consequences of that are at the very least likely to be a major war that may well be regional and will almost certainly cost thousands more lives than the current conflict. Moreover, the prospect of a nuclear armed Iran raises the real possibility of Islamists using nuclear blackmail in their attempt to impose their own form of government on the area we presently know as Israel. One should never be in any doubt that when it comes to Islamist terrorist organisations such as Hamas and Hezbollah - Israel is fighting for its very survival as a nation. Moreover, the peace of the world depends on Israel's survival as the only free democratic country in the Middle East to a much greater extent than the present British government appear to realise.

When it comes to dealing with Hamas, the present Labour government must stop living in a 1930s pacifist dream.

Centre Right 3^rd January 2009

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Nuclear power stations are a terrorist target...but is the government prepared?

The possibility of an al-Qaeda link in the Mumbai terrorist attacks along with the specific targeting of UK and US citizens there should concentrate the government's mind on other UK targets that al-Qaeda are known to have in their sights. In particular the government should take a long and hard look at the security implications of its decision to build a new generation of nuclear power stations.

Significantly, only this week a report by the US government's Commission on WMD and Terrorism warned that the US is likely to face a nuclear or biological terrorist attack in the next five years. In fact, evidence has long existed that al-Qaeda are already planning to attack nuclear power stations. For example, caves formerly occupied by by al-Qaeda in Afghanistan were found to contain a map showing the locations of US nuclear power plants. While in Europe,

Islamist terrorists have already tried to attack a nuclear power station. Back in 2004 the UK had a very near miss as Dutch security services foiled a plot to attack a Dutch nuclear power station. Had the plot succeeded, an easterly wind would have meant that within a few hours the Suffolk and Norfolk coasts could have been covered in a radioactive cloud, which would then have drifted inland to cover much of East Anglia.

One of the government's main arguments for building more nuclear power stations is that we need 'energy security' - secure supplies of energy instead of relying on oil and gas from politically authoritarian and manipulative countries such as Iran and Russia. That is certainly true - as was clearly seen this week when Russia threatened to cut off gas supplies to Ukraine this Christmas.

However, the problem with the government's arguments on energy security is that they are too narrowly focused on securing reliable supplies of energy and show a disturbing lack of joined up thinking, particularly in relation to anti terrorism. Good security policy is based on making oneself relatively harder to attack than others. However, building more nuclear power stations, when we already know that al-Qaeda is planning to attack them, actually increases our vulnerability. It increases the number of potential targets, targets which by the very nature of their location on the coast are relatively hard to defend.

Moreover, it is questionable as to how much government planning has really gone into coping with the effects of of a terrorist attack on a nuclear power station. After the 9/11 attacks in America there was speculation that the the hijacked jet that crashed into the Pennsylvania countryside was intended to hit a nuclear reactor. The resulting press attention led Richard Meserve, the chairman of the US government's main nuclear safety body, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to admit that prior to 9/11 it was not a general requirement for nuclear power stations to be able to withstand an aircraft crash.

The very real terrorism threat to nuclear power stations must raise serious questions as to whether nuclear power should be the option of first resort to guarantee secure energy supplies for the UK.

Moreover, if we are, as a last resort, to have more nuclear power stations, then the government needs to undertake some serious planning as to how to cope with such an attack. Consider the possibility of a 9/11 style attack with an aeroplane, whether small or large being deliberately crashed into a nuclear power station. In fact, the existence of at least 49 'near misses' of nuclear power stations by RAF fighter jets since 2000 means that the government ought to be planning for even an accidental occurrence of this nature.

Let us take for example Sizewell B on the Suffolk coast, Britain's most modern (pressurised water reactor) nuclear station, which is one of the most likely sites for at least one, if not two of the planed new nuclear power plants. It could easily be approached from half a dozen or so European countries which are only a short distance across the North Sea - including the Netherlands which has already had an Islamist plot to attack a nuclear power station. If such a terrorist attack, or even an accidental aircraft collision did occur the area around Sizewell would need to be immediately evacuated.

Areas that would require immediate evacuation include the major urban centres of Ipswich 21 miles south west and Lowestoft 19 miles to the north. (It is typically assumed that the area within a 50 mile radius of a nuclear power station would need to be evacuated in the event of a 'major incident'). However, in the area around Sizewell there are only single carriageway roads, including the A12 Ipswich to Lowestoft road - the nearest A road to Sizewell. Although Ipswich does have dual carriageways linking it to the south (A12) and west (A14), it seems improbable that a town of 120,000 people could be evacuated within an hour or so along these roads. In Lowestoft the situation would be even worse, the town is an hour's drive from the nearest dual carriageway of any length and 2 hours from the nearest motorway. Moreover, to escape from a 50 mile radius of Sizewell, the half of Lowestoft's population who live on the North side of the Harbour would have to cross one of two small river bridges which are already gridlocked with traffic on a daily basis, then join the rest of Lowestoft's 60,000 population evacuating along the single carriageway A146/A143 for at least an hour's drive before even reaching the A14 dual carriageway in central Suffolk.

Now, with all the road building plans that Transport Secretary Geoff Hoon has been announcing recently, not one of them does anything to address the impossibility of evacuating the good people of the Suffolk coast, Ipswich and Lowestoft areas in the event of a terrorist attack, or even an aviation accident, at Sizewell. Mr Hoon did graciously announce a few million pounds to put up road signs warning of congestion ahead on the A12 to the south of Ipswich, though somehow I can't see people wanting to leave Suffolk in a hurry being too impressed by these! In reality he has done nothing to enable the area around Sizewell to be evacuated in the event of a serious incident, whether accidental or terrorist, there. He hasn't even announced the dualing of the A12 that links Ipswich and Lowestoft and is within a few miles of Sizewell, something that local MP John Gummer has repeatedly campaigned for. Nor has he announced any funding for the third river crossing in Lowestoft that local people have for decades campaigned for, which might give people in North Lowestoft at least some hope of escaping away from a radioactive cloud from Sizewell.

In short, there appears to be a dangerously worrying lack of joined up thinking by the government between energy policy, anti terrorism and transport policy.

An alternative more joined up approach to energy policy should include tidal power being given relatively more active consideration. In fact, tidal power has some significant advantages over nuclear power, not least in respect of minimising the risk of terrorism. Moreover, the UK has some of the best conditions in the world for tidal power. For example, it is estimated that a tidal barrage across the Severn Estuary, which could be operational as early as 2017, would generate around 8,640 MW, the equivalent of between two and half and three large nuclear power stations and at £15 billion would cost a similar or possibly smaller amount (E.ON recently produced figures which suggest that the cost of a 2,200 MW nuclear reactor would be around £6.7 billion). Moreover, a tidal barrage, whether in the Severn or elsewhere in the UK, would have an estimated life span of at least 100 years, compared to 30 or so years for a nuclear power station, no decommissioning or waste disposal costs, both of which are extraordinarily high for nuclear power plants, could provide an additional road link between south west England and south Wales, and would protect Somerset, Avon, Gloucestershire and South Wales from coastal flooding. The latter is not an insignificant consideration when there is a real possibility that climate change may lead to higher sea levels towards the end of this century. Moreover, as far as terrorism is concerned, the impact of a terrorist attack would be to release tidal water ponded up on the landward side of the barrage - out to sea. As with any energy source there would of course be environmental change, particularly in respect of the estuary mudflats being flooded and the need for alternative habitats to be created for wading birds. However, we need to always remember that environmental change is not the same as environmental damage, something that even the RSPB has accepted in other locations.

This sort of tidal power has the real potential to be a good example of genuinely joined up government. Something that unfortunately, the present government's nuclear policy does not seem to be - not least in respect of the very real threat that al-Qaeda type terrorists are already posing to nuclear power stations.

Centre Right 6^th December 2008

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Legalising pre nuptial agreements could institutionalise injustice for Muslim women

This week the question of whether pre nuptial agreements should be made legally binding was raised in a report reviewing family law reform for the Centre for Social Justice. Hardly a hot topic you may think unless you happen to be fantastically rich and about to get married? Well actually such a proposal could effectively legalise a situation of grave injustice experienced by a number of Muslim women.

Although it may come as a surprise to many, the islamisation of family law in Britain is at the forefront of the strategy being pursued by some 'non violent' Islamist groups in the UK. Put simply, the strategy of such groups is to bring about a step by step alignment of British law with sharia - either by lobbying for changes to parliamentary law or by pushing test cases through the courts. Illustrative of this was a meeting that government ministers had with leaders of key Islamic organisations immediately after the arrest of a number of Muslims on suspicion of being involved in a terrorist plot centred on Heathrow airport in August 2006. The government ministers aimed to allay the fear that the arrests had generated in the Muslim community. However the Islamic leaders chose this occasion to make two wholly unrelated requests - Islamic festivals to be made UK bank holidays and a partial implementation of sharia in Britain in respect of Islamic family law. The then Communities Secretary, Ruth Kelly rather naively responded by setting up a commission to look into implementing the first of these.

However, if we are to avoid importing and institutionalising the injustices experienced by some women in the Islamic world, then we need to have our eyes much wider open to the agenda of 'non violent' Islamist groups than the present government has, and this includes even seemingly innocent matters such as whether pre nuptial agreements should be made legally binding in the UK.

Pre nuptial agreements (i.e. agreements made prior to marriage about what would happen in the event of divorce) are based on the assumption that two individuals are freely choosing to spend their lives together. However, in many non western cultures marriage is primarily viewed as being a union between two families, rather than simply between two individuals. A situation, which quite naturally leads to parents being involved in selecting a suitable husband or wife for their children. Now let me say straight away that there is absolutely nothing wrong with arranged marriages where individuals freely decide to follow their parents' choice. I have seen some wonderful arranged marriages that are at least as good as some individually chosen marriages. It needs to be said quite clearly that arranged marriages are emphatically not the same as forced marriages.

However, when marriages - and pre nuptial agreements - are arranged on the basis of sharia a real problem can sometimes emerge. In sharia marriage is regarded primarily as a contract between the two families concerned , a situation that in many ways creates a functional equivalent of pre nuptial agreements. However, sharia states that when a man divorces his wife, which he may do on almost any grounds, he must simply return her dowry - and unless the families agree to additional terms in the marriage contract, that is all the divorced wife may get. The husband keeps the house and everything else. Worse still, if she divorces her husband, for which there are much more limited grounds, she is likely to forfeit even her dowry and can be left both homeless and penniless - as the plight of all too many women in Islamic countries testifies. Such injustices must never be institutionalised in British law.

Whatever the merits of making pre nuptial agreements legally binding - and I remain to be convinced that they will actually strengthen marriage - such a law would unfortunately be used by a minority as a back door route to introducing sharia into Britain. The injustices that sharia imposes on women must never be allowed to be institutionalised in British law.

Centre Right 22nd November 2008

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Conservatives have influence in the Maldives and should use it

It's not often that an opposition has potentially more influence with a foreign government than the incumbent British government. But this may be the case with the Maldives. The newly elected president - Mohamed Nasheed of the Maldivian Democratic Party - relied heavily on Conservative Party expertise to win the country's first democratic election in thirty years. It is reported that his election campaign was run by a former aide to London mayor Boris Johnson and the Conservative Party was also instrumental in securing funding for his campaign.

The democratic election under the auspices of a new constitution ratified three months ago by the country's former President Abdul Gayoom, who had presided over a dictatorship responsible for significant human rights abuses. However, there is a fly in the ointment of the new constitution in the form of a clause, which states that

'a non Muslim may not become a citizen of the Maldives'

This is a significant deterioration from the situation under the previous constitution, which only denied non Muslims the right to vote. The new law effectively strips around 3,000 Maldivians of their citizenship and basic rights. This is an area where there is a real opportunity for Conservative shadow ministers to exercise quiet diplomacy behind the scenes. This may not get media attention, but helping change a human rights abusing Islamic state into something approaching a liberal democracy is the sort of foreign policy success that provides a very sound foundation for good Conservative government in the future.

Centre Right 1st November 2008

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New government sex education proposals and the 'hidden curriculum'

When parents educate their children about sex - the overwhelming majority of responsible parents are likely to aim to help their offspring make the transition from puberty to forming, what is ideally, a life long loving relationship exemplified in many cases by marriage.

However, when the present government takes charge of sex education - its primary aim is altogether different. Announcing that the government will make PSHE (Personal, Social and Health Education) including sex education compulsory for all children from 5-16, the Children's Minister Baroness Delyth Morgan stated that:

'Ultimately this will help the drive to reduce teenage pregnancies, STIs...'

That, is an altogether different aim from those of most parents. So parents SHOULD be concerned that the government is also considering abolishing the right of parents to withdraw their children from sex education lessons.

The government's argument is based on the report of an 'external' review committee on sex education chaired by School's Minister Jim Knight MP. This claimed that OFSTED have identified the primary/secondary transition (i.e. age 11) as a weak point in school sex education and also criticised schools for concentrating on factual sex education information, rather than on

'helping children and young people to develop the skills and confidence they need to manage real life situations they face in their daily lives, such as ...how to negotiate condom use when they do choose to become sexually active.'

The committee stated that

'Many parents lack the knowledge and confidence to talk to their children about sex and relationships.' (page 25)

So, the argument runs, schools should do it - not just for them - but for all parents.

The implication is that the government want every 11 year old in the country to be taught how to put on a condom. Whilst at the very same time the government is reviewing whether to abolish the right of parents to withdraw their children from school sex education lessons.

Moreover, the reason the government want to subject every child in the country to this form of sex education is not primarily to prepare them for entering and sustaining a life long, loving relationship - but to reduce the UK's teenage pregnancy rate - which is currently the highest in Europe.

Fundamentally, this policy undermines parents. It is based on the ideological assumption of Liberal-Left politicians that the government not parents should be responsible for all of children's education. Although the committee's report talks about a partnership between schools and parents, by this it means a partnership where parents support what the school is teaching about sex, rather than the other way round. It is a partnership which

'encourages parents to reinforce the SRE (Sex and Relationship Education) being delivered in schools, within the home.' (page 9)

The 'hidden curriculum'

However, what successive government ministers have failed to grasp is something that educationalists call the 'hidden curriculum'. Basically, this means that some of the most significant messages children absorb at school are not what is formally taught in the curriculum, but implicit messages they pick up. It is the hidden curriculum messages in the the government's sex education policy that are the most dangerous. If we tell children in the early years of secondary school how to have 'safe sex' - then the very clear hidden curriculum message we are giving them...is that we now regard them as old enough to have sex. This is a message that is unfortunately often reinforced by the closing line of sex education lessons, 'it's your choice!' - as if the child was now a responsible adult free of the need for parental care, guidance and authority.

As a teacher I have seen this happen. For example, a year ago I was teaching in a comprehensive school drawing from a predominately white working class council estate. My class of 12-13 year olds had just had their sex education lesson with the school nurse. Now as a teacher you can fairly easily pick out key children who are potentially likely to be at risk of engaging in underage sex - the way the girls dress and general attitude to the opposite sex, not to mention what they talk about (!). However, in this class, one 13 year old girl, who was very much not an obvious candidate for that category, pulled out her purse to show her friend a condom the nurse had given her - 'just in case the need arose'.

What the government should be doing

What the government should be doing is to focus on the responsibility of parents - rather than seeking to restrict the innate right of parents when and what to teach their children about sex. Many ordinary decent parents would be horrified at the idea that they should teach their 11 year old daughter how to use contraception - it give their child entirely the wrong message. So why should the government expect those very same parents to be happy for the government to make this a compulsory lesson in schools - a lesson from which parents would have no right to withdraw their children? Even common sense should tell that government that parental responsibility needs to be encouraged not undermined. School age children spend only around 1265 hours a year in school - that's less than 15% of their time. The remaining 85% of the time parents are directly responsible for them.

What we need is a radical shift of government policy in sex education. A shift that as in other aspects of education emphasises the roles and responsibilities of parents, instead of the present government's approach of emphasising the 'rights' of legally underage children to make their own choices and the 'right' of government to impose particular forms of education on children in order to 'fix'. social and economic problems in society.

What would happen if schools were allowed to tell parents very clearly when their children started school that it was the parents' responsibility to teach their children about sex - but it would also be covered in school science lessons at a certain age? Parents could be offered help and advice as to how to do that - but it would remain their responsibility. That would allow sex education to become focused on what it really should be - helping children to make the transition from puberty to making what is ideally a life long, loving relationship, exemplified in many cases by marriage. Harm reduction strategies, including advice on contraception could still be targeted at children considered to be 'at risk' of engaging in underage sex. However, the school would have to send home a letter first, explaining to parents why their child is considered to be at risk of engaging in underage sex and exactly what the school was intending to teach them about contraception - unless the parents objected. Now of course there would be dozens of upset parents complaining to the school along the lines of 'Why has my child been singled out?' and 'My Tracey's a good girl - she wouldn't do that!'. Well that's exactly the response we need - forcing parents of at risk children to start taking some responsibility for their children.

Tragically, as with a number of the present government's education policies, their new sex education proposals risk harming the life chances of the decent majority of young people in order to focus on the needs of the delinquent minority.

We have to have an alternative - our children deserve better than that.

Centre Right 25^th October 2008

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Government gives schools a new 'toolkit' to prevent violent extremism: but is it dangerously muddled?

The Department for Children, Schools and Families (DCSF) has just launched what it describes as a new 'toolkit' to equip schools to prevent violent extremism.

Sadly, as with so many DCSF documents, what is included in this 'toolkit' is largely a rehash (or perhaps the word should be 'respin') of what is already going on in schools. Schools are encouraged to use the Every Child Matters framework, to develop school strategies that promote critical thinking, to challenge any behaviour that harms the ability of individuals or groups to work together and to manage harmful media and internet information etc. Does the government honestly think that the overwhelming majority of schools are not already doing all of these and more - and were doing so long before Ed Balls became Schools Secretary?

The toolkit's most glaring omission is that while ostensibly seeking to promote community cohesion, it fails to provide a list of the key British values that underpin our free democratic society - such as parliamentary democracy, freedom of speech, freedom of religion etc - a list which many schools would greatly value the government providing. One cannot promote community cohesion in schools, or anywhere else for that matter, unless it is clear what key shared values, one is seeking to get people to cohere to.

Instead, the only 'value' the DCSF toolkit says schools should actively promote is 'diversity'. Now tolerating other people's beliefs may well be a widely held value in British society - I would sincerely hope that it is. However, actively seeking to encourage 'diversity' is quite another issue. The latter may well be a New Labour value, but it is hardly a fundamental British value that schools should be expected to promote. In fact, its inclusion at all in this document is somewhat at odds with the toolkit's purported aim of promoting community cohesion. Promoting a list of specific British values might actively promote community cohesion by drawing people towards a common set of shared values. However, promoting 'diversity' almost by definition does the exact opposite and leads to a more fragmented society.

Frankly, the DCSF under Ed Balls' leadership seems to have got into a politically correct muddle that is in serious danger of completely losing the plot when it comes to creating community cohesion. As if to illustrate the point, at this very moment schools across England are being asked to report on their pupils ethnicity according to a new list of 90 categories that the DCSF have developed. The list includes 12 categories of 'Black' ranging alphabetically from 'Black Angolan' to 'Black Sudanese', but bizarrely no longer includes the category of 'White British' which is replaced with a range of categories such as 'White English', 'White Welsh', 'White and Pakistani' and even 'White Cornish'. I kid you not, the latter is not an ice cream flavour, it is now an official government ethnic category, something that 'White British' no longer is - at least according to the DCSF.

Now a government that is muddled is one thing, some may say that's hardly anything new! But the government's toolkit for schools moves beyond mere muddle to potentially dangerous muddle. A muddle that far from dissuading young people from extremism may actually encourage them towards it. The government's 'toolkit' advocates schools adopting 'the Oxford Muslim Pupils Empowerment Programme'. This programme, designed by the imam of Eton College and used in an Oxford secondary school, involves an imam coming into school and holding a 'confidential' lunchtime discussion group with Muslim pupils on subjects such as Qur'an, Hadith, sharia and British foreign policy, that aim 'to develop the foundations for a British Islamic identity'. One wonders quite how the government thinks that this can in any way promote community cohesion. Whilst the majority of ordinary British Muslims have little interest in political Islam or the details of sharia, virtually all imams have been trained in 'Classical Islam' i.e. the interpretations of the Qur'an and sharia that were 'fixed' in medieval times. These stipulate that non Muslims should be invited to submit to Islam and if they refuse, Islamic government with sharia should be imposed on them, if necessary by force. So, inviting imams to dig out their old school textbook on sharia and use it as a basis for discussion with young Muslims in comprehensive schools does not seem like a terribly well thought out idea...

The trouble is that the government is so focused on countering violent extremism, that it is largely ignoring the non violent Islamist agenda of many groups in the UK that have the same ultimate aims as violent Islamists - creating an Islamic state in Britain. Such groups pragmatically reject violent jihad preferring instead a strategy of 'political jihad'. The latter aims to achieve a step by step islamicisation of Britain involving for example a gradual alignment of British law with sharia and in the education sector pushing for more genuinely Islamic education in schools, first for Muslim pupils and then for all pupils. That, appears to be just what the Oxford Muslim Pupils' Empowerment Programme is doing - and which the government are suggesting that other schools should copy.

So let's just ask ourselves how effective the government's 'toolkit' is likely to be at equipping schools to counter even just 'violent' extremism, by assessing it against some real life situations found in UK schools.

A couple of years ago, having just returned from aid work in Afghanistan I was temporarily working as a supply teacher in a tough inner city comprehensive school that was approximately 50% White and 50% Asian, most of the Asians being Muslims. I developed quite a good relationship with some of the teenage Muslim boys - it was a bit of novelty having a white teacher who spoke Urdu! I'll briefly relate here two incidents related to extremism that occurred. The first was when a Danish newspaper published cartoons of Muhammad. 'What do you think about this sir?' came the slightly aggressive and clearly aggrieved question from a group of the lads. 'I quietly replied 'I think both sides need to act more responsibly.' What even us?' came back the aggrieved response. 'Look lads, you know that I understand what this means to you' (saying anything negative about Muhammad is the single most sensitive issue for most Muslims and bound to provoke a huge emotional response), 'but someone deliberately chose to take that Danish flag to Palestine and burn it front of the TV cameras - you can't buy foreign flags in most Islamic countries - and now innocent people are suffering, churches have been burnt down by rioters in Palestine and a Catholic priest has been shot dead in Turkey.' Their mood changed and they listened to me in silence. No one had ever challenged them with that side of the story before.

The second incident concerned one of these lads on his own. Imran had a large amount of rebellion in his general attitude and was also deeply religious. It was that volatile combination that made me concerned that he was at least potentially vulnerable to extremism. One day as I was walking around the class he said to me 'I found this verse in the Qur'an that says that we should kill non Muslims'. He didn't name the verse, but there are a number of such verses, such as Q9:29 (Kill the unbelievers wherever you find them...until they submit and pay the Jizya - a tax on non Muslims forced to live under an Islamic government).

His comments raised an important issue. Namely, that throughout Islamic history there has been both a peaceful Islamic stream and also a violent stream. Both of these are based on a whole range of Qur'anic verses - the violent stream emphasising verses such as Q9:29 quote above and the peaceful stream emphasising verses such as Q2:59 that encourage Muslims to have peaceful relationships with Jews and Christians. Historically the overwhelming majority of British Muslims have followed the peaceful stream, However, the internet access that has become widely available in the last 10 years has resulted in many young British Muslims readily finding material produced in other countries, where less peaceful interpretations of the Qur'an are more prevalent.

So, would the government's toolkit have dealt with either of these situations? The answer is almost certainly 'no'. I was only able to respond to the first situation because I had specialist knowledge of Islam gained through living and working in Pakistan and Afghanistan for a number of years as well as a PhD in Islam and Christian-Muslim relations. Few teachers, even RE specialists have anywhere near sufficient expertise in Islamics to deal effectively with such issues. In fact, many RE teachers are not even aware of the fact that historically Islam has from its very earliest days always had both peaceful and violent streams - both drawing their inspiration fro the Qur'an.

A more effective 'toolkit'.

So, what should a future Conservative government plan to do? I would suggest that it should provide a 'toolkit' of effective guidance that would genuinely help schools - both those with significant number of Muslim pupils and those with a predominately non Muslim intake. I would suggest that this 'toolkit' should contain at least 3 elements that are currently missing from the 'toolkit' that Ed Balls has just provided for schools:

1. It should draw up on a cross party basis and then circulate to schools a list of British values that are central to our free democratic society - such as parliamentary democracy, constitutional monarchy, one law for all, independence of the judiciary, freedom of speech, freedom of religion, no imprisonment without the right to trial by jury, loyalty to Britain, sovereignty of Britain as an independent nation state and British citizenship conferring both specific rights and responsibilities. Unfortunately, as I demonstrated in an article this past summer, the present Labour government has in the last few years actively undermined at least 50% of these historic British values.

2. Provide schools with a regularly updated list of extremist organisations - both racist groups such as the BNP and organisations that have produced Islamist literature or made pro Islamist statements. Currently many schools both those with large numbers of Muslim students and those in almost entirely white monocultural areas struggle to know which organisations they should avoid inviting speakers from, not accept donations of library books from and should block student access to their websites. Whilst this would require ongoing monitoring by the DCSF, as a first step I would suggest that any school should avoid inviting speakers from and block access to the websites of the following organisations - all of which academics have identified as having either published or distributed Islamist literature or have a significant Islamist orientation in their ideology or leadership: the East London Mosque, Federation of Student Islamic Societies (FOSIS), Finsbury Park Mosque, Hamas, Hizb ut Tahrir, Interpal (an Islamic aid agency long thought to have links to Hamas), Islamic Forum Europe, Islamic Society of Britain (ISB), Islamic Human Rights Commission (IHRC), The Muslim Association of Britain (MAB), The Muslim Council of Britain (MCB), Muslim Public Affairs Committee (MPAC), Supporters of Shariah (SoS), The Saved Sect, UK Islamic Mission (UKIM), Young Muslims Organisation (YMO), Young Muslims UK (YMUK)...(This list is not exhaustive)

3. Give examples of ways in which Muslims can be persuaded away from extremist ideologies such as Islamism. One of the best examples of this is the innovative new RE agreed syllabus which Birmingham Local Education Authority started using last month. This starts from a list of 24 shared values such as 'caring for others', 'living by rules', 'being loyal and steadfast', 'being fair and just' - then looks at what each religion, including Islam says positively about these values. As such it positively encourages Muslims (and others) to follow a peaceful, rather than a violent path in life.

Centre Right 11^th October 2008

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Islamism is territorial as well as political…

Patrick Sookhdeo Faith, Power and Territory: A Handbook of British Islam (McClean,VA,USA:Isaac Publishing,2008) 360pp.

Patrick Sookhdeo is always worth Reading on political Islam. He is the author of Global Jihad (see previous review) which provided a groundbreaking analysis of Islam and international relations. Dr Sookhdeo, who was until recently based in the UK, has now written an equally insightful book on British Islam. In Faith, Power and Territory he looks at how many modern expressions of Islam in Britain have both political and territorial ambitions.

The book demonstrates how, unlike Christian missions, Islamic missionary work (da'wa) aims not merely at encouraging a personal faith decision, but also at islamicising the social and political structures of society. Patrick Sookhdeo identifies attempts to 'contextualise' this da'wa to make it appear more acceptable to non Muslims in Britain. He observes for example that Islamists commonly refer to the creation of an Islamic state in Britain with the euphemism of creating 'a just world order', a practice based on the historic Islamic doctrine of taqiyya (saying one thing in public and another in private in order to advance the Islamic cause). The book also identifies specific Islamist strategies for achieving this islamisation of society, such as Islamist calls for the creation of 'no go' areas, where insults to Islam would not be tolerated.

Throughout this book Dr Sookhdeo demonstrates that 'Territory' is central to the aim of Islamic da'wa, because once an area has once been subjected to Islamic control, whether in terms of a being a mosque, or some other form of Islamic control, it is regarded by Islamic conservatives as Islamic sacred space that cannot at any later date be 'reclaimed' for any non Islamic use:

"Any space gained is considered sacred. Whatever has been won for Islam is dedicated to Allah, and belongs to the Umma (i.e. Islamic community) forever. Non Muslims could at best be tenants on their former property. Any lost sacred space must be regained - even by force if necessary. So Islam can only be expected to expand its territory, never to move, exchange or yield anything it has already gained in the UK."

Local councillors on planning committees take note!

Sookhdeo observes that this has profound implications for the planned building of a mega mosque next to the planned Olympics site in London. A mosque which could accommodate 40,000 (or according to some local sources 70,000) worshippers - making it the largest religious building in the UK.

In this book Patrick Sookhdeo covers an impressive range of subjects including Islamic educational institutions, financial institutions, legal institutions, charities, lobbying and monitoring organisations, media and publications. In doing so he repeatedly demonstrates how the British government has naively given ground to the Islamist agenda in a whole range of areas. For example, he observes that the Halal Foods Authority that the government's Food Standards Agency works closely with, was in fact set up by the Muslim Parliament - a group that looked to the Iranian revolution as the 'ideal' Islamic model; Similarly, he observes that the current British government has actively pursued the creation of sharia compliant financial products, another aspect of the Islamist agenda, despite 70% of British Muslims having conventional mortgages. This naivety is even evident in the government's counter terrorism strategy. The Mosques and Imams National Advisory Board (MINAB) set up after the 7/7 London bombings as part of the government's Preventing Extremism Together (PET) programme consists of four organisations. One of these is the Muslim Association of Britain (MAB), which is an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood. Another is the Muslim Council of Britain (MCB), which, whilst being an umbrella Islamic organisation, has a strongly Islamist orientated leadership itself. His analysis of the present government's relationship with the MCB penetratingly exposes the present government's naivety in dealing in Islamic extremism:

"The UK has sought through the Muslim Council of Britain to empower the Muslim conservatives instead of seeking out the modernists and liberals within Muslim society. Effectively they have worked to consolidate the power of the imams and mullahs, something which very few governments in Muslim majority countries do..."

Dr Sookheo goes on to demonstrate that Islamist terrorism does not exist within a vacuum, but within the wider infrastructure that provides the ideology. Therefore focusing on violent groups, as the present government continues to do, will not solve the problem. The mainline Islamist ideology - which has the same ultimate aims as the terrorist groups - must be confronted and dealt with. He argues that:

"It must be recognised that there is a link between da'wa, radicalism and jihadist ideology."

The book concludes with a facsimile of what appears to be a Muslim Brotherhood document outlining a strategy to bring about an Islamic government in North America, a disturbingly revealing document that the book reproduces in both its Arabic and English formats. Section 4 of this strategy document, headed "Understanding the Role of the Muslim Brother in North America" clearly articulates the Muslim Brotherhood's understanding that Islamic mission (da'wa) involves gradual, though ultimately total, islamisation of the social and political structures of western society. It clearly indicates that political action is seen by Islamists as being as much of a strategy to achieve this end as violent jihad and indeed appears to suggest that it is a strategic foundation that must be laid before a violent jihad could be launched with any hope of successfully enforcing Islamic government on western society:

"The process of settlement is a 'Civilization-Jihadist Process' with all the word means. The Ikhwan (Arabic name for the Muslim Brotherhood) must understand that their work in America is a kind of grand Jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and 'sabotaging' its miserable house by their hands and the hands of the believers so that it is eliminated and God's religion is made victorious over all other religions. Without this level of understanding, we are not up to this challenge and have not prepared ourselves for Jihad yet. It is a Muslim's duty to perform Jihad and work wherever he is..." (page 7).

The document claims that so far 8 stages of this 'Civilizational-Jihadist process' have been completed. These are listed as:

"A. The Stage of searching for self and determining the identity.

B. The stage of inner build up and tightening the organization.

C. The stage of mosques and the Islamic centres.

D. The stage of building the Islamic organizations - the first phase.

E. The stage of building the Islamic schools - the first phase.

F. The stage of thinking about the overt Islamic movement - the first phase.

G. The stage of openness to other Islamic movements and attempting to reach a formula for dealing with them - the first phase.

H. The stage of reviving and establishing the Islamic organizations - the second phase.

We believe that the group is embarking on this stage in its second phase as it has to open the door and enter as it did the first time."

Sobering thought when one considers that some of the key organisations that the present government and Labour politicians are actively working with such as the MAB, look to the Muslim Brotherhood for their ideological inspiration.

Centre Right 4^th October 2008

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What are realistic political aims for Afghanistan?

As well as having clear 'war aims' in Afghanistan , the west needs to have a clear idea of what is a realistic political settlement. Unfortunately the present Labour government seem to have only hazy ideas about the objectives of fighting in Afghanistan and even hazier ones about what might be realistically achievable political objectives. A year ago Defence Secretary Des Browne told the Labour Party conference that a future political settlement in Afghanistan would have to involve both the Taliban being part of government and government imposed Islamic law - statements he rather patronisingly neglected to consult the Afghan government on. One might equally well ask exactly what sort of a government minister could make such statements while at the very same time sending thousands of British troops to risk death and disablement in southern Afghanistan. Let me say very clearly at this point that I don't believe that Des Browne or any other government minister is the complete moral chameleon that these comments imply (although some will doubtless disagree!). It's just that the Labour government don't seem to have any clear political vision for what can realistically be achieved in Afghanistan.

So, let's set out what in practical terms is at least potentially achievable:

1. We are fighting radical Islamists such as the Taliban and al-Qaeda to prevent them creating a radical jihadist state from which to launch attacks on the west, with the ultimate aim of enforcing an Islamic government on the whole world. This is what was being worked out in Afghanistan when the Taliban 'governed' most of country. There is alternative - we have to fight to prevent this happening.

2. It is possible to return to a situation similar, though obviously not identical, to that which existed before the soviet invasion of 1979. Then, Kabul and some major cities were effectively governed by a semi westernised elite who had often been educated (and had their thinking liberalised) in western universities. Meanwhile the rural areas were effectively ruled by tribal elders. Even in the Pushtun (Pathan) areas, which are the Taliban heartland, this tribal structure remained largely intact throughout the soviet invasion. However, when the Taliban emerged as a political and military force from 1995 onwards, instead of the effective power being held by the grey beards - the old men, it was suddenly wielded by young talibs, many still in their teens, educated to primary school level in maktabs (Islamic schools) and armed with Kalashnikovs. That is why Taliban rule was one of the traumatic events for ordinary Afghans living in cities such as Jalalabad where I lived at the time.

However, tribal society, particularly in the Pushtun areas whence the Taliban derive most of their support is potentially the single most powerful political weapon against the Taliban. Pushtun tribal society is governed by a strong tribal code of conduct known as Pushtunwali. Anyone who breaks the tenets of Pushtunwali is known as peghor - a term of utter abuse meaning devoid of Pushtunwali and by implication of manliness itself. Pushtun commitment to Pushtunwali is in fact stronger than their commitment to Islam, to the extent that the Pushtun tribes are primarily Muslims simply because being Muslim is part of Pushtunwali. In fact, whenever there is any clash between Pushtunwali and sharia (Islamic law) - Pushtunwali always wins. This can be seen throughout Afghan history (Afghan is simply another term for Pushtun - at the end of the nineteenth century the Afghan i.e. Pushtun tribes conquered the non Pushtun tribes in the north and east to create the present 'Afghanistan' i.e. 'land of the Afghans'). For example, in 1827 a zealous mullah called Sayyid Ahmed Shah Bareli led a 'back to the Qur'an' movement that established a strict Islamist style government among the Pushtun tribes in what is now the Pakistan's North West Frontier Province. The Pushtun tribes went along with him until he tried to impose aspects of sharia (Islamic law) that conflicted with Pushtunwali. When he tried to bring Pushtun marriage customs in line with sharia, the Pushtun tribes rose up on mass. On the signal of a bonfire lighted on a central hill one night, they silently rose up and murdered all of Barrel's followers in their beds. Pushtun ballads are still sung remembering this event.

Today, something similar is happening among some of the Pushtun tribes in Pakistan's tribal area. One Khan (tribal leader), Anwar Kamal in Lakki Marwat has formed a lashkar (tribal militia) with a core of 2,000 men expanding up to 10,000 when needed, to fight Taliban militants who enter his 200 square miles of mountainous territory. It is this sort of traditional tribal authority that is the most viable alternative to the Taliban in the rural areas of southern and eastern Afghanistan, which are the Taliban heartland.

Having much of Afghanistan governed by Pushtunwali is not an ideal situation in terms of western standards of freedom and human rights. Not least because it is a strongly male dominated society where women have few rights and where law and order is maintained by blood vengeance. However, it is a realistic political possibility, which would allow the west to encourage more liberal influences to be nurtured in Kabul and other urban areas in the hope that such influences, not least in western style schooling (in contrast to the alternative Islamic maktub and madrassa system which the Taliban emerged from), may slowly begin to spread out to the rest of the country.

If there is one thing that we should have learnt from recent history in both Afghanistan and Iraq, it is that a democracy with the liberal freedoms we take for granted cannot be created in the Islamic world overnight or even in a few years. It requires 'patient nurturing' as David Cameron emphasised in his speech this month in Pakistan. In saying this, he was wholly in line with the great Conservative campaigners for social justice William Wilberforce and Lord Shaftesbury. When radical voices urged immediate and often violent change, Wilberforce and Shaftesbury saw that only gradual change could succeed in bringing about long lasting social justice in Britain.

It is this Conservative approach to foreign policy that can offer real hope of permanent change for good for the long suffering people of Afghanistan. It contrasts starkly with the dangerously muddled policy of the present Labour government that on the one hand sends British soldiers to fight the Taliban without adequate equipment and on the other hand and at the very same time talks about bringing the Taliban back to share government and having government imposed Islamic law - even though, at least from my experience of living there, most ordinary people living in the cities of Afghanistan desperately do not want either - they just want the Afghan constitution and to be allowed to get on with their family lives without constantly living in fear of the Taliban's religious police.

Centre Right 27^th September 2008

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British and US governments need clearer objectives in Afghanistan

When Margaret Thatcher led Britain to war in the Falklands we had a clear war aim: "to cause the withdrawal of Argentine forces from the Falklands, if necessary by means of military force".

Unfortunately the same clarity of aims seems to be lacking in the current campaign in southern Afghanistan. The latter was announced in 2005 in terms if "reconstruction", with the then Defence Secretary John Reid expressing the somewhat naive hope that it might be completed without a shot being fired. Given that the Taliban are primarily a Pushtun movement and southern and eastern Afghanistan were the Pushtun heartland, this was never likely to happen.

So, at a time when Afghanistan rather than Iraq is increasingly being seen as the key challenge, it would be wise to review what our specific war aims should be in Afghanistan. I would suggest the following:

1. Preventing a radical Islamist state being established which would be used to launch jihad attacks on other parts of the world. This is essentially what happened to Afghanistan when the Taliban government invited bin Laden to base his operations there after he was forced out of Sudan.

2. Preventing radical Islamist organisations obtaining nuclear material, which would allow them to create a "dirty bomb" i.e. the scattering of radioactive material over an area by means of conventional explosives. There has long been evidence that ex soviet nuclear material has passed through Afghanistan, with some evidence that some Taliban commanders may have been able to obtain it. There is also evidence that in summer 2001 bin Laden met with two Pakistani nuclear scientists who provided al-Qaeda with a blue print for developing a nuclear bomb and discussed uranium mining in Afghanistan.

3. Allowing a stable Afghan government to emerge that the West can positively engage with to promote a gradual liberalisation. However, this does not necessarily mean a government exercising the same degree of government control over all of its territory as a western government does over its regions. The power of successive Afghan governments has always declined significantly the greater the distance from Kabul.

If specific war aims such as these are clearly enunciated then military strategy can be developed that is both consistent with them and actively works to achieve these aims. However, the lack of clear enunciation of such aims by both the British and American governments has led to a series of policies that politically may undermine these basic war aims.

Most notable of these is President Bush's reported decision to allow US forces to undertake operations inside Pakistan without the prior consent of the Pakistani government. Nothing could be more calculated to swing even the most pro western liberal minded Pakistanis against the West. Popular reaction could all to easily lead to the emergence of a radical Islamist government in Pakistan in the not too distant future - precisely what we are fighting in Afghanistan to prevent.

Equally questionable, is the present British government's policy in Southern Afghanistan that was originally sold to the public in terms of "reconstruction". However, we now have British forces fighting to hold small towns such as Musa Khala and Sangin in Helmand against Taliban attacks. If this is part of a military strategy that will prevent the Taliban taking over Afghanistan again, then no one should argue with that. However, it is worth bearing in mind that historically the Afghan government's influence has always been significantly less in provincial capitals than it has been in Kabul. The provinces such as Helmand were effectively ruled by governors appointed by the interior minister and even the governor’s influence declined significantly in the rural areas away from the provincial capital. I have travelled through many rural Afghan towns and villages and apart from the provincial capitals most did not even have a police outpost. If there was a major outburst of 'trouble' then the provincial police chief might have sent a bevy of police there for a few days. But by and large provincial rural areas have traditionally been largely left to govern themselves. So, whilst Afghan officials may well be keen to get British troops to enforce the government remit in remote rural areas, it would be politically naive to engage in such activities - unless they form part of a military strategy that clearly contributes to specific war aims.

If the government is serious about the war in Afghanistan not only must it provide our troops with adequate equipment and a fair policy on such issues as when leave starts, it must most fundamentally of all spell out much more clearly what the specific war aims actually are. That is the very least that we owe to our armed forces when we ask them to put their lives on the line.

Centre Right 13^th September 2008

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Labour Council enforces Ramadan on non Muslims

Despite recent temperatures pushing 30 C Labour controlled Tower Hamlets Council has ordered all councillors not to drink in meetings during Ramadan (starts in about 2 days), so as not to offend Muslim councillors. It has even gone so far as to order non Muslim councillors not to eat the finger food prepared for council meetings until Muslims break their fast at sunset - despite the food being served in a separate room.

Now I'm all for encouraging individuals to act with cultural sensitivity. That's why during the years that I lived in Pakistan and Afghanistan I didn't drink alcohol (although there were places in Pakistan where it was available), I didn't eat pork or bacon (although my colleague Larry found a shop in Peshawar that sold it under the counter!) and I didn't make a show of eating during Ramadan - although I did discretely drink water and no local Muslims ever objected to that. The latter however, is apparently now against the rules for non Muslims on Tower Hamlets Council...

The problem comes down to Labour's approach to so many things - instead of encouraging people to be act responsibly they enforce it with government rules; and instead of encouraging cultural sensitivity in all directions (Muslims councillors shouldn't actually need to be told to be tolerant of non Muslims taking a sip of water on a hot day!) Labour's political correctness creates 'in groups' whose 'rights' are enforced on everyone else. This Labour approach to multiculturalism is in fact the exact opposite of tolerance and actually creates victims among people who are not in Labour's politically correct in groups'. These include:

1. Muslims who don't strictly keep Ramadan. Despite what some politically correct councils seem to think, many Muslims do NOT fast during Ramadan. When I lived in Pakistan many of my Pakistani friends quietly told me that probably no more than 30% of local people actually fasted during Ramadan. However, in any Muslim community, whether in the UK or in Islamic countries, there is a huge degree of social pressure to at least be seen not to be breaking the fast. There is a very real issue of intimidation in many Muslim communities that policies like those adopted by Tower Hamlets Council are actually facilitating.

2. Non Muslim minorities in the UK such as Christians and Hindus with family origins in predominately Islamic countries such as Pakistan and Bangladesh. Such people are cruelly disappointed to find that politically correct local councils enforce the same sort of rules on them and their children that oppressed them in their countries of origin. In fact, one of the greatest failures of 'multiculturalism' has been that it has transported into Britain social power structures from countries such as Pakistan and Bangladesh that oppressed non Muslim minorities in those countries. This was indelibly impressed on me some years ago when I was invited to speak at the Asian Christian Fellowship in Southall, which numbered well over a hundred people. After the meeting a family of Pakistani origin invited me back to their home for a meal (hospitality is one of the very positive cultural values that Asians contribute to this country...!). There it quickly became apparent that I was one of the first white Urdu speakers (of a sort!) they had ever met. With tears streaming down her face, the lady of the house in a mixture of broken English and Urdu, poured out her heart about how distressed she was that the local council and schools kept treating them as if they were Muslims - because they were of Pakistani origin. It wasn't a question of ignorance - at the time the mayor of neighbouring Hounslow was an Asian Christian, one of 50,000 in the UK. The problem was the political correctness of their local council that listened to self proclaimed Muslim community leaders, instead of relating to people as individual citizens.

3. And of course the other victims of enforced 'multicultralism' exemplified by Tower Hamlets council, are all the other non Muslims in the area who don't want to be subjected to Islamic rules! Let's be clear - in the UK there are plenty of Islamist groups who engage in a 'political jihad' of seeking to slowly step by step align British public policy with that of Islamic government. Their strategy to achieve this is firstly, to push for special recognition of religious distinctives by local and central government, which then gives them greater leverage to 'enforce' these by social pressure and intimidation within predominately Muslim areas of the UK, then finally requiring non Muslims to observe these 'rules' in the name of 'tolerance' of Islam. It looks like Labour controlled Tower Hamlets Council have fallen into this Islamist trap hook, line and sinker...

Centre Right 30^th August 2008

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Record breaking exam results – but what is really happening to children and young people’s educational achievement?

Everyone of us with friends or children who have taken exams recently knows how incredibly hard they have had to work and feels nothing but admiration for what they have achieved. We all offer our warmest congratulations to those individuals who worked and sweated for these results.

This year a record breaking 25.9% of A-level students were awarded an A grade - more than twice the number in 1990. Government ministers have predictably sought to shine in the academic glory achieved by teenagers and herald these results as evidence of the success of their education policy. They conveniently forget of course that any real improvement in standards is primarily due to the hard work of students and teachers! What ministers should be doing of course - a duty which they positively owe to those hard working teenagers who took exams this summer - is making sure that educational standards in exams are maintained.

However, there is an increasing body of hard evidence that exam standards have actually slipped significantly and even some evidence that this grade inflation may actually be masking a decline in general levels of academic ability since the 1980s.

Research by educationalists at Durham University suggests that the A-level standard now awarded an A grade in many subjects would have only merited a C grade in the 1980s (i.e. 2 grades lower). In fact, their research suggested that in A-level Maths the standard is now 3 and half grades down (i.e. a D grade in the 1980s might now get an A grade). Their research provides hard evidence of what many long serving teachers have long suspected.

The Department for Children, Schools and Families (DCSF) predictably dismissed the Durham research. Many, like me, will find it profoundly disturbing that politicians and spin doctors at the DCSF, who are not even trained teachers, actually think they know more than professional educationalists at a leading university.

In fact, the Durham research - which measured the level of conceptual understanding required to get specific grades in exams, produced very similar conclusions to a 2006 research study done by educationalists at Kings College London for the ESRC. The London University team found that in 2004 the level of conceptual understanding that 11 year olds had was 2-3 years behind their counterparts in 1990, i.e. there had been a significant decline in the general level of educational ability.

Taken together, these two pieces of research suggest that far from standards of learning improving as government ministers keep claiming - the reverse may actually be true. That is to say, the intellectual ability of British children taken as a whole (i.e. not necessarily you or your particular child!) has actually decreased compared to what children in the 1980s achieved. This decline in learning (i.e. what children comprehend) has occurred despite there being a whole range of evidence that that teaching (i.e. what teachers do in the classroom) has significantly improved since the 1980s. A number of education writers point to the most probable cause of this decline in learning ability as being 'toxic childhood' (See Sue

Palmer's excellent book with this title - which David Willetts called 'one of the most powerful books of the year').

'Toxic childhood' is the cocktail of factors from lack of outdoor play, overuse of computer games resulting in a lack of social skills, violent video games, poor parenting and family breakdown etc., which inhibit learning. Significantly, this list includes a number of issues also identified by Iain Duncan Smith's Social Justice Policy Commission, as being long term causes of poverty.

Taken together, the findings of the London and Durham University research teams suggest that this decline in children's learning ability may possibly be being masked by 'grade inflation' i.e. exams getting easier.

The situation is hidden partly because in the 1980s both A-levels and GCSEs were marked by what is termed 'norm referencing' i.e. a set percentage of students got each grade. This was later replaced by 'criterion referencing' - in which students have to achieve certain set standards. This makes it hard to compare standards just by comparing results. However, when GCSE was introduced the grade F mark (equivalent of the old CSE grade 4) was set at the 50 percentile mark i.e. 50% would get grade F and above and 50% below. By comparison today in most subjects around 75% of students achieve grades A*-C - (the equivalent of an O-level pass) i.e. 3 grades higher. Now it is entirely credible that improved teaching could have improved pass rates from 50% getting a particular grade to 75% getting the same grade. However, it is much more questionable as to whether, with even the best teaching in the world, children who would have got a low grade CSE in the early 80s would now get the equivalent of an O-level pass (which implies they might go on to A-level and potentially university).

So have exams got easier? Many teachers feel that A-level became easier a few years ago when they became modularised instead of being examined just at the end of the course. Last year the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority (QCA) announced that in future GCSEs would also be modularised - potentially allowing students to retake modules to improve their grades.

Similarly, many schools have met government targets to increase the number of A*-C GCSE passes by students taking easier subjects such as PE and Media Studies. Research findings announced last year by Durham University suggested that GCSEs in PE, Media Studies, Textiles and Drama were approximately one grade easier than GCSEs in Languages, History and IT.

When this evidence is taken together with the Kings College London Research that showed a significant decline in intellectual ability among 11 year olds - it raises the uncomfortable question of whether grade inflation at both A-level and GCSE might possibly be masking an actual decline in school leaver's intellectual ability.

The truth is that government targets to constantly improve can all to easily have the opposite of the intended effect. They pressurise teachers to teach to the test, rather than widening the thinking skills and knowledge base of children and they put pressure on schools to steer children into easier subjects.

Is grade inflation masking a decline in educational ability? Whilst there is a body of evidence that points to that possibility - the truth is that school exam results have become rather like the government's inflation figures - everyone knows what the official figures are, but no one definitively knows what the actual levels are - and that is a scandal for any government to preside over.

Consequently, I would suggest that the next Conservative government makes it a priority to:

1. Urgently review the target driven culture that the present Labour government have imposed on schools that is distorting Children's education.

2. Commission educationalists to establish clear and permanent bench marks in terms of knowledge, conceptual understanding and skills for each subject and grade to stop any further grade inflation.

3. Commission a major independent research project to determine whether children and young people's educational ability has actually been rising or falling during the last decade.

Centre Right 14^th August 2008

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For those who want to use the summer break to understand Islamism in both its peaceful and violent forms (same end goal...just different methods!):

1. Peaceful Islamism

Anthony McRoy From Rushdie to 7/7: The Radicalisation of Islam in Britain (London:The Social Affairs Unit,2006) 236pp

This is an extremely important book, which should have much wider exposure than it has done so far. It is basically the book form of Anthony's PhD on this subject. But don't be put off - it is both relatively short and extremely readable. Explores the history of recent radicalisation as well as giving a very helpful analysis of the history, ideological agenda and methods of the main peaceful Islamist groups in the UK including the MCB, Muslim Association of Britain, Muslim Public Affairs Committee, Islamic Human Rights Commission etc.

2. Violent Islamism and foreign affairs

Patrick Sookhdeo Global Jihad: The Future in the Face of Militant Islam (McLean,VA USA:Isaac Publishing,2007) 669pp

Brilliant analysis of the ideology of violent Islamism and its strategy in relation to global domination and entrapment of the West (see my earlier review of Global Jihad on CentreRight).

3. Security issues in relation to Islamism

Daniel Benjamin and Steven Simon The Next Attack: The Globalisation of Jihad (London: Hodder and Stoughton,2005) 330pp

Historical and strategic review of Islamist attempts to enact terrorist attacks on the West. The authors are both former directors of the US National Security Council.

Centre Right 14^th August 2008

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The fire service needs to be freed from its health and safety straitjacket

When I was an aid worker in Afghanistan, parents of those looking to join our team would sometimes ask 'is it dangerous?' To which my standards reply was that there are certain professions - the armed services, the police and the fire service etc. where you have to accept a certain amount of risk.

Not any longer it seems according to the health and safety bureaucrats responsible for the fire service...

A few weeks ago I went for a quiet evening stroll down by the river and came upon a calf, which had fallen down a steep bank into the river and was struggling to keep its head above water. A couple of unemployed teenagers had already spotted it and called the police (time the press said more good things about teenagers like these!). It looked a bit risky to try to pull it out alone, as without someone behind it the calf might panic and go out into deeper water. So, ten minutes later when a local WPC arrived, I suggested that if she didn't mind getting into the shallow water to help the calf out - I'd go into the main part of the river behind it (it didn't look more than waist deep). Health and safety kicked in - it seems the police now have instructions not to enter water themselves, caution the public not to enter and call the fire service. OK - fair enough the fire service are the guys who are paid to get wet!

The police radio crackled and I heard the WPC query why the fire service were sending a crew from 15 miles away instead of calling out the local retained (i.e. volunteer) crew. It seemed that the retained crew weren't trained in water rescue and would be tempted to just go into the river and get the calf out!

To put this into context - this is Suffolk - gentle quiet flowing rivers and about thirty yards upstream from a spot I used to paddle in when I was a child!

After about twenty minutes the fire crew arrive - turns out they are not allowed to go into the river either and they also warn the rest of us not to enter the river. We try to coax the calf down to a section where it might be able to climb out, but it doesn't move far enough. By now the light is fading and it’s getting difficult to see the calf. The fire service decide they need a specialist water rescue unit i.e. fire crew who are actually allowed to enter the water! The unit is based in Felixstowe - the other side of Suffolk. Now Suffolk is a big county that has not exactly been blessed by government spending on roads - no motorways and basically only one dual carriageway of any length. So, we're told it's going to take the specialist water rescue unit at least an hour an half to get to us. (It will probably take even longer if the government force through its rather ill thought out plan of merging local fire brigades into regional fire services - at least this time the 'water rescue unit' was coming from Suffolk!).

After we've been there for about an hour, the calf by now totally exhausted, drifts out into mid river. In the fading light we can just see it disappear under the water. After twenty seconds or so it kicks itself back to surface before again disappearing under the water. It doesn't reappear. No one does anything. Frustrated and not feeling bound by fire service health and safety regulations I quietly asked one of the teenagers to look after my mobile phone, waded into the river and pulled the calf out. Everyone, including the firemen, cheered when I lifted the calf out of the water and hauled it to the bank, where the fire crew gave it oxygen until the RSPCA arrived.

Back on the bank, the firemen half apologetically explain that they constantly have it rammed down their throats that they are not allowed to enter water. Apparently it all came about as a result of two firemen drowning trying to rescue someone from a raging torrent in the North of England a few years ago.

That I understand. What I don't understand is the 'one size fits all' approach to health and safety that treats a quiet, gently flowing Suffolk river the same as a raging white water torrent elsewhere in the country. The water only came to my lower chest and although there was quite a lot of weed in the river, it wasn't exactly hugely dangerous. I understand that firemen shouldn't be pressured into jumping into a raging torrent. I can even - at a stretch - understand them being advised not to enter a river. What I cannot understand - and I am quite sure the public don't either - is firemen repeatedly being told that they are not allowed to enter any river. Canoeists grade rivers from 1 (gently flowing) to 6 (definite danger to life) - do the government's health and safety managers think that firemen aren't capable of doing something similar?

These firemen didn't join the fire service to stand on a river bank for an hour watching a calf drown. They joined to save lives. It's about time the government let them do the job they joined the fire service to do.

Centre Right 6^th August 2008

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Labour are undermining at least 50% of historic core British values

Historic Core British Values	Conflicting with Islamic Extremism	Undermined by Labour
Parliamentary Democracy	X	X
Constitutional Monarchy	X
One Law for All	X
Independence of the Judiciary
Freedom of Speech	X	X
Freedom of Religion	X	X
No Imprisonment without Jury Trial	X	X
Loyalty to Britain	X	?
Sovereignty of Britain as a Nation State	X	X
British Citizenship

Earlier this month the Communities Secretary Hazel Blears set out the government's policy on combating violent extremism (why only 'violent' extremism one might ask - but that's another article!). In this she listed 6 'shared values': 1. a belief in democracy 2. the rights of minorities 3. the need for competing political parties 4. a free press 5. an independent judiciary and 6. free elections. She declared that:

'These fundamental tenets of democracy form the great dividing line between us and the extremists.'

Really? Three things concern me here.

First, the government evidently lacks a clear understanding of exactly what are our historic core British values: do they not include freedom of speech for everyone - not just the press? Where is freedom of religion - particularly the right not to have a world-view whether religious or secular pluralist imposed on people by legislation? Where is the Magna Carta provision of no arbitrary imprisonment without trial by jury etc. I could go on...

Secondly, this government - as I will briefly demonstrate below - has itself been undermining many of these core British values, particularly some of the more significant ones that Hazel Blears chose to omit from her list.

Thirdly, not only is the government's list of 'shared values' that are 'the fundamental tenets of democracy' wholly inadequate, the government appears to be equally hazy as to the precise points at which Islamic law (sharia) conflicts with our historic core British values. For example, I wholeheartedly agree with Ms Blears that the independence of the judiciary from the government is an important British value, but it is not as Ms Blears asserts 'one of the great dividing lines' between us and Islamic extremists (in Islamic countries sharia courts are normally independent of the government).

So, for the sake of the ordinary decent people in this country - like the teacher I met recently who, knowing nothing of my interest in this area, spontaneously spoke of how worried he was by a newspaper headline stating that the Lord Chief Justice advocated British courts using sharia, for the sake of such ordinary decent British citizens as that man, I'll briefly explain to Ms Blears and the rest of the Labour government some of the key points on which Islamic law (sharia) conflicts with some of our historic core British values - including a number that the present government are themselves actively undermining.

In order to do that I would suggest the following as 'historic core British values', by that I mean ones that have evolved to their present form over a significant period of British history and are central to the maintenance of our present freedoms. Most, though not all, of these values are expressed through our parliamentary and legal institutions. I am sure others will want to modify or add to this list. That will be a very constructive debate to have. I make no claim for completeness!

1. Parliamentary Democracy. This has several aspects:

a) One citizen one vote in free and fair elections to vote/out the government of the people's choice (and not as a 'one way street' to introducing an Islamic government as a significant number of non violent Islamist groups in the UK see it).

b) The right of any sane adult citizen not convicted of a serious crime to stand for election. (In modern applications of Islamic law if non Muslims are allowed to stand for election or vote at all, this is often only in a tiny handful of special seats for non Muslims, which completely marginalises their influence on mainstream politics).

c) Choice of government being based on being able to command a majority of elected members of parliament. (In traditional interpretations of Islamic law non Muslims are not permitted to be part of government).

d) Multi party participation in elections - with an official opposition in parliament.

e) Only parliamentarians becoming ministers so that they can be held to account in parliament.

f) Parliament being independent of government - including in its finances - so able to hold government to account.

g) Government by consent of members of parliament - originating in the Magna Carta provision of 'no taxation without representation'.

h) Laws being made by parliamentarians. (In Islamic law - laws are 'discovered' by sharia theologians interpreting the Qur'an and Hadith. Parliament and government can only apply laws that the sharia courts tell them are compliant with Islamic law).

2. Constitutional Monarchy - the sovereign as a non political head of state, but with the ultimate right to dissolve parliament. (In Islamic law non Muslims are excluded from being head of state).

3. One law for all - with absolute equality for all before the law - whether male/female; Christian/Muslim/Jewish/Secular - or anything else, one law for all. (Islamic law gives significantly lesser legal rights to non Muslims and to women - including a Muslim man's testimony in court being equal to that of two non Muslim men or four non Muslim women).

4. Independence of the judiciary from government (as stated above this isn't actually a major clash with agenda of Islamic extremists - despite Ms Blears seeming to think it is!).

5. Freedom of speech - including both freedom of the press and the right of individuals to criticise another's worldview - whether Christian, Muslim or Secular Pluralist or any other. (Criticism of Muhammad or the Qur'an is the most serious offence in Islamic law and carries the automatic death penalty even in 'moderate' Islamic countries such as Pakistan).

6. Freedom of religion - including:

a) Not having a worldview whether Christian, Muslim, Secular Pluralist or any other imposed on individuals or private organisations by legislation. (Islamic law as a single religious and political system legislates a world-view).

b) The right peacefully to practise and eierenically persuade others of the truth of one's beliefs. (In Islamic law the death penalty applies to any Muslim man who embraces another faith such as Christianity and may also be applied to anyone trying to persuade a Muslim of the truth of another faith).

7. No imprisonment by the state or its agents without a fair trial before a jury of one's equals. (Islamic law does not require a jury - only a judge who according to sharia must be a Muslim).

8. Loyalty to Britain as a nation state before loyalty to any other state or organisation. This includes - but is not limited to - not giving any form of aid or assistance (political, financial or military etc) to those fighting against British armed forces, actions that have traditionally been described in Britain as 'treason'.

9. The sovereignty of Britain as a nation state - whose laws are solely determined by her parliament rather than by any non British power. (In Islamic law parliaments do not 'make' law - see comment on 1h above).

10. British citizenship being the birthright of every child born in Britain of British parents and conferring both rights (including an inalienable right of residence) and responsibilities.

I have written before on Conservative Home of how the present Labour government have a relationship with 'non violent' Islamist groups that is similar to the relationship Labour had with the unions a decade or so ago. Put simply, Labour doesn't want all of their agenda, but it does want their votes (and in the case of the unions their money!). So, it has appeased them by giving them part of what they want - for example: the incitement to religious hatred legislation - widely viewed by Islamist organisations as an Islamic blasphemy law; a leading Islamist commissioned to write a government report alone (!) on how Islam should be taught at British universities; sharia treasury bonds (sukuk) currently being introduced by the government etc.

However, aside form its appeasement of 'non violent' Islamist groups, there are other ways that the present Labour government's ideology, policies and actions have significantly undermined historic core British values:

1. Parliamentary democracy

a) Free and fair elections - in 2007 Labour MPs voted to give themselves a £10,000 'communications allowance' from public funds to promote themselves to their constituents - on top of the existing postage and other allowances that all MPs receive (a future Conservative government is pledged to abolish this in the interests of democracy). While just to skew the playing field even more in favour in sitting Labour MPs, in June this year Justice Secretary Jack Straw proposed banning prospective candidates challenging a sitting MP from spending any money from any source in advance of an election. To put this into perspective - one of the major criticisms Britain has made of elections in in countries such as Russia is the huge advantage given to government MPs in terms of state funding etc.(See Greg Hands MP's excellent article on this).

e) Only parliamentarians becoming ministers 1. Unelected Labour political advisors have unconstitutionally assumed part of the role of ministers by giving orders to civil servants. 2. Immediately after becoming Prime Minister Gordon Brown appointed Sir Digby Jones as a minister when he wasn't a member of either house of parliament, an ction which led to the Prime Minister being censured by an all party parliamentary committee for this.

f) Parliament independent of government - Gordon Brown unconstitutionally sought to interfere in decisions over MPs pay - which constitutionally should be set by parliament without government interference.

5. Freedom of speech

1. An unusual coalition of writers, actors and churchmen strongly condemned Labour's attempt to pass incitement to religious hatred legislation in a form which (before being amended) would have severely curtailed the fundamental historic British right of being able to criticise another person's worldview - whether Christian, Muslim, Secular Pluralist or any other.

2. Highly respected children's author Lynette Burrowes was subjected to a police investigation after saying in a radio interview that she had reservations about homosexual male couples adopting girls. Here was a perfectly legitimate expression of a difference of opinion from the Labour government's policy - but she was subjected to a police investigation for it. The police action is a massive erosion of freedom of speech. Unfortunately hers is far from being an isolated case.

6. Freedom of Religion

a) Not having a worldview (Christian, Muslim, Secular Pluralist or any other) imposed on individuals or private organisations by legislation. In 1559 Elisabeth 1 passed the Act of Uniformity requiring everyone to assent to a particular Worldview - that of the established church. It was not until the abolition of the University Tests Act in 1871 that Britain attained full religious freedom. However, the Sexual Orientation Regulations passed by the present Labour government reversed Britain's 400 year march to religious freedom by requiring Catholic adoption agencies to do something (place children for adoption with homosexual couples) that their own worldview said was morally wrong. In effect it enforced a world-view (a Secular Pluralist one) by legislation on individuals and private organisations. (I'm not a Catholic by the way, but this was a fundamental erosion of our historic core British value of religious liberty).

b) The right to peacefully practise and persuade others of the truth of one's beliefs. The Labour government now plan a further significant erosion of this in its proposed Single Discrimination Act, which in its present format may make it illegal for Christian ministers to state that homosexual sexual practice is morally wrong. The Church of England - hardly a bastion of radical fundamentalism - has already warned that this is a serious erosion of religious liberty. When the government tries to tell the church what it can and can't call 'sin' there is a very real possibility that some Christian ministers will go to prison rather than obey it.

7. No imprisonment by the state or its agents without a fair trial before a jury

Massively undermined by the government legislating 42 days detention without trial for terrorist suspects.

8. Loyalty to Britain

A bit of an open question this one, but I do have a question mark about exactly why the government thinks NOW is an opportune time to review Britain's treason laws...

9. The sovereignty of Britain as a nation state - with laws determined solely by the British parliament

Dare I just say the words 'Lisbon Treaty' a.k.a. 'The EU Constitution' - which the government was elected on a manifesto of allowing us a referendum on - but hasn't; which Gordon Brown promised parliament line by line scrutiny of - but didn't allow; but which does transfer huge amounts of power from our elected British parliament to unelected EU officials.

Now that means that of these 10 main areas of historic core British values - whilst Islamic extremists challenge 80-90% of them, the Labour government themselves are actively undermining at least 50% of them.

Many like me will find it deeply worrying that the Communities Secretary, Hazel Blears' list of the 'shared values' that are in her words the 'fundamental tenets of democracy (that) form the great dividing line between us and the extremists' does not include many of our historic core British values - like freedom of religion and no imprisonment without trial by jury - precisely those core British values that the Labour government are actively undermining at this very moment.

When the SS Great Britain is being holed below the waterline by her own captain and officers, it is clearly time for a change of crew if the good ship Great Britain is to have any hope of defending our historic core British values against the hidden U-Boats of Islamic extremism.

Centre Right 30^th July 2008

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I hope Gordon Brown is allowed a quiet Holiday in Suffolk…

I hope Gordon Brown is allowed a quiet holiday in Suffolk and I mean that most sincerely - politicians do need a life outside of politics, particularly private time with their families.

Gordon Brown has actually made a really good choice for once, the Suffolk coast not only has award winning beaches, but also has the best summer weather in the UK - same average summer temperatures as Devon and Cornwall, but only half the number of rainy days.

However, if Gordon Brown doesn't get left alone (as he should be) on his summer hols, then Hazel Blears the Communities Secretary and local Waveney MP Bob Blizzard (Labour majority 5,915) may have something to answer for. Local Labour MP Bib Blizzard has been pushing for the creation of a unitary council encompassing both Lowestoft (Suffolk) and Great Yarmouth (Norfolk) - a proposal strongly opposed by both local councils, but which would create a 'safe' Labour council (surprise!). So, Hazel Blears instructed the Boundary Commission to review local councils in Suffolk and Norfolk. However, Ms Blears only allowed them to look at setting up unitary authorities, specifically forbidding them from looking at the status quo (which funnily enough happens to be predominantly Conservative controlled district councils). She also required the Boundary Commission to look at creating a Lowestoft-Yarmouth ('Yartoft') unitary council. The actions of Hazel Blears and local MP Bob Blizzard have now resulted in the Boundary Commission coming up with two alternative proposals for Suffolk - BOTH of which put the historic Suffolk town of Lowestoft under a Norfolk unitary council - effectively moving it from Suffolk to Norfolk - entirely against the very strongly felt wishes of the local people!

Now I have just started teaching at a school near the area and Suffolk people are to say the least rather upset about the Boundary Commission's proposals to scrap local district councils ('why fix it when it isn't broke?'). In fact, in Lowestoft they are absolutely livid about being moved from Suffolk into Norfolk. Councillor Mark Bee, the Conservative leader of Waveney District Council memorably described it as 'a dog's breakfast, in fact the more I think about it - I wouldn't even give it to my dog!'

Suffolk folk are an essentially conservative folk who really don't like change being forced upon them. But mercifully for Gordon Brown on his hols – we are also on the whole a fairly polite and hospitable people. No one's likely to slow handclap Gordon out of the local pub - as Londoners recently did to School's Secretary Ed Balls.

BUT, I dare say that even in Suffolk there may well be a few aggrieved local people who will want to bend Gordon's ear on a rather pressing local political issue...

If so, Gordon should know exactly who to blame and insist that Hazel Blears cleans up the mess she and local MP Bob Blizzard have created, and reject both of the Boundary Commission's proposals for Suffolk, let Lowestoft stay in Suffolk and above all let local people decide for themselves whether they want an expensive reorganisation of local government imposed on them by the Labour government just weeks before the government is forced to call the next general election.

Party differences aside I really do hope Gordon Brown and his family are allowed a quiet family holiday, everyone deserves that.

But Gordon Brown, Hazel Blears and the likes of Bob Blizzard really do need to listen to local people instead of trying to impose things on local people in the vain hope of gaining some party political advantage.

Centre Right 25^th July 2008

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Sharia legitimises slavery

This week Lord Phillips, the Lord Chief Justice advocated that some disputes could be settled on the basis of 'the principles of sharia' rather than English law. Douglas Carswell MP has written a commendable critique of why Lord Phillips has overstepped his constitutional position in making these remarks. What must be of equally great concern is that the Lord Chief Justice appears to have totally misunderstood the very nature of sharia. Put simply, Islamic theology unequivocally states that law cannot be 'made' by people, it can only be 'discovered' by Islamic theologians interpreting the Islamic scriptures (Qur'an and Hadlth). Consequently, when sharia exists alongside any other form of law, the 'man-made' law must always be subservient to sharia.

An example of the superior status given to sharia is slavery - which within the last 50 years has been banned by constitutional law in virtually every country in the world...yet is still present in a number of Islamic countries BECAUSE sharia legitimises the enslavement of non Muslims. An illustration of this happened this very week when Belgium police freed 17 women allegedly held as slaves by members of an Arab royal family residing in Brussels.

In fact, the extent to which political correctness has blinded our eyes to the role of sharia in legitimising slavery is truly astonishing. In the recent celebrations of the 200th anniversary of the British parliament's abolition of the slave trade, we heard very little about the role played by Muslim Arab traders in enslaving large numbers of black Africans prior to their transportation in European ships to the West Indies. Nor did we hear much of the one million white European slaves, many of them British sailors or even Cornish villagers captured in slave raids on South West England, enslaved and sometimes forcibly converted to Islam by the ruler of Morocco in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Although we must be grateful to Giles Milton for bringing this subject to public light in his excellent book White Gold

The truth is that political correctness and the fear of being accused of 'Islamophobia' have kept the Islamic aspect of the slave trade largely veiled from public attention. Yet the express permission granted in Islamic law for the enslavement of non Muslims was a significant factor not just in the eighteenth century transatlantic slave trade, but also continues to be in a number of modern Islamic contexts. The existence of twin system of law in many Islamic countries - one constitutional and the other, Islamic (sharia) often operated on a more informal level - allows those engaged in slavery to claim a degree of 'legitimacy' in terms of Islamic law.

Consequently, while Arab countries have in recent years made pronouncements in terms of their constitutional (i.e. western based) laws banning slavery, in practice slavery has often continued. For example, in November 1962 Saudi Arabia found 'a favourable opportunity' to formally abolish the slave trade, and paid £1,785,000 as compensation to slave owners for the release of 1,682 slaves. Yet the UN estimated that there were between 100,000 and 250,000 slaves in Saudi Arabia at the time. The overthrow of the Sultan of Oman in 1970 revealed some 500 slaves kept in his palace - some so badly treated that they were unable to stand upright while others had become unable to speak. Similarly, Mauritania whose constitutional law abolished slavery in 1981 was estimated in 1995 to have 300,000 'former' black slaves kept in servitude.

The point is simply this, sharia always trumps any man made 'laws' because Islamic theology understands that law cannot be 'made' by man, but only 'discovered' by Islamic scholars from study of the Islamic scriptures. It is therefore against the very nature of sharia, for it to exist - as Lord Phillips suggested this week that the UK should allow it to - in a subservient position to any form of man made constitutional law. If the Lord Chief Justice does not understand this basic difference between western law and sharia, then he needs to refrain from addressing Muslim audiences on the issue of sharia.

Sharia does very clearly legitimise the enslaving of non Muslims, BUT not of Muslims - who Muslims are exhorted in the Qur'an and Sharia to set free.

Within Sunni Islam there are 4 schools of Islamic law - all are based on interpreting what the Qur'an and Sunna (example of what Muhammad said and did contained in the Hadith) say.

1. The Qur'an does encourage the freeing of Muslim slaves. However, it also expressly allows Muslims to take slaves during war and in the case of female slaves - to marry them Q33:49 "O Prophet truly we have made lawful for thee wives to whom thou hast given their hire (dowry) AND what thy right hand possess out of the booty God hath granted thee."

2. The Sunna - Muhammad's example - although Muhammad released some slaves who had become Muslims - most famously a black slave called Bilal, he himself ordered non Muslims captured in battle to be taken into slavery. The most famous example of this is after the Battle of the Ditch, 5 years after Muhammad became the political ruler of Medina. After the battle Muhammad felt a Jewish tribe living near Medina had not given him support so he ordered the execution by beheading in a ditch of 700 Jewish men and the enslaving of the women and girls...

3. Sharia: The Hedaya - which for the last 400 years has been the main textbook on Sharia used in Sunni madrassas throughout the Indian subcontinent is explicit that enslavement of non Muslim captives is legitimate. It states that:

"The imam with respect to captives has it in his choice to slay them, because the prophet put captives to death, and also because slaying them terminates wickedness; or, IF HE CHOOSES HE MAY MAKE THEM SLAVES, because by enslaving them the wickedness of them is remedied, and at the same time the Muslims reap an advantage..." The Hedaya in fact goes into great detail about who may be enslaved and under what circumstances a slave may be released

Centre Right 5th July 2008

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A future Conservative government needs to speak with both truth AND responsibility about Islam to avoid hate attacks on Muslims increasing

This week a white racist from the small Yorkshire town of Goole was convicted of plotting terrorist attacks aimed almost certainly at what are being euphemistically referred to as 'minority communities'. Also this week a white racist party came within 78 votes of securing 3rd place in the Henley by election, beating Labour by 177 votes. Given that neither Henley nor Goole are exactly multi-ethnic, the common factor is almost certainly a fear of radical Islam perversely twisted by white racist parties who want us all to believe that all Muslims are potential terrorists, a claim that is as untrue as it is dangerous.

However, both the conviction of a white supremacist of terrorist offences and the 3.5% vote gained by a racist party in the Henley by election, are at least in some measure a tragic legacy of the repeated public claims by both Labour and Lib-Dem politicians that violence is a 'perversion' of Islam.

I have no doubt that such repeated comments by senior government ministers, including Jacqui Smith the Home Secretary and Hazel Blears the Communities Secretary are well intentioned. They doubtless see themselves as acting responsibly, aiming to avoid vigilante attacks on Muslims. But genuine responsibility needs to go hand in hand with truth.

During the recent election for London mayor I observed that the denials of any link between Islam and violence by both leading Labour politicians and ex Metropolitan Police Deputy Assistant Commissioner Brian Paddick, then the Lib-Dem candidate for London mayor, ultimately provided fertile ground for racist parties to whip up hatred of ordinary Muslims. Put simply, it only takes a certain number of Islamic extremists to be convicted of planning terrorist acts before the ordinary man and woman in the street stops believing what public figures like Home Secretary Jacqui Smith say - and instead start to believe the perverted claims about ALL Muslims that are made by racist parties.

That is almost certainly the explanation for this week's events. In the light of these, including a planned terrorist outrage aimed at 'minorities', it gives me no pleasure whatsoever, only sadness to have to say 'I warned you' to Liberal-Left politicians like the Lib Dems Brian Paddick, who in direct response to my article on Centre-Right repeated his claim that 'Islamic terrorism is a contradiction in terms'

The only safe course for the government is to speak with both truth AND responsibility. That means privately challenging Islamic groups to deal with the theology of violence in classical Islam (a subject most ordinary British Muslims thankfully know almost nothing about). While in public, the government must quite truthfully stress that the majority of ordinary Muslims totally reject violence - rather than making mistaken claims about what Islam is or isn't, as the present government continues to do.

If the present government continue to fail to do this, then as this week's events have shown, there is a real possibility that the UK will see rising levels of fear and hatred of ordinary Muslims, most of whom totally reject violence and just want to get on with their family lives. Ironically, such attacks on ordinary Muslims are themselves likely to broaden the appeal of radical Islam among British Muslims.

Centre Right Posted 28^th June 2008

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Britain will only be safe when a Conservative government rewrites Labour's Human Rights Act

Douglas Murray is almost certainly right in suggesting that the British government should seek to prosecute Abu Qatada. However, more fundamentally the government's problems in deporting Abu Qatada and other Islamist terrorists to their countries of origin stem from this government's own adoption of the European concept of human rights, in preference to our historic British one.

The European concept of human rights is exemplified in the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) and was incorporated into the 1997 Human Rights Act, which formed a centre piece of Labour's 1997 election manifesto. This gives innate rights such as 'liberty' to all individuals. In contrast to this, the Anglo American concept of human rights which originated with the Magna Carta limits the power of government to interfere unreasonably in the lives of its citizens (e.g. the government may not imprison anyone without a trial before a jury etc.).

Islamists like Abu Qatada - who has been named by four countries as al-Qaeda's spiritual ambassador in Europe - exploit the individualistic European concept of human rights to claim that their own human rights would be violated if they were extradited to their countries of origin, as they would face inhumane treatment there.

Now I cannot think of a single Islamic country where either police corruption and brutality or prison conditions well below western standards, are not daily facts of life. Even in a relatively westernised Islamic country such as Pakistan I have seen a prison room about 15 feet square holding around 20 or so prisoners with temperatures of up to 45 degrees centigrade. The combination of these conditions with the present UK government's adoption of the European concept of human rights - that prioritises individual rights over those of the country as a whole - has created the problems we now face. In a nutshell, it is the European concept of human rights that almost inevitably allows Islamist terrorists such as Abu Qatada to hold the UK government over a barrel, by claiming their own human rights would be violated if they were extradited to an Islamic country.

That is why a future Conservative government must rewrite Labour's Human Rights Act, basing it on our historic British approach to human rights, instead of the European one. This would effectively remove the rights of non British nationals who pose a threat to our security to remain in the UK. This is the only way to guarantee that the rights of ordinary law abiding British citizens to 'security' and 'freedom from terrorism' take priority over the supposed 'rights' of Islamist terrorists from other countries who abuse our freedoms here.

Centre Right 21^st June 2008

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The government hasn't even grasped what 'Islamic extremism' is

Today Jacqui Smith, the Home Secretary announced a £12.5 million package to tackle Islamic extremism. However, the measures are fatally flawed because the government has failed to understand - let alone define - exactly what constitutes 'Islamic extremism'.

Jacqui Smith and the rest of the government persist in talking about extremism as a 'distortion' of the teachings of Islamic theology. So, when Jacqui Smith and other government ministers speak about Islamic extremism, they are effectively defining Islamic extremism' as being 'extreme' in relation to Islam in general, rather than as being 'extreme' in relation to British values of democracy, freedom of speech, freedom of religion, equality for all under the law etc.

This difference - which the government has repeatedly failed to recognise - is absolutely crucial, as for historical reasons the majority of British Muslims follow a peaceful tradition of Islam that emerged in the Indian sub continent in the mid nineteenth century. Consequently, although most British Muslims are largely unaware of it, some of their views differ significantly from certain of the emphases of classical Islam (i.e. the interpretations of the Qur'an and Hadith that were 'fixed' by Islamic scholars in medieval times and now taught in virtually all madrassas). In classical Islam the imposition of an Islamic state with sharia on non Muslims - if necessary by means of military jihad - has historically been a core belief.

The government's new policy to tackle 'Islamic extremism' involves sending imams into schools. However, virtually all imams are trained in classical Islam (the dars-i-nizami curriculum taught in almost all madrassas linked to the Indian sub continent has remained unchanged for centuries).

So, what the government's new strategy is actually doing ...is to introduce potentially vulnerable children in schools to imams, who in other contexts are quite likely to be teaching beliefs such as the need to introduce sharia into the UK and support for jihad overseas that in relation to fundamental British values such as democracy, freedom of speech and equality for all under the law - are frankly extremist.

This all stems from the government's failure to even understand, let alone define exactly what 'Islamic extremism' actually is.

This failure of the government to define 'Islamic extremism' as 'extreme' in relation to British values - rather than in relation to Islam in general - is not simply utter incompetence. It has also allowed Islamists, some of whom this government has appointed as its own advisers, to claim to be 'moderates' because there are people more extreme than them. It has also led the government to appease Islamist groups in the UK. Most fundamentally however, this failure of the government to even grasp exactly what 'Islamic extremism' really is - leaves Britain profoundly vulnerable.

Centre Right 3^rd June 2008

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Iran: A new cold war?

A report by a British army officer serving in Basra details how he discovered from multiple informants that Iran was funding the Jaish al-Mahdi - better known as the Mahdi army - to pay unemployed Shi'a men up to $300 each to kill British soldiers.

This is yet another indicator that Iran is fighting a proxy war against the West in Iraq and elsewhere.

Iran is seeking to become the leader of global Islam, despite being a predominantly Shi'a country. Her influence now extends from Afghanistan in the East to the Mediterranean region in the West:

· Iran has interfered both politically and militarily in Afghanistan for the last 25 years. One recent example of its attempt to extend its power base in Afghanistan is the madrassa (Islamic theological school) that it began building in southern Kabul a few years ago. Despite the Shi'a being a relatively small minority in Afghanistan, this enormous building is set to become the largest madrassa in Afghanistan.

· In the southern Mediterranean region, Iran now finances the radical Sunni Islamist group Hamas who are dedicated to the annihilation of the state of Israel and now control the Gaza strip.

· In the northern Mediterranean region, Hezbollah, founded and funded by Iran, has just militarily bullied its way into gaining a veto over the affairs of the Lebanese government.

It is only a question of time before Iran decides it is an 'opportune' time to allow Hezbollah to launch the sort of attack against Israel that will lead to a significant Israeli military response.

Last time that happened, David Milliband, now foreign secretary, argued strongly in cabinet for Britain to call for an immediate ceasefire, effectively preventing Israel from dealing with Hezbollah. As I have argued before on Centre Right that decision will almost inevitably lead to another war between Hezbollah and Israel with even more loss of life. When that happens, Milliband, whether as foreign secretary or as leader of the Labour Party needs to take a much longer term and more realistic view of foreign affairs, particularly in relation to Iran and its proxies Hezbollah and Hamas.

In the war against terror, whether in the form of a cold war with Iran or home grown suicide bombers, Britain needs a Churchill as its leader, not a Chamberlain.

Appeasement, whether of Hezbollah or its overlord Iran will only lead to even greater loss of life in the future.

Centre Right 28^th May 2008

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Should we re-introduce the death penalty - at least for terrorists?

An Iraqi court has sentenced Ahmed Ali Ahmed, a leading member of al-Qaeda in Iraq, to death for the murder of Archbishop Paulos Faraj Rahho, who was abducted on 27th February.

Responding to the sentence, the Anglican vicar of Baghdad, Canon Andrew White, one of the Church of England's leading experts on the Middle East stated that the death penalty was 'justified'.

The case for the UK re-introducing the death penalty, at least for terrorism, if not for all murders, is strong:

· Terrorist prisoners become 'living martyrs' - and in the eyes of other terrorists, provide the justification for further terrorist acts and kidnappings aimed at securing their release, as Israel has discovered to its cost.

Such a move would also send a positive message to the general criminal fraternity about how seriously we as a country take the sanctity of human life:

· Respect for the sanctity of life has been undermined in the UK by murderers being released on parole after serving only 10 - 15 years of a 'life sentence'. Society can only hope to preserve a degree of respect for the sanctity of life among criminals, when those who deliberately kill others face at least the possibility of the legal system requiring them to forfeit their own lives.

· The evidence clearly shows that the death penalty acts as a general deterrent against murder and so saves innocent lives. Between 1965 and 1970 when the death penalty was temporarily abolished as an experiment, the UK's murder rate more than doubled, rising by a massive125% and has continued to rise ever since.

The major impediment to Britain reintroducing the death penalty is of course the EU, which requires member states to sign up to its own particular brand of human rights law - the European Convention on Human Rights - which prohibits the use of the death penalty.

When the next Conservative government both rewrites the Human Rights Act and examines how Britain can take back powers from the EU - this is clearly an issue that needs to be addressed...

Centre Right 22^nd May 2008

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A future Conservative government should...replace the word 'Islamophobia' with 'Muslimophobia'

I have a problem with the term Islamophobia (definition: 'fear' or more popularly 'hatred...of Islam').

The term has been used by Islamist groups to condemn anyone who dares to criticise not necessarily Muslims - but Islam as an ideological system. Not only does this give Islamist groups a weapon to further their own agenda - it also creates victims.

There are people in the UK, some of them my friends, with a highly rational and well grounded fear of Islam. They include the 3,000+ former Muslims who have dared to change their religion - mainly to Christianity. Many of these fellow citizens of ours face huge levels of harassment, violence and even kidnappings and attempts to kill them. I have personally met former Muslims who have been subjected to horrendous beatings and even induced abroad where they have effectively been kidnapped, locked in solitary conditions in an attempt to force them to return to Islam.

This problem is compounded by all of these actions being not merely legitimated but actually required by Islamic law (sharia). All four Sunni schools of Islamic law and the Shi'a stipulate that any adult male Muslim changing their religion (the act is termed irtidad in sharia) should be executed (the Shi'a and one of the four Sunni schools permit imprisonment for women instead of the death penalty).

Currently this problem looks set to get much worse in the UK. Whilst surveys suggest that only 14-15% of the Muslim population as a whole have been radicalised, a 2007 survey found that among British Muslims aged between 16 and 24, 36% believed that Muslims who convert to another religion should be punished by death.

The politically correct use of the term Islamophobia by the government and public bodies only adds to the suffering of the victims, as it sends out the message that any criticism of Islam is offensive and should not be tolerated. In doing so, it hides this very real problem from public gaze.

Radical Islam and political correctness have two things in common. Firstly, they both work by intimidation; Secondly, both seem unable to distinguish between people and their beliefs - a common failing of Liberal-Left politics. However, as Conservatives we hold that one may entirely disagree with someone's beliefs without rejecting them as a person. I do not personally accept Islamic beliefs - I happen to be a Christian - but during the course of my adult life I have had hundreds of Muslim friends, both in this country and in Pakistan and Afghanistan where I lived for a number of years.

In Islamic law, the government has a very specific duty placed on it to protect Islam from any criticism, which is why Islamist groups have been so keen to get the UK government to condemn Islamophobia. All part of their agenda of seeking to 'align' British law with sharia.

However, in a free democratic state no government should be seeking to defend a belief system be it Islam or any other (including secular humanism!) from criticism. The government should be seeking to relate to people primarily as fellow citizens rather than as members of any particular faith community. What the government does need to do is to condemn attacks on Muslims, the vast majority of whom are good, law abiding British citizens who share many of the family values that Conservatives hold dear. For that the appropriate term is not Islamophobia but Muslimophobia.

It's time to remember the victims of Islamophobia, many of whom have originally come here from countries such as Pakistan and Iran where many of the fundamentally British freedoms we cherish such as freedom of speech and freedom of religion do not exist in the same way. A Conservative government should make a priority of replacing the term Islamophobia with Muslimophobia.

Centre Right 9th May 2008

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Boris should challenge Ken Livingstone and other Labour/Lib-Dem candidates to reject the Islamist vote

Islamist groups and white racist parties fall into the same category - they both want to give preferential treatment to some people and discriminate against others. The Islamist group the Muslim Association of Britain (MAB) is calling on its followers to vote for Ken Livingstone and other named Labour and Lib-Dem London assembly candidates, who they see as sympathetic to their cause.

The MAB are anti-Semitic, with key leaders having strong links to the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas, which aims at the total annihilation of Israel. The current MAB president Muhammad Sawalha was previously a member of the military structure of Hamas, where he is reported to have organised and facilitated terrorist activities before coming to the UK in 1990.

The MAB was set up in 1997 by Kamal al-Helbawy, the London based spokesman for the Muslim Brotherhood along with other Islamists including Azzam Tamimi. Tamimi who acts as an adviser to the Hamas leadership also happens to be the leader of the Muslims4Ken campaign, which Ken Livingstone has been working closely with for the last year...

Boris was absolutely right to say he didn't want the BNP vote - we would expect nothing less of him. HOWEVER, we have yet to hear Ken Livingstone or other Labour/Lib-Dem London assembly candidates say they don't want the Islamist votes...

Centre Right 29^th April 2008

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Hamas - The West needs to understand the Islamic foreign affairs paradigm

Former US president Jimmy Carter yesterday claimed that Hamas will now accept a Palestinian state in only part of the territory that it claims. However, the actual words used by Hamas illustrate the need for western politicians to understand the paradigm of foreign affairs that middle eastern Islamic organisations like Hamas and even Fatah operate under. What Khalid Meshaal, the leader of Hamas actually said in Damascus yesterday was:

"We agree to a (Palestinian) state on Pre-67 borders, with Jerusalem as its capital, with genuine sovereignty, without settlements but without recognising Israel."

Hamas in common with other middle eastern Islamist groups such as Hezbollah aim to impose an Islamic government with Islamic law on the whole of Palestine because they believe that the Qu'ran teaches that the whole world should be subjected to an Islamic government. Moreover, even classical Islam teaches that it is an act of defensive jihad to fight to re-impose on Islamic government on an area that at a previous time in history had one. To achieve this groups such as Hamas follow a well established paradigm of foreign affairs that is in at least its broad outlines is predictable because it is based on the sunna (example) of Muhammad. This rejects any concept of a permanent treaty with non Muslims. However, it permits hudna - a temporary truce agreed with a non Islamic government, in order to gain a strategic advantage before military jihad is recommenced to impose an Islamic government on non Muslim people.

Whilst I have the greatest of respect for former President Carter, he is naively wrong to think that Islamist groups such as Hamas and Hezbollah can be talked around to adopting a western diplomatic paradigm of 'peaceful co-existence of states.' Unless western governments understand the paradigm that Islamist groups operate under they will continue to press for concessions that will in the long run endanger lives.

Centre Right 22^nd April 2008

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Ken Livingstone needs to come clean - what is his relationship with RESPECT?

Further to Ben Roger's post on Islamists supporting Ken. It is at the very least curious that the two men leading the group Muslims4Ken, Azzam Tamimi and Anas al Tikriti are also the two key founders and leaders of the Muslim Association of Britain (MAB).

A few years ago the MAB, an Islamist organisation that has stated it is proud of "the principles of the Muslim Brotherhood" linked up with the Socialist Worker's Party to form RESPECT - which despite a split last year is still going strong.

Since1997 the MAB has been running a "Muslim Vote Smart" campaign - trying to swing the Muslim vote in key constituencies by telling M