Nuclear Subs in Scotland

With the Clyde nuclear spill in the news, it seems that British nuclear facilities in Scotland are under the spotlight once again. This goes for the British nuclear submarine fleet too, especially now since Bob Ainsworth announced in May that the entire fleet would soon be moved to Scotland.

So what are the options for the rump-UK government and its nuclear submarine fleet, once Scottish re-independence is achieved?

The choices would seem to be:

1. Lock them up, throw the keys in the loch, and leave them in Scotland to rot:



2. Dismantle them properly and come to terms with the reality of your middle-ranking power status. [Who the hell were you kidding anyway?] This will require drydock facilities:

3. Negotiate to rent the old deep-water lochs from Scotland for an appropriate fee. The al-Megrahi case clearly showed how much the mighty UK Govt can still force the parochial Scottish Govt's hand on Big Issues. I’m sure for a consideration they can be brought to heel for some kind of mutually beneficial arrangement.

4. Let’s face it, the nuclear subs were kept in the west of Scotland to keep any attack/meltdown away from London, to disguise their comings and goings in deep water, and to give them Atlantic-facing harbours. Belfast and Plymouth could play host [if the locals are obliging] but Sunderland and Newcastle are facing the wrong way. Fortunately, you are still fighting the Cold War, so this may not be a problem.

5. Rent harborage from Iceland. Oops, hang on. Scratch that.

English Independence from the EU

According to the SNP, when Scotland eventually wins her independence back, it will be within the framework of Europe – not a form of nationhood all Scots are keen on. Personally, I prefer Norway’s fringe position in the EEA, only opting into the EU programs that are to its liking. The question is, why not England too? Everyone is talking as if the resulting diminished UK would continue as a member of the EU. But what if it somehow chooses not to take up the offer of automatic successor state membership?

Is this even possible?

By virtue of Scotland’s foundation membership in the United Kingdom of Great Britain via 1707’s Act of Union, if Scotland achieves her re-independence(1) she would not be leaving the Union so much as dissolving it, much like a marriage. Unfortunately for Lesser Britain, the EU would almost certainly ignore this legal inconvenience (much as it did with Ireland’s NO vote) and treat this new state as the effective successor entity to the old UK, insisting that it fulfil its relevant treaty obligations.

But what if there was no obvious successor state? What if the rump-UK were to fragment further, each part having its own parliament? What could the EU realistically do if the new nation-states choose not to become EU members?

Legally, Scottish re-independence is therefore the easiest route for England to achieve her own re-independence, in her case from the EU. The key is for the creation of an English parliament at the same time as Scotland regains her independence. With a separate representative body to the British parliament, Englishmen could then legitimately claim that England is not the UK's successor state.

Then it’s bye-bye Brussels and England will have won back her sovereignty, free of EU laws and foreign interference.

Thus, Scotland achieving her re-independence is England’s best way of separating from Brussels and becoming a nation again. A good reason for Englishmen to get behind Scottish independence, and another reason for English and Scottish nationalists to work together.







Notes

(1) Re-independence is a more correct term than ‘independence,’ which implies that it is something new. Scotland was an independent country for more than eight centuries, during which time England was successfully conquered twice by both the Danes and the Normans.

Dictatus Peterae – Idle Musings of a Megalomaniac

Newly leaked from my Westminster source is what seems to be a scented page of lilac paper torn from the personal diary of a government minister. The text is in Latin and in the florid, bold hand of one with complete confidence of his power and influence. Labour Party sources have denied its authenticity, while demanding how it came to be in the public domain.


A contact at Edinburgh University has offered the following translation:


It is hereby decreed:

I. That the Labour Party was founded by God alone.

II. That Baron Mandelson of Foy and Hartlepool alone can with right be called universal.

III. That He alone can depose or reinstate ministers and diplomats.

IV. That, in a committee His representative, even if a lower grade, is above all other ministers, and can pass sentence of deposition against them.

V. That He may depose the absent.

VI. That, among other things, we ought not to remain in the same house with those excommunicated by Him.

VII. That for Him alone is it lawful, according to the needs of the time, to make new laws.

VIII. That He alone may use the Prime Ministerial insignia.

IX. That of He alone shall all ministers kiss the feet.

X. That His name alone shall be spoken in the ministries and committees.

XI. That this is the only name in the world.

XII. That it may be permitted to Him to depose Prime Ministers.

XIII. That He may be permitted to transfer ministers and diplomats if need be.

XIV. That He has power to ordain a minister of any portfolio He may wish.

XV. That He who is ordained by Him may preside over another ministry, but may not hold a subordinate position; and that such a one may not receive a higher grade from any minister.

XVI. That no election shall be called a general one without His order.

XVII. That no law shall be considered passed without His authority.

XVIII. That a sentence passed by Him may be retracted by no one; and that He himself, alone of all, may retract it.

XIX. That He himself may be judged by no one.

XX. That no one shall dare to condemn one who appeals to His holy chair.

XXI. That to the latter should be referred the more important cases of every ministry.

XXII. That the Labour Party has never erred; nor will it err to all eternity, the Scripture bearing witness.

XXIII. That His Holiness is undoubtedly made a saint by his merits.

XXIV. That, by His command and consent, it may be lawful for subordinates to bring accusations.

XXV. That He may depose and reinstate ministers without assembling the cabinet.

XXVI. That he who is not at peace with Him shall not be considered for any public office.

XXVII. That He may absolve subjects from their fealty to other power-brokers.




OK, SO WHAT IS THIS?

My Edinburgh University contact tells me that this as a corrupted version of Dictatus Papae, a document supposedly written by Pope Gregory VII (Hildebrand) in 1075. It wasn’t made public at the time, and it has been argued by scholars that rather than just the idle scribblings of a power-hungry pope, it was in fact the church’s wish-list for absolute power. At very least it gives a good idea of just how powerful the medieval Christian Church either saw itself, or planned to become.

For those who seek to defend democracy in Britain in the early 21st century, the truly chilling aspect of this discovery is how little has been changed for this journal entry, if indeed it is authentic, which is yet to be verified.

Scotland Independent by 1950

What would Scotland be like today if the Home Rule Bill had been passed on its second reading in 1913? It was a very close thing, only prevented by the outbreak of the carnage of the Great War.(1) If Home Rule had happened then - rather than 85 years later in 1998 - it is safe to assume that independence would have followed within forty years, say by 1948, fifty years before devolution was grudgingly granted.


Comparing the history of Scotland to that of independent European states over the past sixty years, what follows is an attempt to construct what an independent Scotland's history would have been, had this happened.

1. Scotland declares independence in 1948, a year after India. The general feeling in both England and Scotland is that with the Empire winding down, the Union has served its purpose. It joins the UN the same year, the Scottish member sitting between the representatives for the 3.9 million people of Saudi Arabia and 13.3 million of South Africa.

2. The Stone of Destiny is returned to Scotland after the independence celebrations. Scottish Police hold back the jubilant crowds as the stone is welcomed at the border. A piper welcomes it home to Arbroath Abbey.

3. Queen Elizabeth's second coronation takes place over the Stone of Destiny in a refurbished Palace of Holyrood in 1953. The Scottish Government celebrates the event with new blue 'E1R' letter boxes. The English press label it a stunt.

4. Scotland re-establishes its east coast burghs’ European trade contacts from the time of the Hanseatic League. On March 30th, 1956, mayors from Flemish towns take part in an emotional ceremony in Berwick to remember the Flemish merchants killed when Edward I of England ordered his men to slaughter all 17,000 men, women and children there 660 years before.

5. Scotland a signatory to the Treaty of Rome in 1957.

6. Edinburgh rapidly expands as the population and services around Scotland’s government grows there.

7. The Scottish government invests in Glasgow to give it a facelift. It loses its grim post-imperial waterfront to be reborn in the architectural style of Charles Rennie Mackintosh (See above). The Highlands complain that too much investment is happening in the south.

8. Reverse emigration begins and children and grandchildren of Scots who emigrated in the last decades of Empire return from around the world. Gaelic speaking grandchildren of Nova Scotian émigrés, speaking English with strange Canadian accents, begin to resettle the Highlands.

9. In a 1960 referendum, Berwick-Upon-Tweed votes to return to Scotland, motivated by the better social services, healthcare and free transport for the elderly to the north. Other English Border towns also threaten to secede for the same reason, much to the annoyance of the British parliament at Westminster.

10. Oil is discovered under Scottish waters in the 1960s. Scotland leaves the oil industry in private hands and the oil begins to flow as the American oil companies apply their open water extraction skills learned in the Gulf of Mexico.

11. Glasgow’s social deprivation from the last years of Union is largely cured by 1970.

12. A cod war with Iceland is averted in the 1970s when Scotland and Iceland come to a peaceful agreement on their sea borders.

13. British PM Ted Heath follows Scotland with what is left of Britain into full membership of the Common Market in 1973.

14. The rump British state is refused an IMF loan in 1975, due to its lack of collateral. It goes cap in hand to Europe for funds.

15. In 1978, Scottish football is made a laughing stock as the team is bundled out of the World Cup in the first round, after boasting they would win it.

16. Scotland has a referendum in 1979 and votes to leave the EEC, even though 51.6% of the electorate choose to remain. Under Scotland’s 1949 Constitution, 40% of the electorate need to vote ‘Yes’ for Scotland remain within external organisations. The 'Yes' vote cries foul.

17. Margaret Thatcher is elected PM of Britain in 1979 and presides over EEC investment – mainly French and German subsidies - to reinvigorate English and Welsh industry, concentrating on mining.

18. In 1981, Scots band Rusty Nail win the Eurovision Song Contest, narrowly beating English band Bucks Fizz. Their gimmick is for the two girls to pull off the two men’s kilts, revealing women’s underwear.

19. Using her new-found oil wealth, Scotland begins building a breathtaking program of infrastructure in the 1980s. Scotland is soon covered in an integrated modern network of roads, rail and ferry links, addressing Highland concerns about excessive centralisation. The A9 becomes the backbone of the road system, a three-lane superhighway from Edinburgh to Inverness, one of the safest roads in Europe.

20. Aberdeen and Inverness hit one million people by the year 2000. Oban, a thriving West Highland student city of 500,000, becomes the twin city of Bergen in Norway.

21. In the 1980s, Scotland becomes famous for its effortless transition from heavy engineering to high tech, fuelled by low corporate taxes and government relocation subsidies. Silicon Glen becomes an R&D and export phenomenon, unlike the cheap PC manufacturing facilities in England, which take advantage of its cheap labour.

22. In 1985, the Glasgow’s Mile’s Better campaign celebrates the city as one of the most beautiful in the world.

23. By 1990, oil revenues have given Scotland one of the hardest currencies in the world, and the Scottish pound becomes a safe haven currency, alongside Switzerland and Norway’s. (2)

24. A sovereign oil fund is created in 1990 to prevent successive Scottish Labour governments spending oil revenues on infrastructure Scotland no longer needs, and to keep inflation down. Despite this, Scotland is soon regarded as one of the most expensive places in the world, but not for the locals, who are paid in local currency and find everywhere else in the world ridiculously cheap. Scottish students become known throughout Europe for their annoying leather backpacks and free higher education.

25. Scottish unemployment drops to among the lowest in the western world, while the Scottish welfare state is the envy of Europe, with poverty almost non-existent.

26. By 2000, Scotland’s population reaches 7 million, having grown at the same pace as other similar size European countries since 1950, supplemented by extensive reverse emigration. (3)

27. In late 2008, a consortium of Scottish and Norwegian banks bails out Iceland, after the Welsh Prime Minister of Britain – known popularly as 'Flash' Morgan for his role in the credit crisis there – invokes anti-terrorism laws to seize Icelandic assets to protect British investors.

28. In 2009, Scotland shrugs off the credit crunch and the subsequent depression by dipping into its $326 billion sovereign oil fund, recently hit by the world economic downturn. (4)

I hope this gives at least some Scots an idea of how much their birthright has been stolen from them, and how much is at stake in the coming referendum.

Any resemblance to actual events or to persons living or dead is purely intentional.






References

(1) Murray G.H. Pittock, Scottish Nationality, Palgrave, New York, 2001, pages 100-102

(2) See http://www.oilofscotland.org/

(3) Norway – from 3.2 million to 4.6 million; Denmark – from 4.3 to 5.3 million; Sweden – from 7 million to 9 million; Portugal – from 8.4 million to 10.7 million.

(4) This is the current balance of the Norwegian Sovereign oil fund, which is spread across a mixed portfolio of ethical investments. Twenty nine corporations are barred from receiving any of the funds.
http://www.swfinstitute.org/fund/norway.php

Play Crash Gordon Off, Keyboard Cat

Couldn't resist it. Behold, Keyboard Cat.

Actually, before you behold, first check this out. It's like the video equivalent of the FAIL blog. OK, now this might make a bit more sense:




Once again, comedy cuts our so-called leaders down to size.

Not that he needed much cutting in this case.

English vs. Scottish Press Freedom

The recent exposure of MP’s expense perks is destined to go down as one of the greatest moments in English media history. I suspect the Telegraph felt that they had to win back the middle ground of relevance after the blogger Guido reminded them what their job is supposed to be.

I particularly loved Frank Skinner’s comments as he mused aloud on why on earth MPs need second jobs:





Yet again, it takes a comedian to talk truth to power (see my post on Jon Stewart).

Then I had a look at the expenses claimed by region and noticed a common factor – nearly all of the MPs had claimed for an assistant.

It would appear that the primary purpose of the political assistant is to free up the MPs’ time to earn more money outside Parliament. It’s certainly not to make them more accessible to their electorate.

The thing that impressed me most was the Telegraph’s new-found willingness to attack the system, of which it is very much a part. Then I remembered something I stumbled across when I was putting together another post recently:

Media freedom is well established in the UK and media coverage of the [2005 General Election] campaign was extensive. There are many print and electronic media outlets that freely and actively cover election campaigns, and the electorate is generally offered a range of views and information. (1)

Anyone who has bought a newspaper in Scotland in the past few years will probably think that a piece of political black humour. The Scottish Parliament might seem squeaky clean compared to the British one, but as far as press freedom goes, the English are putting Scotland to shame.

The behaviour of the Scottish press throughout this British expenses scandal has been deplorable. (See Moridura’s post) Day after day they find something negative to say about the Scottish Government alongside the British story, rather than simply report the truth – that their beloved Union of Great Britain is falling apart at the seams.

What does it take for a team of patriotic Scots millionaires to join forces to create a half-decent Scottish newspaper? Do I have to name names? Yes, it could have a Scottish perspective on what is going on in the world, but what on earth is wrong with that? Every other country in the world has. And I'm not talking about being pro-SNP.

If the group's first act were to take over the Herald and the Scotsman, it would inherit their established distribution networks, and would have access to an army of ex-journalists, freed from the shackles of British Unionist management, no longer prevented from saying what they really want to say. With the Herald and Scotsman eliminated, it would quickly establish itself as Scotland's national newspaper.

Once it has built a readership, it could switch to a tabloid format to win over the Daily Record readers with sport, and could cover national (i.e. Scottish), European and international news, entertainment and movie stars, and have a section on what Scots are doing around the world. I’d bet that even bloggers would be willing to contribute the odd opinion piece for free, or some original research - now that Guido has made us respectable. The important thing is that it would contain real news and original research. Anything is better than the zombie Labour spin we are getting now.

There are strong moral reasons for doing this too, and, as my father used to say, “Ye cannae tak it wi ye.”

Gentlemen, it's time to play your part. You know who you are.

Your country needs you. And it will be remembered.







References

1. This is an excerpt from the EU OSCE/ODIHR observer report on the 2005 General Election, p13
http://www.osce.org/odihr-elections/15922.html

Nine Ways to Steal an Election

In a former post, we looked at some of the many loopholes in the UK’s democratic system. Turning this around, let us now look at the many ways the British electoral system may be successfully exploited by a party sufficiently determined to seize power - or hold it at any cost.



Combining the findings from a number of recent investigations into electoral fraud in Britain (1,2,3,4,5), it is absolutely clear that - despite the current government's lip-service to electoral reform - all of the following means of electoral fraud remain relatively easy to execute across the whole of mainland UK (6):

1. Nominating people as postal voters without their knowledge, for the fraudulent use of their vote by a third party. The first voters know of this is when they turn up at the polling station and find they have already voted. (7)

2. Family voting by the householder on behalf of everyone in the house. The householder is in total control of the household voter registration, both in terms of who is registered and who is not. If he or she doesn’t approve of how someone will vote, they can delete them from the household register, or vote on their behalf by post, knowing their date of birth. (8)

3. Registering bogus voters on a household’s voter list. The householder can make up as many names/birthdays/identities/signatures as he/she wants. (9,10) This is particularly effective if a party persuades the householder to vote for it by post as a block. According to the Council of Europe inspection team, this is “very difficult to detect”. (11)

4. Registering to vote in multiple electorates. Many people do this legally, for example students who live away from home. But since there is no central electoral register, there is no limit to how many constituencies in which a person can register. Using postal voting, it is “childishly easy” in a General Election to send off multiple postal votes in plenty of time for all the constituencies where you are registered. (12)


Although illegal, routine collection and handling of postal votes by party activists (‘If you fill it in now, I'll post it for you.’), enables each of the following three related forms of electoral fraud:

5. Intimidating or bribing socially vulnerable voters to vote for the party that is collecting the postal vote, or to leave it blank for the party activist to complete later. This is devastatingly effective if the household is a student dorm or an old folks’ home, giving the activist enormous voting power. (13,14)

6. Altering completed postal votes. It’s as easy as crossing out one choice and replacing it with another. There are very lax rules about this. The party activist doesn't even have to match the pen colour.(15)

7. Destroying postal votes for the opposing parties. (16)


In addition, the UK Department of Justice (17) wants to bring in e-voting and e-counting, both of which are wide open to the same kinds of abuse to which all forms of remote voting are vulnerable: impersonation, bribery and intimidation.(18,19,20). If the Opposition objects to their use, this also creates a clear conflict of interest for the IT suppliers of the systems, and a strong commercial incentive to extend the incumbent Government’s tenure by:

8. Programming or changing results for electronic counts of postal votes. This is relatively easy to achieve, especially when observers are kept away from the computers doing the counting.(21) The Open Rights Group findings make it clear that for the systems so far deployed there is absolutely no way to verify the results produced. (22)

9. Hacking, programming or changing results of e-voting (online voting) totals. Again, there is absolutely no way to verify the results produced, particularly when the e-voting computer servers are locked away in data centres remote from the scrutiny of observers in the counting rooms. (23,24)


Thus, if e-voting and e-counting are deployed for the next General Election (as they were for Scotland’s elections of 2007), there will be in place nine separate ways for committing serious electoral fraud across the length of Britain.

Interestingly, of all the recommendations in the various reports, the UK government chose only to focus on the checking of personal identifiers on returned postal ballots, which is now mandatory.(25) Unfortunately, the potential fraud is not with who is voting by post, but the pressure brought to bear on those who voted, the handling of these votes, the corresponding destruction of postal votes for other candidates, and in whether the voter exists at all. (26) So this does absolutely nothing to eliminate any of the problems inherent in the concept of remote voting. What is more, this reform was in place before the highly dubious Glenrothes by-election result of November 2008 (27), and so had no effect whatsoever.

Whether intentionally distorting the truth by careful choice of words, or astonishingly unaware of the realities of electoral fraud, the report by the Electoral Commission on Glenrothes contained the following gem:

“A full check of all returned postal voting statements is the only way of checking that postal votes are returned by those who applied for them. Full checking will also remove actual and perceived loopholes in the system and can be expected to deter further attempts at malpractice. We therefore commend the Returning Officer and his staff for undertaking 100% verification on the first occasion of the Regulations being in force in Scotland.” (28)

Considering that all the Returning Officer was doing was checking unverifiable names and dates of birth on postal votes against a list of equally unverifiable names and date of birth on the electoral roll, this is utter nonsense.

Everyone seems to be missing the point. Even the author of the latest report from the Committee on Standards in Public Life seems to argue that the only issue at stake here is one of the public's faith in our democracy:

“Electoral fraud is not a trivial matter. It is an affront to the democratic principle of one-person one vote. Left unchecked it will eventually undermine trust and confidence in the democratic process and by implication the electorate’s consent to the outcome of elections.”(29)

But it’s even more serious than that. If ever there was a perfect time for a determined political party with a ruthless political machine to seize and hold the British state by massive electoral fraud, this would surely be it.

With Scottish independence looming and an increasing number of English demanding their own assembly, the danger is that some might see this as the only way of saving Britain, ironic as that may sound.



UPDATE 25-5-09

Since I wrote this, the expenses scandal has broken, and the BNP look like it might be seen by many as the alternative English party in the coming election. If you add immigration levels to the mix of why many think Britain needs saving, the BNP look particularly dangerous - especially if they get their act together on electoral fraud. It will indeed be ironic if they do, considering the EU - born in the wake of fascism - had the chance to clean up Britain's electoral system in 2005. And blew it.

References

(1) The Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR) report on the May 2005 UK General Election, August 5, 2005, p18:
“The ODIHR is the lead agency in Europe in the field of election observation. It co-ordinates and organizes the deployment of thousands of observers every year to assess whether elections in the [Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe] area are in line with national legislation and international standards. Its unique methodology provides an in-depth insight into all elements of an electoral process.”
http://www.osce.org/odihr-elections/15922.html

(2) UK Electoral Reform Society (ERS), Policy on e-Voting and Counting, April 2008.
http://www.electoral-reform.org.uk/downloads/Electronic%20voting%20POLICY.pdf
From its website : “Since its foundation in 1884, the Electoral Reform Society has worked for the development of democracy not only in the United Kingdom but also abroad, promoting, organising and monitoring elections."

3) Open Rights Group (ORG): report into the May 2007 English and Scottish elections, June 2007, p63: “The Open Rights Group is a fast-growing NGO focused on raising awareness of issues such as privacy, identity, data protection, access to knowledge and copyright reform.”
http://www.openrightsgroup.org/e-voting-main/

(4) Council of Europe (CoE), Venice Commission report, ‘Application to initiate a monitoring procedure to investigate electoral fraud in the United Kingdom,’ January 9, 2008. http://www.assembly.coe.int/CommitteeDocs/2008/electoral_fraud_UK_E.pdf
From the CoE website : “The European Commission for Democracy through Law, better known as the Venice Commission, is the Council of Europe's advisory body on constitutional matters."

(5) Committee for Standards in Public Life (CSPL), 12th Report, April 2008.
http://www.public-standards.gov.uk/Library/OurWork/AnnualReport2007.pdf
From website: “The Committee on Standards in Public Life is an independent public body which advises government on ethical standards across the whole of public life in the UK.”
This is the first report by the new chairman Sir Christopher Kelly. His predecessor, Sir Alistair Graham, was sacked by Tony Blair in April 2007 after criticism of his government’s attitude to standards of integrity in public life as having ‘a low-priority’.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1545488/Anti-sleaze-watchdog-in-attack-on-Blair.html

(6) As a result of the Electoral Fraud (Northern Ireland) Act of 2002, the UK Government closed some of these loopholes, but only for Northern Ireland: individual voter registration replaced household voter registration, and the requirement for photographic proof of identity in the polling station was brought in. UK Electoral Commission: ‘Electoral Fraud Act 2002: an assessment of its first year in operation,’ December 2003. http://cain.ulst.ac.uk/issues/politics/election/electoralcommission1203sum.pdf
As a result of the tighter identity checking, the number of voters fell by 10% as the bogus identities dropped off the electoral roll. CoE report, note 68, p10

(7) CoE report, note 21, p5

(8) Open Rights Group, ‘Observer Handbook (ORG Handbook): May 2007 Elections’, April 20, 2007, p2
“Unsupervised voting includes postal voting and Internet voting. Such remote methods can be done in unsupervised areas such as home or work where others can influence or steal votes. The secrecy of the ballot cannot be maintained and there is the potential for ‘family voting’ whereby the head of the family casts the entire family’s votes on their behalf.”
http://www.openrightsgroup.org/wp-content/uploads/org_observer_handbook.pdf

(9) CoE report, note 85, p12-13: “The main underlying weakness of the electoral system in the Great Britain is the current household registration system without personal identifiers. This system makes it extremely easy to add bogus characters to the voters’ lists. All a head of household has to do is to add a number of names on the yearly canvas form. The Registration Officers have only limited power to check these names and the absence of personal identifiers makes any checking of these names an all but impossible task. Therefore, as long as the names on the registration form are not overly frivolous, and the number of bogus entries is not unrealistically large in comparison to the residency in question, all names will be de facto accepted on face value and added to the voters’ list."

(10) CSPL, p10: “In the Committee’s view, the safeguards introduced by the Government in the 2006 to combat electoral fraud are easily bypassed because of the fundamental weaknesses in the current system of electoral registration. In most cases the information supplied on completed electoral registration forms is taken at face value, and few checks are carried out at polling stations to verify a voter’s identity."

(11) CoE report, note 89, p13

(12) CoE report, note 91, p13: “The fact that a person is legally allowed to be registered on the voters’ lists in more than one locality offers another opening for electoral fraud. Although its is illegal to vote more than once in the same national election, the onus on not doing so is completely on the voter itself. While it would be physically difficult to vote in person in multiple polling stations in different localities, the postal vote arrangements make it childishly simple to do so, and equally difficult to detect.’ "

(13) ODIHR report, p8: “Postal voting presents challenges with regard to the secrecy of the vote, and the possibility of undue pressure on voters at the time of marking the ballot. This may be of particular concern with regard to perceived as being most vulnerable.”
See also CoE report, note 100, p14

(14) CoE report, note 32, p6: “Multi occupancy households, such as student dormitories and caring homes for the elderly, are also considered to be single households for the purpose of voter registration."

(15) CoE report, note 98, p14

(16) Times Report on Labour advising it student canvassers to destroy opposition votes in Leeds: ‘Get the votes and we can win, but don't get caught with them,’ TimesOnline, 29 April 2007. http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article1719968.ece
The Council of Europe report, p5, note26, also states that when the police found the two Labour candidates in the Birmingham warehouse with the thousands of completed postal voting packs they were either altering or destroying votes for other candidates.

(17) The Department of Constitutional Affairs became the Department of Justice on May 9, 2007 after assuming some of the duties of the Home Office.

(18) ERS report, p3: “When votes are cast outside a polling station the secrecy of the ballot cannot be assured and there can be no guarantee that the elector did not suffer intimidation or was offered a bribe while voting."

(19) ORG Handbook, p2

(20) ERS report, p4: “Being a form of remote voting, it compromises the secrecy of the ballot, significantly increasing the risks of voter intimidation, bribery and impersonation. The Society therefore opposes the introduction of internet, text and telephone voting at present."

(21) ORG Report, p13: “In most locations computer screens were positioned too far away from barriers to be observable or were turned away from view so they couldn’t be observed."

(22) ORG Report, p3: “ORG is concerned that the lack of reliable audit trails, the actions of some vendors that left no audit trail and a general reluctance to perform manual counts to confirm the results of e-counting mean that there is no meaningful way to verify that voters’ intentions had been accurately counted."

(23) ORG report, p1: “E-voting is a ‘black box system’, where the mechanisms for recording and tabulating the vote are hidden from the voter. This makes public scrutiny impossible, and leaves statutory elections open to error and fraud.”
p20: “No matter what access was provided, fundamentally the servers are opaque to the human eye. No observer would be able to examine what the server was doing, what data it was sending and receiving or whether problems were occurring, without detailed technical access to the software and its operating system, yet it would be inappropriate and is clearly against guidelines for observers to handle anything to do with the running of the election. Hence ORG must conclude that the servers and their operations were—and will remain in future elections—unobservable."

(24) ERS report, p4: “The use of internet, text message and telephone voting seriously compromises the security of an election, both because: It is vulnerable to hackers and other attacks on the electoral system by those who might want to influence the outcome by interfering with the equipment or software"

(25) Among other things, the UK Electoral Administration Act 2006 allowed independent observers at UK elections for the first time, in line with most democracies. It also brought in identity-checks on all postal votes, checking date of birth and signature against those provided (but not verified for authenticity) at the time of voter registration. There is nothing to guarantee that any of these identities are real.
http://www.opsi.gov.uk/acts/acts2006/pdf/ukpga_20060022_en.pdf

(26) CoE report, note 84, p12: “It does not take an experienced election observer, or election fraudster, to see that the combination of the household registration system without personal identifiers and the postal vote on demand arrangements make the election system in Great Britain very vulnerable to electoral fraud. The 2006 changes to the electoral law only partially addressed this vulnerability."

(27) David Maddox, ‘SNP raises doubts on Glenrothes as inquiry launched into by-election,’ The Scotsman, February 4, 2009.
http://news.scotsman.com/latestnews/SNP-raises-doubts-on-Glenrothes.4943446.jp

(28) Electoral Commission Report on the Glenrothes By-Election, p13.
http://www.electoralcommission.org.uk/news-and-media/news-releases/electoral-commission-media-centre/news-releases-reviews-and-research/glenrothes-election-report-published

(29) CPSL, p10

Scottish Nationalism as a Moral Issue

My friends often ask me why I waste my energies on something so divisive, so exclusive as Scottish nationalism when I could do so much more for human rights, environmental issues, or on matters more international, moral or intellectual.

I try to explain that I don’t see these things as mutually exclusive with Scottish nationalism.

Why? Because the independence of Scotland is first and foremost a moral issue.

When I look at the complexity of the problems that face Scotland today – low life expectancy, high unemployment, excessive drinking, violence, neds, environmental degradation, hard drug use, Scotland’s failing social fabric, religious bigotry, her poor roads, her awful train system, her old people dying of cold every winter, her sons and daughters emigrating every year, her young men fighting England's illegal foreign wars, her beautiful lochs used as nuclear bases for England, the incessant lies told to her people about their self-worth and potential by Scotland’s foreign-owned media – I see a complex array of causes, all with one contributing factor, one common denominator that is the root cause of so many of these problems, consistently holding us back from sorting any of them out: the dead hand of London.

So yes, I care about these other issues. They’re why I’m a Scottish nationalist in the first place.

And I've yet to hear a moral reason for remaining IN the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.

Free and Fair Elections in Scotland

As Scotland’s minister for Culture, External Affairs and the Constitution, Mike Russell’s job is to deliver a successful independence referendum in late 2010. This will not be easy. In the first part of this series, we look at some of the obstacles that lie in his way as he charts the path for Scotland out of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.

The UK Situation

As she stands today, Scotland is still part of the UK, which has so far refused to hand over the running of Scotland’s elections to Holyrood. Scotland must therefore continue to endure Britain’s easily corruptible electoral system, which has already been the subject of an investigation by the Council of Europe.

Against protests from the British Government, two representatives arrived in February 2007 to investigate claims of fraudulent aspects of the UK electoral system. They spent two days meeting a cross section of people with first hand experience of the true extent of British electoral fraud: representatives from the Electoral Commission, Amnesty International, the Police, the Electoral Reform Commission, and members of the judiciary, among others.

In its report of January 2008, the EU’s Venice Commission concluded (1) that:

• Handling of postal votes by party activists must stop.
• The “arcane” system of household voter registration must go.
• "It is still childishly simple to register bogus voters on the voters’ list”.
• "The use of postal voting is the key to using these bogus voter identities to vote. It’s not so easy in polling stations.
• “None of the 2006 changes to the electoral code (2) addressed the vulnerability of electoral fraud by means of bogus entries on the voters register”.
• The outcome of a general election can still be changed by these means, if a party is sufficiently organized.
• “the checking of personal identifiers on 100% of the returned postal ballots [should be] made mandatory by law in all of Great Britain before the next elections take place.”
• “Countering the public perception that electoral fraud was widespread was an important objective in its own right.”

Interestingly, they noted that the Electoral Fraud (Northern Ireland) Act of 2002 rendered Northern Ireland’s system vastly superior to that of the mainland, principally by the use of rigid identity checking at both voter registration and actual voting. [Note: without ID cards.]

The report then went further, questioning “the reluctance, or even refusal, of the current British government to introduce individual voter registration with personal identifiers, despite strong recommendations to the contrary by the Electoral Commission.”

Astonishingly, given the weight and number of findings, the Council of Europe still declined to initiate mandatory electoral monitoring of future UK elections:

“Despite the vulnerabilities in the [British] electoral system, there is no doubt that elections in the United Kingdom are conducted democratically and represent the free expression of the will of the British people … We can therefore not recommend opening a monitoring procedure with respect of the United Kingdom.”

So even though they had met with people who had provided clear evidence of systematic electoral fraud - and there were criminal convictions on the public record - their conclusion was that the electoral loopholes had not been sufficiently exploited to be a concern, UK elections were essentially free and fair, and no monitoring of the UK’s elections would take place.

In other words, a whitewash. A slap on the wrist at most.

Was a commitment given by the UK government to avoid a referendum on the Treaty of Lisbon in return for a lenient finding? Or a threat made to hold one if the findings were unsavoury?

What we can be sure of, after the democratic travesty of Glenrothes, is that the Labour Party has not changed its ways and indeed has no intention of eliminating electoral fraud before the next general election.

Notes

1. Opinion of the Electoral Law of the United Kingdom (Venice Commission), Opinion no. 436 / 2007, Strasbourg, Jan 9, 2008. http://www.assembly.coe.int/CommitteeDocs/2008/electoral_fraud_UK_E.pdf

2. UK Electoral Administration Act, 2006 http://www.opsi.gov.uk/acts/acts2006/ukpga_20060022_en_1

Open Letter to MI5 and Special Branch re: Scotland

A. To the English Bosses of MI5 & Special Branch's Scottish Operations:

How are you today? Busy week at the office? Looking forward to a relaxing Sunday browsing the papers? Off to church later on?

I have couple of questions for you.

How often have you wondered why certain Scots proclaim their Britishness far more than the English?

Seriously, how much of a prat do you think the PM is? How much is he driven by the desire to strut the world's stage, to cement his legacy for posterity, and by the fight for his political survival at the next election?

Does he even care about England?

Truly, how much loyalty do you feel you owe him and his party after they tried to fit you up for the dodgy dossier on Iraqi WMD?

On the other hand, do you honestly believe that Scottish nationalists are bad people? Are you aware that some members of the SNP are English born, while others have served in the armed forces?

Aren’t English and Scottish independence simply ideas about fairness, democracy and identity?

So why do you feel the need to have your field resources monitor, undermine and discredit Scottish nationalists? Is it really worth your while running interference on Scottish independence, when it’s something more and more English want every day?

Won't what you're doing to derail Scottish independence only sour future relations between our two nations?  England and Scotland can look forward to having more in common than most other nations - a shared language, the same royal family, and stirring fireside stories about how we ran an Empire together.

Will England not need all the friends she can get?

Being a Scottish nationalist does not mean that I hate England. Only that I love Scotland, just as you love England, and that we now wish to manage our own affairs.

Without self-serving prats like Gordon Brown lording it over us both.

B. To the Scots involved in MI5 & Special Branch's Scottish Operations:

There is probably not much I can say to convince you to let Scottish independence run its course.

You are probably consumed with a visceral hatred of Alex Salmond and the SNP.

You sincerely believe your job to be threatened by Scottish independence, and sometimes feel as if you are fighting for your career, your reputation, your pension, your very professional existence.

And you feel under constant pressure to prove your loyalty to your controller and/or station chief.

Sound about right?

Now, I’m probably not too far off the truth in saying there aren’t too many MI5 resources allocated to monitoring the English independence movement just yet. In fact, many English men and women in MI5 probably share a secret sympathy for it. They probably feel in their hearts – without even realising it – that English independence would probably be the only legitimate way to break up Britain, when England is good and ready.

So ask yourself this: how many English men or women have you met who harbour the same visceral hatred of the English independence movement as you do for the Scottish version? Not many?

Why is that?

Scottish independence will almost certainly happen, sooner or later, regardless of how you are ordered to slow it down. And then Scotland will have its own intelligence service, cooperating on a daily basis with our English colleagues on international terrorism and security.

So remember this, next time you are asked to gather information on Scottish nationalists, provide dummy explosives to radical activists, or help rig a by-election:

1. Scotland will need experienced intelligence officers with good contacts in Thames House who know how to set up a state security apparatus.

2. You could play a valuable role in establishing it.

3. Scotland and England will have the same enemies.

4. Your career is not dependent on the structural integrity of Britain.

5. The Scottish security services will still swear loyalty to the Queen.

Over to you.

Is Salmond Up To It?

Compare if you will the Ireland of 1798 to that of 1920. Or the India of 1857 with 1947. The rebellions on the earlier dates (1798 & 1857) were doomed to fail, taking on a British Empire at the peak of its power. The latter dates (1920 & 1947) were the culminations of successfully orchestrated struggles, using concerted colony-wide campaigns of obstruction and resistance to disable Britain’s ability to rule each region.

Both colonies were ultimately successful at gaining independence, although by very different means. Both of Ireland’s rebellions were violent. In contrast, after the suppression of the 1857 rebellion, Indians realised they could not leave the Empire by force of arms and eventually adopted Gandhi’s policy of non-violent resistance.

In contrast, the successful twentieth century rebellions were both begun while Britain was engaged in fights for its very existence.

This is again the case today.

Britain is now undergoing the worst financial disaster in its history. Its self-appointed political super-class has managed to mire the pseudo-state in unprecedented and almost unimaginable levels of debt. Its banking system is falling apart at the seams with a run expected on sterling, hyperinflation a possibility, and talk of the IMF intervening.

Make no mistake, Britain is on the ropes.

If there ever was a right time for Scotland to walk out of this Union, this is surely it.

The question is this: is Alex Salmond is up to the task of leading her out?

Because if Whitehall tries to delay, prevent, annul, or nobble Scotland’s independence referendum - as it almost certainly will - there may well be a groundswell of popular democratic outrage, but if the moment is not seized, the opportunity will be missed altogether.

We all know Alex loves a curry, but is he up to being Scotland’s Gandhi?

MI5 in Northern Ireland

Northern Ireland was on a path to peace and prosperity until someone recently had other ideas. This post seeks to discover who is behind the current bloodshed and to determine their strategy. It asks the question ‘why now?’ and argues that the British government itself might be pulling the strings.

It was with great sadness that I read of the first security force members to be killed in Ulster since 1997. At this terrible time, my thoughts are with the grieving families and friends of the men who died. I remember when a close family member was killed there in the 1970s, and how it shattered the lives of everyone who knew him – his mother, wife, young children, brothers and sisters.

We can only hope the war-weary people of the Province keep cool heads and avoid escalating this to another pointless cycle of tit-for-tat revenge.

I say I was saddened to hear about the deaths, but I was certainly not surprised. Let me tell you why.

If Northern Ireland can stay on the path to peace, it would surely be only a matter of time before a peaceful Ulster begins to build more substantial ties with Dublin. Whether because the loyalists look over the border and see a more prosperous Ireland, or because the IRA’s American donors dried up after September 11 (1), paramilitaries from both sides have taken concrete steps to retreat from the brink. Nearly two years ago, Protestant groups declared that they were renouncing violence(2), and the Independent Monitoring Commission (IMC) reported six months ago that “[the Provisional IRA’s] Army Council by deliberate choice is no longer operational or functional.”(3) The IMC’s next report in November 2008 went so far as to say that the “people [in Northern Ireland] are generally confident that there will not be a return to the former troubles.” (4)

The Provisional IRA knows that peace on both sides of the border is a necessary precondition for unification to occur. Given time, they would seem to be happy to wait till the two regions drift together in peaceful coexistence and prosperity. They are in no doubt whatsoever that if the killing times return the troops would be back on the streets, and Ulster’s ties to London would be re-established for another thirty years, by virtue of the troop presence alone.

The tone of British press has been predictably superficial: that the murders are the acts of “cornered animal” paramilitaries whose thuggish existence is threatened by a successful peace process.(5)

Threatened by peace after twelve years of peace? Something doesn’t add up. What on earth is driving these fringe republicans back to violence?

Things have been underway for some time. First, in a spectacularly provocative move, it was quietly arranged that MI5 would take back the counter-terrorism activities of the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI), the bipartisan police force that succeeded the RUC as a result of Good Friday Agreement of 1998. MI5 is deeply despised by the nationalist population, and stands accused by Sinn Fein of collusion with loyalist death-squads.(6) With no official announcement, the handover occurred on October 10, 2007. Word got out that it was happening and the wisdom of the move was seriously questioned in the weeks before the handover – not only by nationalist politicians, but by the local NI Police Ombudsman and the Policing Board.(7)

As Margaret Gilmore, Senior Research Fellow at the British security think-tank Royal United Services Institute reported a year ago:

“The PSNI has been responsible for national security in the province. But on 10 October 2007, the police relinquished that responsibility, passing it instead [back] to MI5. The handover took place without any official document… That apparently innocuous yet historic document has never been published and even getting anyone to talk about the shift is extremely difficult.”(8)

She goes on to highlight a stark difference in the way MI5 would operate to its predecessors:

“MI5 is also uncompromising on the thorny issue of how much of its work will focus on republican dissidents and how much on loyalists. Security sources admit MI5 officers in Northern Ireland will focus almost exclusively on republican dissident groups that they deem a threat to national security, while they believe loyalist dissidents are more a law and order/serious crime problem, and thus should be dealt with by the police.”(9)

So MI5 took back surveillance activities of terrorist activities from the police force created by the Good Friday Agreement, but only to monitor dissident republican groups? Understandably, this caused a huge outcry of resentment among the nationalist population. Who would be protecting them? In the four and a half years up to the October 2007 handover, the civilian murder rate by loyalist paramilitary groups was almost twice that by dissident republican groups.(10) Loyalist groups still retain their arms caches to this day.(11)

Not long after the decision to redeploy MI5 was taken, the fires were stoked still further: two months later, MI5 Director General Jonathan Evans cut the ribbon on the Service’s new £20million office in Ulster, easily its biggest regional office outside its Thames House facility in London. The size of the facility caught many in Northern Ireland off guard and caused yet more alarm among local politicians.(12)

Its purpose was not immediately apparent. By February 2008, it was revealed: far more than a regional surveillance office, it would be a second headquarters for MI5, capable of relocating 400 staff in the event of a terrorist attack in London. As Jamie Doward wrote in the Observer at the time: “The opening of the base is in danger of widening rifts in Northern Ireland. (13)

Dolores Kelly of the Northern Ireland Policing board summarised the danger the new centre presented:

“We worked hard for two years to get agreement around two ground-breaking accountability mechanisms which made possible a new beginning in policing – the Policing Board and the Police Ombudsman. MI5 operates outside the control of these mechanisms and as far as the ordinary public and voters are concerned it is a law unto itself. Whose national security they are going to protect? Certainly all through our dirty war, they were curiously blind to the threat coming from the loyalist community. The British Government declared more than a decade ago that it had “no selfish or strategic interest in Northern Ireland”, but clearly this is no longer the case given the massive spy centre they have built at Holywood.”(14)

The new facility is therefore a clear signal that Britain is renewing its strategic interest in the Province, and nationalist politicians can no longer make the case to the fringe elements of the republican paramilitaries that the peace process will lead to a united Ireland.

The change of policy had the desired result. Surveillance indicated an immediate surge in activity among dissident republican groups who actively began to recruit.(15) Several police officers were wounded in fifteen attacks in seventeen months.(16) Republican political leaders struggled desperately to calm the situation.

Meanwhile, the Catholic nationalist populations' simmering sense of betrayal was maintained and nurtured by MI5’s continuous surveillance of republican communities, while offering not one iota of protection from loyalist paramilitary groups. MI5 have been operating completely beyond the reach of any Northern Ireland government oversight(17), their very presence a violation of the Good Friday Agreement and everything it sought to achieve.

Two months ago, intelligence showed the government campaign of sustained covert nationalist provocation might finally bear fruit. An announcement was made by Evans that trouble was expected, and that the threat from dissident Irish Republican groups had “significantly increased in recent months”.(18)

To ensure the threat was consummated, the tension was ratcheted up one more notch. The masterstroke was on March 6th when, apparently to counter the imminent threat, the Special Reconnaissance Regiment (SRR) were deployed, a composite unit drawing men from the SAS and other special forces regiments. This group had a fearsome reputation in Northern Ireland and would also report to MI5 command directly. Martin McGuinness, Northern Ireland’s Deputy First Minister, was forthright in his condemnation of their deployment:

"The history of the North has shown that many of these forces have been as much a danger to the community as any other group.” (19)

The rest, as they say, is history. Two days later, sappers Mark Quinsey and Cengiz Azimkar were killed at Massareene army base after stepping out to pay for a pizza delivery. The same weekend, PSNI officer Stephen Carrol was killed on night patrol in Craigavon.

This is the security background to the recent murders, the blame for which must be laid squarely at the feet of the British Government. By its actions over the past 17 months, Whitehall has sent a clear message to the dissident republican paramilitaries that the Provisional IRA has been foolish to negotiate with the UK, that the peace process will not lead to a united Ireland, and that Britain is reasserting its strategic interest in the Province. The recent murders were the end result of careful planning by key people in the UK government, elected or otherwise, who by sustained incendiary measures have repeatedly poured fuel on the dying embers of Irish republican violence to incite fringe groups to attack the security services. Regardless of whether outside observers find these actions sufficiently provocative, the point is surely that the dissident paramilitaries of Northern Ireland evidently did.

And so it begins again.

Orwellian doublespeak seems to be the rhetorical device of choice. Protestant leaders have stated that “the attack vindicated the police decision to call on the army intelligence specialists” (20); while the Sunday Herald described the predictable knee-jerk reaction of the authorities:

“Police estimate there are around 300 dissident republicans intent on wrecking the Northern Irish peace process. They claim to have identified many of them and say they are moving to put them behind bars,”(21)

and the Daily Mail is openly canvassing its readers about whether the troops should be sent back to Northern Ireland to restore peace.(22)

So why now? And who is behind this? The candidates who stand to gain the most are:

1. Hardline Ulster Unionists who believe that the peace process will lead to the reunification of Ireland.

2. An unpopular British government with low standing in the polls, needing to be seen acting with resolve in a crisis.

3. MI5 bosses facing budget reductions if Irish operations are wound down completely. As a percentage of its total budget, Irish republican counterterrorism is already down from 23% three years ago to just 17% a year ago.(23)

4. Elements of the British establishment who feel - like Jack Straw - that Britain’s seat on the UN Security Council would be jeapardised if its territory were in any way diminished.

Mr. Straw unwisely let the last cat out of the bag in 2006 when asked about Scotland. His answer was clear and unambiguous:

“A broken-up United Kingdom would not be in the interests of Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland, but especially not England. Our voting power in the European Union would diminish. We'd slip down in the world league GDP tables. Our case for staying in the G8 would diminish and there could easily be an assault on our permanent seat in the UN Security Council.”(24)

So here we have a coincidence of interest between the party in power, its unelected leader, those who wish to maintain Britain’s structural integrity and global standing, the British security services, and the hardline element of the local loyalist population.

The strategy has clearly been to provoke dissident republican paramilitaries into violence, the goal being to recreate and sustain a level of bloodshed sufficient to justify a return of the troops to the streets in a de facto occupation.

A further goal, and I’m possibly crediting whoever is behind this with more foresight than they deserve, is to remobilise the feral ranks of Scottish Unionism, increasing the tension steadily until 2010 when a resurgent body of Unionist flag-waving bigots can sway the looming referendum on independence London’s way.

Think about it: if Scotland becomes independent, England and Wales plus Northern Ireland would be a strange beast indeed. The Province’s main cultural links lie with Ireland to the south and via Ulster’s historical, religious, linguistic and cultural connections to Scotland farther north. Of the other three nations of the United Kingdom, England would be the country farthest from Ulster, and with the least in common. Perhaps Ulster might even end up being jointly administered in friendship by an independent Scotland and Ireland together, to assuage Ulstermen’s fiery pride.

Whatever happens, the point is this: if London loses Scotland, so too probably Ulster. But if the Troubles can be rekindled, Ulster would be held by the presence of British troops alone, while Scotland – the real prize in this great game with the leverage she gives to England’s world power status – might be held by a sense of ethic and religious solidarity with her beleaguered neighbour. Scotland would still be British soil, held by the “acceptable level of violence” across the North Channel in Ulster.(25)

Two birds with one stone.

Whatever the reason, the resumption of violence in Northern Ireland has become Britain’s strategy to retain the Province. Especially now that Tony Blair, so crucial in steering the Good Friday agreement through, is out of the way. Rogue forces within the British government are now free to unravel what he helped achieve. (26)

His successor Gordon Brown has himself been directly and heavily involved with current Northern Ireland policy. The Times reports:

“He taken an increased interest in the past year, with several visits to Northern Ireland. When the peace process hit trouble over policing towards the end of last year Mr Brown spent much of one week deeply involved.”(27)

But surely Britain could never afford another major troop deployment to Ulster? Isn’t the UK almost bankrupt?

Apparently so, but street patrols in Northern Ireland do not require the vast supporting infrastructure of a remote foreign war. Most of the expense would be fuel for vehicles, surveillance, and in soldiers’ wages, which are due whether the soldiers are sitting on their backsides in their barracks or patrolling the streets of Belfast. Nor would the conflict need heavy artillery or advanced weapon systems. What passes as inadequate equipment in the Middle East will do perfectly well for Northern Ireland. British troops returning from Iraq will be available just in time.

And, of course, an army’s wage bill isn’t so hard to meet when you’re printing money by the truckload, as the British government plans to do.

The British strategy is already paying dividends. A weekend poll showed that after his visit to Northern Ireland, Gordon Brown and the Labour Party have begun to climb in the polls.(28)

And this week the Belfast Telegraph reports that, after two years of cutbacks, MI5 has at last been successful in getting its budget increase approved:

“MI5 is preparing to boost spending on intelligence activities in Northern Ireland in an effort to track down a hardcore of Republican extremists committed to violence. The Security Minister, Lord West of Spithead, said the security services' budget for the province would be reassessed.”(29)

More staff have already been dispatched to the new facility.(30) Perhaps the increased budget and personnel will allow MI5 to monitor the loyalist paramilitary groups now too. They have some catching up to do. After ignoring them for so long, they will have no idea of their activities, or when or where they will strike.

Expect a great deal of violence from both sides before this fire is put out. You can be certain that whoever is behind it will do whatever it takes to keep it smouldering.

How to Stop This?

It is quite clear that the British government has done its level best to provoke this violence. It is therefore a matter of the utmost urgency that Shadow Defence Secretary Liam Fox demand answers from Defence Secretary John Hutton on the following:

1. Do you have any idea what MI5 has been doing in Northern Ireland for the past 17 months?

2. What and when did MI5 hear about these IRA dissident groups’ plans?

3. What security measures were taken in response?

4. What knowledge, if any, does MI5 have of the activities of Ulster's paramilitary groups?

5. What, if any, security resources have been allocated to monitor future activities of Ulster paramilitary groups?

References

(1) Kaya Burgess, “9/11 attacks ‘helped to secure peace in Northern Ireland’,” TimesOnline, October 18, 2008. http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/ireland/article4965700.ece

(2) Mary Jordan, “N. Ireland Protestant Group Vows to Renounce Violence”, Washington Post, May 4, 2007. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/03/AR2007050302321.html

(3) From the Nineteenth Report from the Independent Monitoring Commission (IMC) of Northern Ireland. IMC Report#19, © Crown Copyright 2008, Sep 3, 2008, p8 http://www.independentmonitoringcommission.org/documents/uploads/ACF1599.pdf

(4) The Twentieth Report from the Independent Monitoring Commission (IMC) of Northern Ireland also recommended that it was time for the complete devolution of policing and justice. IMC Report #20, © Crown Copyright 2008, p32 http://www.independentmonitoringcommission.org/documents/uploads/Twentieth%20Report.pdf

(5) “Northern Ireland terrorists are like a 'cornered animal'”, claims Sir Hugh Orde,” TimesOnline (no author), March 15, 2009 http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/crime/article5912123.ece

(6) Jerry Adams, “No room for MI5 in the North”, November 9, 2006, http://cryptome.info/mi5-out-ni.htm

(7) Margaret Gilmore, ‘MI5 in Northern Ireland,’ Monitor, March, 2008, p7 https://www.rusi.org

(8) Ibid.

(9) Ibid., p8. My emphasis.

(10) Between March 1, 2003 and August 31, 2007, there were 13 verified loyalist murders of civilians, versus 5 verified republican murders. None of those killed were members of the security forces. IMC Report #20, Op. Cit., © Crown Copyright 2008, p18

(11) Dan Keenan & Gerry Moriarty, “Time running out for UDA and UVF to decommission”, Irish Times, March 16, 2009 https://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/ireland/2009/0205/1233787117494.html

(12) Gilmore, Op. Cit., p6

(13) Jamie Doward, “MI5 plan to use Belfast bunker in emergency,” Observer, February 24, 2008. https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2008/feb/24/uksecurity.northernireland

(14) Gilmore, Op. Cit., p8

(15) IMC Report #20, Op. Cit., © Crown Copyright 2008, Nov 10, 2008, p5

(16) John F. Burns, ‘Irish Assault Raises Specter of Brutal Day,’ New York Times, March 8, 2009. https://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/09/world/europe/09ulster.html?_r=1

(17) The MI5 website says that “The Prime Minister is responsible for the UK intelligence machinery as a whole,” but that “The Home Secretary is regularly briefed by the Director General, who is directly accountable to him.” MI5 is not accountable in any way to the local security structure put in place following the Good Friday Agreement.

(18) Joseph Daily, “Dissident IRA Threat on the Rise: Most people think it's all over in Northern Ireland. Unfortunately it is not,” WorldNetDaily, January 13, 2009. https://www.wnd.com/2009/01/86031/

(19) David Sharrock, “Row breaks out over return of Army to fight splinter IRA terrorists,” TimesOnLine, March 6, 2009. Sharrick reports: “The regiment’s expertise lies in intelligence gathering and surveillance. Special forces, including the SAS, were withdrawn from Northern Ireland after the paramilitary ceasefires in 1997.”

(20) John F. Burns, New York Times. Ibid.

(21) Chris Watt, “Petrol bombs on Ulster’s streets as police arrest five,” Sunday Herald, March 17, 2009.

(22) MailOnLine Debate: Should the Government send more troops to Northern Ireland?

(23) Gilmore, Op. Cit., p6

(24) Jack Straw, BBC Question Time, September 28 2006. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/question_time/5388078.stm

(25) A term first used in December 1971 by Reginald Maudling, then British Home Secretary. https://cain.ulster.ac.uk/othelem/glossary.htm

(26) One of the few things Tony Blair can be said to have helped achieve. As the Downing Street Chief of Staff, Jonathan Powell noted, “the heroes of this story are Tony Blair, Bertie Ahern and the party leaders in Northern Ireland”.” From Max Hastings’ review of “Great Hatred, Little Room: Making Peace in Northern Ireland,” TimesOnLine, March 23, 2008.

(27) Michael Evans, Philip Webster and David Sharrock, “Northern Ireland shootings: MI5's response,” TimesOnLine, March 11, 2009.

(28) Reuters UK, “Brown cuts opposition opinion poll lead,” March 18, 2009. https://uk.reuters.com/article/domesticNews/idUKTRE52G35D20090317

(29) David McKittrick, “Police 'making progress' in hunt for gunmen who killed soldiers,” Belfast Telegraph, March 10, 2009. https://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/police-making-progress-in-hunt-for-gunmen-who-killed-soldiers-28469992.html

(30) Evans, Webster and Sharrock, Op. Cit.

The Accidental UK

I often wonder how Britain would have turned out today if certain world events had not gone quite the way they did. Because, as any historian will tell you, history is most definitely not a long sequence of predictable outcomes. Rather, it is a series of throws of the dice, random results and accidents, every one of which could have gone a very different way, with vastly differing consequences for all subsequent events.

The historical record is in fact littered with moments where something utterly different, or the exact opposite – or nothing at all – could just as easily have happened.

So for a bit of fun, I thought I might try my own hand at counter-factual history. It’s what no serious historian will admit to doing but for many it's an obsession. The idea behind it is this: if history is all one long inexorable progression of inevitable facts and dates, how come no one actually knows what’s going to happen next? Just as random things happen today, events in the past could equally well have had many outcomes.

The relevance for all you budding English and Scottish nationalists out there - or indeed for any political activist - is this: if you can’t see all the possible outcomes at certain key historical turning points, how on earth can you recognize the possibilities that lie right in front of you at this very moment?

For me, this is what makes history interesting.

Take, for example, the Spanish Armada: if it had avoided the storm, dealt with the English fire-ships and allowed Parma to mount a successful Spanish invasion of England in 1588, England might well have reverted to Catholicism after its brief flirtation with Protestantism. The plantation of Ulster would never have happened, the Americas could have become entirely Spanish and Catholic(1), regal union with Scotland would not have occurred in 1603, and England would have been divided religiously from Protestant Scotland instead of Catholic Ireland.

Or had the wind that held the French fleet off the Irish coast turned, allowing them to land at Bantry Bay in December 1796, it might easily have led to a successful French invasion(2), sparking an Irish rebellion two years earlier than 1798 and possibly the end to British rule in Ireland, which would have had a republic 125 years earlier, a base for any subsequent French war with Britain, and the Peace of Amiens might have held.(3) Napoleon might have died in his sleep in Paris as an old man.

Or if General Lee’s strategic intentions had not been discovered via his lost Special Order No. 191, the South’s invasion of the North might then have been an enormous success, the traumatised Northern population would have sued for peace and the South would have won the Confederate War of Independence. Lincoln's war to save the Union would have failed, and the Confederacy would have become the independent CSA with a slave-based cotton economy.(4) With the defeat of the American democratic experiment, US General Sheridan would not have toured Germany in 1870 to advise the Germans on how to wage total war on the French(5) , the French would not have thirsted for revenge for 44 years, the catastrophe of WW1 might have been averted, and Martin Luther King would not have been demanding civil rights in 1963, but an end to slavery.

As for Britain, if the South had won, the electoral franchise would probably not have been extended in the wake of the US Civil War. Patriotic British historians like to dispute this, arguing that Lincoln’s victory had minimal influence on Britain’s own idea to extend the franchise with the Reform Act of 1867.(6) However, the evidence strongly suggests that with their powerful pro-Confederate bias, Britain’s ruling landowning classes would have liked nothing better than to see American popular democracy crushed.(7) A year after Appomattox in April 1866, future Prime Minister William Gladstone recognised the true significance of the victory:

“The one single and important point of the effect that has been produced in America by a largely-extended population franchise [is] …the wonderful…almost incredible effect that has been produced by that system of giving expression to the national will…we ought to… appropriate the lessons.”(8)

And without the vote of the working class, Keir Hardie would have had no reason to form the Labour Party.(9)

And if in 1914 General Oskar Potiorek had remembered to tell Archduke Ferdinand’s driver of the change of route, they would have avoided the assassin Gavrilo Princip, who had given up waiting for them and was having a sandwich.(10) There would have been no assassination, no ultimatum, and the First World War might easily have been avoided. With Britain not distracted by war, there would have been no Easter Rising in Dublin. Neither would there have been a Russian Revolution, a lost generation, German hyperinflation, a Nazi Party, and the British Empire might have lasted another hundred years.

The British parliament might also have passed the first Scottish Home Rule Bill of 1913, already approved on its first reading.(11) Instead, in the rush to war it was forgotten and, rather than getting a devolved Scottish parliament within the Imperial British state on the edge of a peaceful Europe, Scotland saw 110,000 of her sons sent to their deaths in the trenches, nearly 20% of Britain’s war dead.(12)

A sobering thought, and something to think about for those who think Scottish nationalism is a recent reaction to the discovery of oil.

There is also something here to ponder for those who think there is something special, noble, pre-ordained, planned or sacred in the structure of the United Kingdom today. As we have seen, history shows it to be little more than a series of ad hoc reactions to historical accidents - which will continue to happen - and that the current political structure has no more legitimacy than any other.

Notes

(1) Geoffrey Parker, “The Repulse of the English Fireships: the Spanish Armada Triumphs, August 8, 1588”, in What If?, Pan, London, 1999, pages 139-154

(2) It was a significant French invasion force of 15,000 troops. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irish_Rebellion_of_1798

(3) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Amiens

(4) Harry Turtledove’s Timeline-191 novels deal with this perfectly plausible scenario, and extend the timeline as far as WW1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline-191

(5) When the French defeat at Sedan in 1870 did not lead to expected cessation in hostilities from the French people, US General Sheridan gave the following advice to Bismarck: “The proper strategy consists in inflicting as telling blows as possible on the enemy’s army, and then in causing the inhabitants so much suffering that they must long for peace, and force the government to demand it. The people must be left nothing but their eyes to weep with over the war.” As the record shows, Bismarck subsequently followed Sheridan's advice.

Henry R. Winkler, Review of ‘Heard Round the World: The Impact Abroad of the Civil War,’ in The Journal of American History, 56, 2. Sep.1969, pages 388-389

(6) A typical denial is found in David M. Potter, Political Science Quarterly, 86, 2, June 1971, p288.

(7) Dean B. Mahin, One war at a Time: The International Dimensions of the American Civil War, Brasseys, Dulles VA, 2000, pages 25-26

(8) From H.R. Allen,‘Civil War, Reconstruction and Great Britain,’ in Heard Round the World: The Impact Abroad of the Civil War, Harold Hyman (ed.), Knopf, New York, 1969, p48

(9) In 1888 Keir Hardie helped form the Scottish Labour Party (no connection with the Unionist lapdogs of today), whose party president was the socialist Robert Cunninghame-Graham, who went on to found the National Party of Scotland, forerunner to the SNP. In 1893 Hardie then helped form the Independent Labour Party in England. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keir_Hardie

(10) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gavrilo_Princip

(11) Murray G.H. Pittock, Scottish Nationality, Palgrave, New York, 2001, pages 100-102

(12) Pittock, p103

Why I am Blogging

Growing up in southwest Scotland in the early 1980s, fear dominated my coming of political awareness as I stared out at the sea mountain that is Ailsa Craig.

There is a conversation with my father that sticks in my mind - you know, the typical father-son chat about George Orwell and his Stalinist vision of our future in Nineteen Eighty-Four, and whether we would soon be under permanent government surveillance.

“Ach, they've got bigger fish tae fry than you, son,” he would say.

That insidious feeling that I’m always being watched has stayed with me ever since. I now recognise it for what it was: a manufactured anxiety by the media. After all, Big Brother headlines sold newspapers. But the proliferation of cameras in all our major world cities since has done nothing to reassured me.

Around the same time I remember another cosy fireside chat about the Cold War, specifically on the likelihood of nuclear annihilation, especially considering the American nuclear subs parked up the road in Holy Loch, near Glasgow: prime targets in any nuclear exchange. It was a very real scenario. I clearly recall a Daily Record centre-spread that showed the probable thermonuclear blast zone and fallout area. Again, my father’s answer was the same dismissive optimism:

“You'll no ken ocht aboot it onyway. Whit's the point o' worrying?” "That's awricht fer you tae say," I shot back. "Ah huvnae lived yet."

For reasons that still escape me, this struck him as something profound. To me it was self-evident, bordering on the bleeding obvious. What I didn't appreciate at the time was that this was my fathers's way of dealing with reality: his entire adult life had been spent in the shadow of the Cold War. It was now my generation's turn to come to terms with what it all meant.

In our new uni-polar world of economic summits and multilateral cooperation, it is easy to forget what it was like at that time. Personally, I went through a period of deep despair about my life which affected the life decisions I made, even whether it was worth making any plans at all. The fear of climate change does not even come close. I now realise it had an insidious effect on how I engaged with the world around me. Why bother to make the world a better place when it could all end in a mushroom cloud on the horizon, black rain, an endless nuclear winter, stillborn babies, mutant children and starvation? Eventually, I resigned myself to the same fatalistic attitude as my father. Why worry? You'll no ken ocht aboot it onyway.

A New Age - but what was it?

That's why the 1990s were so remarkable for me. The perpetual fear of nuclear hell was OVER. Jesus Jones' song Right Here, Right Now captured the euphoria that our entire civilization was no longer on death row. It's still one of my favourite songs. OK, the "watching the world wake up from history" bit was drawing a long bow but, still, a pretty good effort at capturing the Zeitgeist.

Then, as footage of Desert Storm, Bosnia, Rwanda & Somalia rolled before my eyes, it soon became clear that Mr. Jones had been guilty of premature extrapolation. The Cold War may indeed have been over, but as calendar followed calendar, three things became increasingly self-evident in the 1990s: first, history was not over. Second, small wars would now be much more visible. Third, they would involve civilians - not as incidental "collateral damage", but as often as the singular purpose of the war. A lot of civilians.

After a little research, a further shocking realisation dawned - that American intervention around the world was nothing new (please excuse my terrible naivety). With my eyes clear of Cold War mist, I was appalled to discover that America had been waging wars and staging coups for quite some time, often against elected democracies: Iran 1953, Guatemala '54, Chile '73 and El Salvador & Nicaragua in the 1980s, to name but a few.(1, 2)

It was a moment of profound revelation to me. I had picked up a love of history and America from my father. I still loved American culture, but what I had learned changed everything. I had that uneasy feeling that most of what I thought I knew about the world was completely wrong.

Working It Out

Having been an engineer, I realised I had to go back to first principles. So I took some time out to study history and set out to discover what the hell was going on. After a few years, I reached the point where I thought I understood it, where I felt I had achieved sufficient perspective to appreciate the grand scale of immense forces, all vying for supremacy: land hunger, population growth, nations, class, religion, ideology, gender, revolutions, capital, market forces, with great men and women occasionally leaving their mark. It all made a kind of sense. No one person or group was in charge, or at least not for long.

Or so I thought.

Then came the global financial crisis.

A New Perspective

I'd been reading what I could find about the credit crunch but even with my engineering, business and history knowledge I still could not grasp what was going on. With the world's financial system brought to its knees, wild global stock market and commodity fluctuations, international investment and retail banks erased from the landscape, the survivors refusing to lend to each other, money had ceased to have any meaning as hundreds of billions of dollars were thrown at banks to keep them afloat. Suddenly, all three of America's car companies looked like they might go to the wall, Britain was using anti-terrorism laws against Icelandic banks, there was a partial collapse of sterling(3), interest rates dropped to almost zero, millions were made unemployed, a global depression was supposedly on the way(4), and analysts were predicting that the US dollar would soon be replaced as the world's reserve currency.

Capitalism was on the canvas with the referee counting to ten, but was it 1929 again, or something new?

Notes

1. For an excellent study on how Churchill invited in the US to overthrow the democratically elected government of Persia in 1953 after the president announced that he wished to take control of Persia's oil revenues, see Stephen Kinzer, All the Shah's Men: an American coup and the roots of Middle East terror, John Wiley and Son, 2003

2. Kinzer covers the long history of US foreign interventions in Overthrow: America's Century of Regime Change from Hawaii to Iraq, Henry Holt and Co, 2007. John Pilger has a more recent treatment of the subject in a South American context in his excellent documentary The War on Democracy

3. At the time of writing (Feb 2009), sterling has dropped 21% in value against the Euro between Oct 7 and Dec 30, 2008, before making a partial recovery.

4. Gary Duncan, Rise in US jobless raises spectre of Great Depression, TimesOnline, January 10 2009.

A Final Word

This has been my opening post, with the tone I'd like to maintain in my future posts. I shall make no claims without evidence.

Future postings shall (I hope) be briefer - if only because of time. It takes to gather quality footnotes. I only wanted to set the mood, as it were.