One To Watch: Addicts’ Symphony

Samuel Hooper5 Comments

Rachael Lander

 

Tonight at 11PM UK Time, Channel 4 will screen the documentary Addicts’ Symphony.

The documentary showcases a project that took place last year, a collaboration between Big Mountain Productions and the London Symphony Orchestra’s LSO Discovery programme, to explore ways that music could help recovering addicts with prior musical experience.

From the LSO Discovery blog:

The project, Addicts’ Symphony, was the brainchild of the composer and musician James McConnel, whose 18-year-old son Freddy, an aspiring and talented musician, died of a heroin overdose in 2011 at the age of 18. James, himself a recovering alcoholic, was inspired to create the project by a determination to save others like Freddy from a similar fate, and a firm belief in the transformative power of music.

After a summer of recruitment, the ten participants came together for the first time at the beginning of October 2013. Led by workshop leader and composer Paul Rissmann and supported by LSO members Bindi McFarlane (violin) and Matthew Gibson (double bass), the group were reunited with their instruments; some having not played for 20 years, and some just beginning. All they were told at this point was that they needed to put together a performance.

This topic is of particular interest to me for a number of reasons. For a number of years I was a Patron of the London Symphony Orchestra, making financial contributions to support the orchestra’s work and subsidise the price of tickets so that other people from poorer backgrounds such as myself could experience the transformative, life-changing power of classical music.

But what I didn’t realise then was that I was to have personal experience of the ravages of addiction. I remember hearing discussion of a certain musician, an accomplished professional instrumentalist who played with some of the UK’s most prestigious orchestras, who exhibited alcoholic behaviour and drank to manage and suppress terrible stage fright – a theme that is explored in the Addicts’ Symphony documentary. But I never for a moment thought that I would one day exhibit many of these same behaviours myself.

My experiences of addiction, treatment and recovery probably merit a blog post, if not a book, of their own. And I will leave that topic for another day, except to say that despite not being a professional musician, my career outside of journalism is similarly high-stress, and that music was a key part of my recovery as it has always been a fundamental part of my life. The healing, restorative power of music is well known, and music therapy was very much a part of my own personal treatment plan.

The Addicts’ Symphony documentary should be one to watch because it addresses an area that is often overlooked by pundits and policymakers when discussing our approach to addressing and treating addiction. Much of the current focus is on treatment among the economically disadvantaged, or the underclass – and after many years of denial, some progress is finally being made in this area. But little attention has been paid to the havoc that can be caused by addiction in people with high-stress and often high-profile careers, such as the world of top-flight classical music.

As I can now personally attest having been through the mill myself, and an official “service user” of some of the patchwork of addiction recovery services available in Britain, many of the treatments and options available are simply not calibrated to people from different backgrounds – say those with more advanced educational qualifications, professional careers, many of the middle class obligations (such as mortgage payments and other financial obligations) and a lack of offending behaviour.

That is not to say that all treatments on offer are inadequate – far from it. Indeed, I was personally brought back from the brink by taxpayer-funded services that were, for the most part, excellent. And yet there were many areas where my particular needs and circumstances diverged almost completely from those of my fellow service users, forcing me to improvise and strike out on my own without the safety net provided to others.

I will expand on these ideas following the screening of the documentary, but it is already clear that Addicts’ Symphony is an important contribution to the discussion about addiction in high-functioning people with high-stress careers.

From the testimony of Rachael Lander, one of the participants in Addicts’ Symphony and a recovering alcoholic herself:

To admit [my addiction] publicly may amount to professional suicide. However, I’m frustrated with the classical-music profession and the fact that stage fright is still a touchy subject, despite the huge pressures on musicians. My story is not unique. Many classical musicians struggle alone, masking their nerves with beta blockers and alcohol, ashamed, as I was. For some reason, it is more acceptable to admit frailty in the world of rock and pop.

All the way through filming, I was aware that my taking part might help someone like me feel less alone. I trusted the integrity of the documentary’s director, Dollan Cannell, from the moment I met him, and I knew I would have more strength to tackle my specific fear of orchestral playing in the company of the other addicts involved in the programme.

Together we composed our piece, Rhapsody of the Tamed, and performed it with pride with the London Symphony Orchestra last November. It was both heartbreaking and empowering to play a concert with the LSO and admit that I was full of fear. I didn’t have to deny or medicate my feelings. For once I could be honest and, in the process, the shame I’d had about myself began to lift. It hasn’t returned since the night of the concert.

It is wonderful to hear the story of someone who experienced the darkness of addiction and not only came out the other side, but was able – with help – to re-engage with the very profession that had been such a source of stress and a trigger for her personal issues. But outside the meeting rooms of twelve-step fellowships, such stories are currently too few and far between.

Not everyone recovering from addiction is able to take a permanent sabbatical from the sources of their stress and anxiety once they leave treatment – though this is always strongly recommended by many treatment providers as the best choice for a successful long-term recovery. Many have families and other obligations which demand that they re-engage with the world more or less on the world’s terms and at it’s pace rather than their own. And here, finally, is a documentary that – among other goals – points to a possible way forward, at least for one specific high-pressure career.

Never one to turn down an opportunity to listen to the London Symphony Orchestra in action, Semi-Partisan Sam will be watching Addicts’ Symphony tonight with great interest.

 

Cover Image: Cellist Rachael Lander, “Addiction in the orchestra: classical music’s drink and drugs problem“, The Guardian

The Road To Rotherham – When Political Correctness Trumps Child Welfare

Samuel Hooper3 Comments

alexis jay rotherham

 

Professor Alexis Jay’s report on child sexual abuse in the town of Rotherham contains truths and revelations so shocking and awful, and on such a scale that it is scarcely possible to believe them.

From the report:

“No one knows the true scale of child sexual exploitation in Rotherham over the years. Our conservative estimate is that approximately 1,400 children were sexually exploited over the full inquiry period, from 1997 to 2013.

It is hard to describe the appalling nature of the abuse that child victims suffered. They were raped by multiple perpetrators, trafficked to other towns and cities in the north of England, abducted, beaten, and intimidated.

There were examples of children who had been doused in petrol and threatened with being set alight, threatened with guns, made to witness brutally violent rapes and threatened they would be next if they told anyone.”

Horrific cases of abuse and neglect going unstopped because of the lethal combination of a failed bureaucracy and individual failings are, of course, nothing new. We see such horror stories only too often, most notably in the death of Baby Peter.

But tragedies such as these are on a far smaller scale than the slow-burning atrocity which took place in Rotherham over a period of sixteen years. The needless death of one child is an abhorrence. The scarring of up to 1500 children’s lives is almost unfathomable.

At times such as this, when we are not too busy breast-beating, it is fashionable to urge calm and wait for the various investigations – 32 of which are already underway in Rotherham – to finish their course. At the other end of the response spectrum, we can expect to see highly emotive calls for the immediate sacking of every public sector worker in the town who was even tangentially connected to the case.

In this case, Yorkshire and Humber’s UKIP MEP, Jane Collins, eagerly stepped up to the plate:

“I categorically call for the resignation of everyone directly and indirectly involved in this case. The Labour council stand accused of deliberately ignoring child sex abuse victims for 16 years. The apologies we have heard are totally insincere and go nowhere near repairing the damage done.

“These resignations should include South Yorkshire’s police and crime commissioner, Shaun Wright. I also call for a criminal investigation by a force not directly linked with this scandal into all those implicated in this scandal. There is no place for these people in public life.”

Fine. This blog will be the last to plead clemency for those at the top who presided over this horror show before moving on to other well-remunerated jobs, especially if their lack of action during the period in question casts doubt on their ability to perform well in their new roles, or to keep the public’s trust. This would certainly include Shaun Wright, the police and crime commissioner.

But the report hints at something far deeper and more insidious which must also be tackled if we are to prevent a recurrence of this scandal, one which is certainly not limited to the Yorkshire town.

The Spectator’s Isabel Hardman, citing Professor Jay’s report, lays it out:

There seemed to be a fear of man rather than of wrongdoing, perhaps even a true definition of political correctness gone mad, that led the council to ‘tiptoe’ around the issue of child sexual exploitation in the Pakistani-heritage community. The report found that there were just two meetings in 15 years about CSE – and they took place in 2011 when the abuse stretched back into the late nineties.

How did this go on for so long? The Jay report is worth reading in full, if only to get a measure of the way apparently well-organised organisations apparently working in a joined-up way managed to fail 1,400 children (at least). But something removed the urgency and made fear of breaking a taboo and being labelled politically incorrect the bigger thing. It was a fear of consequences, of anyone more important and powerful finding out that repeated allegations and internal reports were being ignored and someone being held responsible. ‘An issue or responsibility that belongs to everybody effectively belongs to nobody, and in the case of sexual exploitation of children in Rotherham, accountability was key,’ said the report.

Aside from the usual bureaucratic failures, exercises in self preservation and groupthink which are always offered up as excuses at times like this, it is the apparently terrifying, suffocating fear instilled by a climate of political correctness which emerges as the main culprit in the Rotherham scandal.

When an issue or cultural pathology presents itself in any British community, civic leaders should be able to talk about it directly and work swiftly to address it without fear of reprisal or backlash – though they should also be of sufficient character and moral fibre that they are willing to incur such a backlash. Rotherham, apparently, lacked both attributes – there was a heavily stultifying culture of political correctness which dictated which issues could be examined and tackled, and there was a lack of quality local leadership at any level willing to take on the toxic culture.

This is despite the fact that many people in the local Muslim community were equally outraged by the contents of the report, and declared that they would have willingly participated in efforts to stamp out sexual abuse within their community if only the council had made them aware of the nature and extent of the problem. Once again, the real enemy seems not to be the minority community itself, but rather people within society at large who are trying to curry favour from goodness knows where by wilfully and falsely equating scrutiny with racism.

Consider, by contrast, the lectures and condescension which British politicians are only too happy to dole out to members of Britain’s black community. Echoing similar calls made by President Barack Obama in the United States, David Cameron has been happy to go on record calling for a “responsibility revolution” among black families and black fathers in particular, in order to stem the tide of gun and knife crime in British cities. In these sermons there is no reflection on the socioeconomic circumstances which might lead to higher instances of family breakdown and absentee fathers, just an assignation of blame and a call to do better.

Tumbleweeds gently roll in place of the admonitions that David Cameron and his ministers consistently fail to dole out to other communities facing particularly acute problems of their own. And in the only comparable example, calls by British politicians for the British Muslim community to do more to watch out for and prevent radicalisation and extremism among their disaffected youth, there has been extremely heavy pushback from many prominent people in the media.

This is the insidious power of political correctness gone too far. Often borne out of a genuine desire to be inclusive and avoid giving undue offence, too often it becomes a self-policing dogma that rewards total, unthinking loyalty and the holding of “politically correct” thoughts and positions while punishing and excluding those who are unsure, or who question the status quo.

In these politically correct fiefdoms, groups which enjoy the benefit of politically correct protection are free to live and act unchallenged and unimpeded, while those less astute or well-represented are subject to the laws and rigorous oversight that governs the rest of us. Professor Jay’s report leaves little doubt as to which particular group and community enjoyed de facto immunity from the law in Rotherham.

Of course, the child sexual abuse scandal was not entirely limited to the Pakistani heritage community in Rotherham. And the last thing that anyone should want is to encourage the Britain First-style “Muslim paedos off our streets” marches and battle cries that are becoming increasingly common in the far right community. But where there is a festering problem in any of Britain’s ethnic or religious communities, we need to be able to talk about it frankly and openly without being labelled intolerant or racist. And local authority after local authority, Britain is currently failing this test.

The other most recent example of Britain’s failure to hold all of our diverse religious and ethnic sub-communities to the same standards of behaviour was the Birmingham schools Trojan Horse scandal, which rumbles on and which compromised the educations of thousands of children, who were willfully exposed to some very un-British values at the expense of the taxpayer. As the first concerns were raised and the investigation began, false accusations of racism and Islamophobia not only hampered the work of the Department of Education and thwarted the will of law-abiding non-extremist parents, they also served to sow divisions in the community which persist to this day.

But a compromised education can be repaired. Theocratic teachings and hardline conservative approaches to music, gender inequality and other unwelcome imports from the fifteenth century can, in time, be unlearned. What cannot be undone is the systematic rape and sexual abuse of thousands of British children, some of Pakistani heritage themselves, by malicious adults from their own community – all of which took place under those nose of a local government machine that is big and powerful and only too happy to proactively intervene in citizens’ lives when not constrained by a veto from the forces of political correctness.

Many articles will be written about how this came to happen, and many politicians will say “never again”. But the core enabler of this sexual abuse epidemic is not hard to fathom. The road to Rotherham began when it was made implicitly clear to those in power that political correctness trumps child welfare.

The Curious Appeal Of Basic Income

Samuel Hooper8 Comments

basic income 1

 

What if the state stripped away the whole confusing, tangled web of benefits, allowances and tax credits, and replaced them with a fixed weekly government payment to every UK citizen, set according to age and regardless of wealth or employment?

What if an annual stipend of £3,962 for every British adult was the price of ending the endless debate and inaction about Britain’s broken welfare system?

This is the utopian future envisaged by The Citizen’s Income Trust, an organisation that generates ideas and policies around the concept of a guaranteed universal minimum income, or basic income, for everyone – no exceptions.

The New Statesman reports:

The Trust proposes a radical reform of the national welfare system, suggesting the annual spend on benefits should be distributed equally among all citizens, regardless of their income or employment status. Under their proposals, 0-24 year olds would receive £56.25 per week, 25-64 year olds would receive £71 per week and those 65 and over would receive £142.70 per week.

Analysing figures from the 2012-13 financial year, the cost of such a scheme is projected at around £276bn per year – just £1bn more than the annual welfare budget that year –making the implementation of a citizen’s income close to revenue and cost neutral.

Disability and housing benefits would remain intact, but the scheme would replace all other benefits including child benefits, income support and jobseeker’s allowance, national insurance and state pensions. Included in the current annual spend figures is £8bn in Department of Work and Pensions (DWP) administration and £2bn in HMRC tax credit administration and write-offs.

The idea is of particular interest because it is almost revenue neutral. Conservatives and libertarians might argue that the current welfare bill and resultant tax burden is far too high as it is, and that switching one expensive system for another of equal cost would be of no fiscal benefit. This may be true. But it is also the case that four years into a Conservative-led administration, little has been done to effect root-and-branch change of Britain’s welfare system. If not now, when will it happen? Is our current position really the high water mark of what conservatism is able to do to change Britain’s expensive but largely ineffectual system?

An exception must of course be made for Iain Duncan Smith’s Universal Credit programme, which promises to accomplish at least some of the same goals as the Citizen’s Income Trust by streamlining welfare payments into a single payment, calculated by a fiendishly complex formula, designed to ensure that there is a constant financial incentive at every point for citizens to switch from welfare to work when they are able. But Universal Credit doesn’t begin to touch pensions, which remain unreformed and very much the unspoken third rail of British politics. Neither does it address Gordon Brown’s toxic legacy of tax credits, which are essentially government subsidies to business to create more low-paid jobs.

Battle-weary conservatives and libertarians such as Semi-Partisan Sam, long used to a hostile climate for their views, might be forgiven for thinking – with the Cameron government’s popularity at an ebb and with Ed Miliband’s unrepentently unreformed Labour Party ahead in the polls – that the battle for shrinking the state has been lost, and the only scraps left to fight over are questions of how we administrate the massive bureaucracy of redistribution.

Here lies the advantage of the Citizen’s Income Trust’s proposal. The fact that such a radical change wouldn’t cost the treasury any more money forces us to focus not on the costs, but on the other benefits and disadvantages of transitioning to a universal income society. What would be the effects on motivation and incentive to work if the government provided such a floor below which no citizen could fall, unlike the current system of benefits which requires active and continual petitioning on the part of the claimant? And what are the broader moral implications?

A recent article by Noah Gordon in The Atlantic walked through some of these issues as they pertain to the United States, and outlined the beginnings of a conservative case for what they call “guaranteed basic income”:

Apart from lifting millions out of poverty, the plans promote efficiency and a shrinking of the federal bureaucracy. No more “79 means-tested programs.” Creating a single point of access would also make many recipients’ lives easier. If they knew they had something to fall back on, workers could negotiate better wages and conditions, or go back to school, or quit a low-paying job to care for a child or aging relative. And with an unconditional basic income, workers wouldn’t have to worry about how making more money might lead to the loss of crucial benefits.

These are all undeniably advantages that would aid, not hinder, the workings of a lightly regulated labour market such as those in the UK or US. One of the main problems for those on low incomes is that there never arises an opportunity to save and create a personal safety net in case of misfortune. In these circumstances, unforeseen events such as illness, unemployment or even an unexpectedly high bill can lead to disaster, a precipitous drop in living standards, and a return to benefits in an endless inescapable cycle. A basic income would at least do away with this honey trap that keeps so many people mired in poverty.

But a guaranteed minimum income would also perpetuate the scourge of the universal benefit. As the Conservative-led coalition government found when it tried to cap child benefit for higher income earners, there is often huge resistance when something once available to everyone is suddenly means-tested or restricted in any way. But unlike most of the commentary that suggests the solution is not to means-test at all, the problem was that people unneeding and undeserving of a financial benefit were ever receiving it in the first place.

When child benefit was capped in 2012, families with a single earner earning £60,000 or more per year lost the benefit, and the fallout was significant – people still cite the benefit cut high in their reasons for dissatisfaction with David Cameron and his supposed contempt for the Conservative grassroots. Of course, the conservative grassroots should never have been content to pay higher taxes in exchange for getting a fraction of their money back through a universal benefit anyway, but this shortcoming was widely overlooked.

Everyone squeals when a universal benefit is taken away, even when the payments are only subsidising violin lessons, wine club memberships or second holidays abroad. And the fact that a payment intended to help with the purchase of essentials such as children’s clothing or nutritious food is co-opted by the middle classes and those on upper incomes to subsidise luxuries speaks to the tremendous waste that such benefits represent.

The one other area where a minimum universal income holds some appeal is the fact that it attempts to reward work and contributions which are not recognised by the market. From the New Statesman:

A citizen’s income also helps compensate for people’s non-financial contributions in a society and culture such as caring for children or elderly parents, undertaking voluntary work or pursuing hobbies and creative interests. Given the safety net of a small guaranteed income, there’s more room for career changes, education and enterprise projects too.

This side of the argument is one too often overlooked by those on the right. Of course it is right and proper that conservatives should support and defend the role of the free market in Britain – that much is crucial. But sometimes – perhaps forgivably, since the free market is under such constant attack by so many voices on the left – we can overlook the fact that the market does not account for everything, and that there are externalities to be considered too.

At present, negative externalities such as environmental pollution or the social harm caused by bad parenting are inadequately accounted for, if at all. Just because it is difficult to apportion costs to such things doesn’t mean that we are granted a licence to throw our hands in the air and make no attempt – but time and again, this is what we do. Therefore, there is some argument that a minimum income could address this shortfall, though it would certainly be a very blunt instrument with which to tackle a problem that likely needs more surgical – or radical – intervention.

As Gordon writes in The Atlantic:

Yet the effort to create a reform conservatism and reconstitute the GOP as the “party of ideas” seems to demand contemplating legitimately radical new ideas on welfare reform.

Radical thinking is certainly required, in Britain as well as in America. If Iain Duncan Smith’s Universal Credit experiment ever actually rolls out on a significant scale and beds down sufficiently that it cannot be immediately unpicked by an incoming Labour administration, then this might be the start of a different radical solution. But at this point, it seems equally likely that Universal Credit will collapse under a mountain of bad headlines, negative spin from Labour and the ubiquitous government IT contract failures that seem to blight any ambitious effort of any scale. If this becomes the case, could a future British Conservative government turn instead to universal minimum income as an alternative?

The view of this blog is that a basic or universal minimum income should indeed be considered in the event of the failure of Universal Credit – though a higher payment incorporating (and doing away with) housing benefit, making it a truly single payment, would be preferable to the model proposed by the Citizen’s Income Trust. Arriving at this viewpoint requires the realisation that the libertarian ideal is not achieveable in modern day Britain, at least not in the short to medium term – there are simply too many people beholden to the idea of a big, activist state.

But in proposing a basic income, conservatives and libertarians can at least make all of their concessions in one unpalatable gulp. Subsidising those who choose not to work may be distasteful, but it is a concession that has to be made only once, as opposed to endless tweaks and patches to a leaking and inefficient welfare system with numerous defined benefits. The mere fact that the dull debate about the extent and cost of benefit fraud would be eliminated at a stroke is in itself almost enough of a reason to support the idea.

Accepting a basic income could thus be acceptable, and even desirable,  if concessions were won from the left ensuring that other regulations (particularly in the labour market) would be reduced commensurately, leading to a more flexible labour market and a more competitive economy. The left can have their cherished goal of a safety net and minimum guaranteed standard of living below which no citizen may fall, but only if the right can have their prize of light-touch regulation throughout the economy. And as with all the best political deals, both sides could legitimately claim victory.

The Swiss will be the next to decide on whether or not to adopt a guaranteed basic income for all citizens. Theirs will be an interesting test case. But opportunities could soon arise for the radical policy to find its way into the manifestos of Britain’s main political parties – Conservatives in the event that they lose in 2015 and are forced to return to the drawing board, Labour if Ed Miliband decides to actually stand for something at the election, and even UKIP as they seek to square the circle and please their newfound ex-Labour supporters while retaining the backing of their energetic conservative-libertarian wing.

Of these, UKIP would seem the most likely buyers at present. Nigel Farage’s party need a strong narrative to cling to as their core messages on the EU and immigration tumble down the list of voters’ priorities in the general election campaign. What better way to eclipse the shambles of their 2013 party conference than to storm out of the gate with a bold policy proposal that could unite both left and right, whilst simultaneously wrongfooting the two legacy parties?

If we cannot have our libertarian Jerusalem in England’s green and pleasant land, perhaps we could at least be partially satisfied with the curious compromise of universal basic income.

A Sermon On Justice And Reconciliation From Ferguson, Missouri

Samuel Hooper3 Comments

Ferguson Missouri MO Fourth 4th July parade 2

  

What to say about the slow-motion tragedy unfolding in Ferguson, Missouri?

The few known facts – that a black teenager, Michael Brown, was shot to death by Darren Wilson, a white police officer, in disputed circumstances – belie the visceral anger that has consumed the town.

The subsequent actions by the authorities, notably the St. Louis County Police – stonewalling on releasing the name of the officer involved, refusing to release the autopsy details, waging an increasingly military-style war of aggression against legitimate protesters and journalists, and releasing CCTV footage of Michael Brown purportedly robbing a convenience store in what can only be interpreted as an act of pre-emptive character assassination – have only compounded the sense that a predominantly white establishment have more interest in protecting their good names and quelling dissent than administering justice.

St. Louis is a city that I know, have spent much time in, and feel close to. People should not be put off St Louis, Missouri and the surrounding area by the horrible scenes unfolding there now on television and Twitter, because the current crisis is not representative of the state and its citizens. But having personal experience of the area,  it is also glaringly evident that the violence and racial tension that forced itself into our collective consciousness with the shooting of Michael Brown last week was looming, unaddressed, for a long time.

Since I have known St Louis, it has been a city of two halves – the still somewhat dicey downtown area and select suburbs with higher black and lower income populations on one level, and the highly desirable enclaves and suburbs (such as Clayton and University City) that surround them, populated by a much wealthier (and whiter) demographic on the other. Everyone may cheer on their hometown St. Louis Cardinals baseball team on game day, but there is a clear divide between those who can afford tickets to watch the game at Busch Stadium and those who have to tune in on the radio or TV.  Tensions between the city’s two halves, while not ordinarily visible to the casual observer, have roiled this part of Missouri for years.

The New York Times thoroughly summarised the history of this divide in a recent article, revealing the underlying causes of the difference between St. Louis City and County:

Back in 1876, the city of St. Louis made a fateful decision. Tired of providing services to the outlying areas, the city cordoned itself off, separating from St. Louis County. It’s a decision the city came to regret. Most Rust Belt cities have bled population since the 1960s, but few have been as badly damaged as St. Louis City, which since 1970 has lost almost as much of its population as Detroit.

This exodus has left a ring of mostly middle-class suburbs around an urban core plagued by entrenched poverty. White flight from the city mostly ended in the 1980s; since then, blacks have left the inner city for suburbs such as Ferguson in the area of St. Louis County known as North County … 

Many North County towns — and inner-ring suburbs nationally — resemble Ferguson. Longtime white residents have consolidated power, continuing to dominate the City Councils and school boards despite sweeping demographic change. They have retained control of patronage jobs and municipal contracts awarded to allies.

This history lesson may seem a million miles away from the reality on the streets of Ferguson today, but it is directly relevant. It is because of structures such as this, where the now-minority white establishment continues to wield almost unchallenged control over the levers of local government, that allow the scenes of high-handed crackdowns on civil assembly and free speech as practiced by the predominantly white County Police.

The attitude – sometimes explicit, sometimes more subtle – of many of the wealthy St. Louis County residents to their St. Louis City and poorer County neighbours – has often been one of impatience and grudging forebearance on one end of the spectrum, and wilful ignorance on the other.

In 2009, St. Louis residents faced draconian cuts to their Metro public transportation service, the network of buses and light rail that connects the city. Residents of generally wealthy St. Louis County voted against an increase in the transit sales tax that would have raised $80 million to fund the Metro’s operation. They made little use of public transportation themselves – they were wealthy and drove cars. But the subsequent service cuts predominantly impacted the poorer County residents and the City residents who rely on public transport to get around. One figure implied that access to jobs in St. Louis County was reduced from 98 to 71 per cent.

Why does this matter? Because it was the poorer, predominantly black workers who served the coffee, sold the groceries and worked in the nursing homes used by the wealthy St. Louis county residents. A measure came up for vote that would have prevented it from becoming exponentially harder for these people to get to work in their low paid jobs every day. And the response of the County voters: Tough luck, we won’t pay a penny more to fund the civic infrastructure that you need. Screw you, we got ours.

Take this attitude and repeat it in every area, from education to police traffic stops, and you get a sense of the climate in which the Michael Brown shooting took place, and how little the two sides of St. Louis have historically been able to empathise with one another.

And on Saturday 9th August, it led to this:

Ferguson Missouri Michael Brown Protests Police

  

On my visits to St. Louis, a visit to the Episcopalian Christ Church Cathedral was always on the itinerary. The church and its community made a lasting impression on me with their many acts and expressions of love, welcoming and tolerance which sometimes seem so much at odds with the prevailing impression of Midwestern Christianity in America.

The way that Christ Church Cathedral (both in its grand stone home on Locust Street and its lively Facebook presence online) is responding to the crisis as it roils the city is perhaps a model to be studied and followed by all of the jostling interest groups – police forces, politicians, civil rights groups, the media and the oft-reported but scarcely-heeded residents – that have descended upon the area.

Yesterday, the Cathedral’s Dean Michael Kinman had this to say:

“The police and the justice system needs to hear the cries of the people and the people need to hear the cries of the police and the justice system, and we as followers of Jesus are the ones to stand in the breach between and even as we are being convicted and converted ourselves, help everyone on every side have their Jesus moment of conviction and conversion, of truth and reconciliation….

“The cry is ringing out from St. Louis around the world. The mothers are crying “Save my child,” and it is time for us to hear that cry and let it change our hearts and with changed hearts together lead this change in the world.

“St. Louis, this is our moment. And we know that this is not a child that will be healed instantly. The tasks are many, the obstacles are large and the journey will be long. But we are the Body of Christ and, with God’s help, together we will get the job done.”

Amen to this. Thus far, the police and the justice system have not been hearing the cries of the people. And in many cases they have conspicuously not been listening, either. Not in Ferguson, Missouri, and, sadly, not in many other towns and cities across America. For black Americans, the police are not automatically the reassuring presence on the street that they are to most whites – in fact, quite the opposite.

The protests taking place now would not be happening on their current scale and intensity if the death of Michael Brown was not just the latest of a litany of tragedies – and perhaps even injustices, depending on the outcome of this investigation – to disproportionally befall black victims and black communities. Looting and violence are reprehensible, but the situation in Ferguson does not exist in a vacuum, and it is not fair or intellectually honest to haughtily condemn them exclusively as failures of personal responsibility and ethics without taking the context of deprivation and repression in which they are happening.

That is not to say that a better, more peaceful path is not there for the taking. The police captain whose empowerment to take over control of the ongoing Ferguson situation from the hapless (and very culpable) St Louis County Police initially caused such a lull in the violence and bitter feeling showed the way with his early remarks:

“And we all ought to be thanking the Browns for Michael. Because Michael is going to make it better for our sons to be better black men. Better for our daughters to be better black women. Better for me so I can be a better black father. And, our mothers, so they can be even better than they are today. Lets continue to show the nation who we are. But, when these days are over and Michael’s family is still weeping, still on their knees praying. No matter what positive comes out, we still need to get on our knees and pray. We need to thank Mike for his life. We need to thank him for the change that he is going to make in America. I love you, I stand tall with you and I’ll see you out there.”

The difference that good leadership – and one man – can make is telling, and is encapsulated in this quote from a local resident, given last Thursday when hopes that the crisis was easing were still high:

But the presence of Johnson was clearly the difference between Thursday and the four nights of turmoil that preceded it.

 “I love this man so much,” said Angela Whitman of Berkeley. “He’s been here since the beginning,giving us encouragement and letting us know we’ll get through this.”

Conversely, the fact that the residents of Ferguson are not yet “through this” shows the limitations of good leadership and one man. Putting a local police chief – with black skin and roots to the community – in charge was a good first step, but it does not make up for the woefully slow response of Missouri Governor Jay Nixon. Nor does it make up for the fact that America’s libertarian political cheerleaders paused so obviously to test the waters before finally jumping into the fray.

The parachuting in of a black police captain does not make up for the many blatant violations of civil liberties – and the dignity of Ferguson protesters – inflicted by the overequipped and underprepared St Louis County Police in the preceding days. It does not make up for the flagrant inequalities in the American justice system, which incarcerates and punishes a huge number of young black men, stamping an indelible black mark on their records and making it even harder for them to ever break free from their circumstances and achieve the American Dream. And it does not make up for the false but universally known fact – reinforced over and over again, in lessons from cautionary tales like those of Trayvon Martin and now Michael Brown – that in America, a black life is worth far less than a white one.

One way or another, the protesters will eventually leave the streets of Missouri. So will the riot police, the clouds of tear gas and the world’s media filming it all. Michael Brown’s family will continue to grieve. These facts are certain, predictable, unchangeable. What remains within the power of people to influence is the legacy of this latest tragic black death on a city street. Will there be a meaningful and lasting change in police tactics, and a broader change in the way that the police seek to interact with – and reflect – the communities that they serve? And will there be a recognition that on America’s present trajectory, Michael Brown’s death was every bit as inevitable as that of the next person shot down without justification or consequences?

It takes a lot to change the culture of a local police department, let alone the judicial system of an entire nation. And for all the good that the players in Ferguson can do to bring these issues to our attention and make us face uncomfortable facts as they seek to reconcile and come to terms with what has taken place, it is usually at the state and national level where any lasting, widespread changes are enacted.

Unfortunately, this means that it is left to the slow-moving and cautious Missouri governor Jay Nixon, the vacationing President Obama (himself hamstrung in his response after failed interventions in the Trayvon Martin shooting and other incidents) and a host of national politicians who are more inclined to use the pain of Ferguson, Missouri for their own ends than to solve a common problem. With this predictable cast list, there seems little hope that we will not be reassembling in a few months’ time to beat our breasts over the next police shooting, mass shooting or other act of wanton violence.

But still, we must hope. And in the absence of any meaningful national leadership, the people of Ferguson, Missouri must lead the way themselves in turning a case study in “Community Policing – How Not To Do It” into a model of outreach and reconciliation for the rest of America.

For the sake of everyone, black and white, city and county, this dark chapter in American history must not be endured for nothing.

  

Statue of Reconciliation Coventry Cathedral Britain

  

Cover Picture: Fourth of July Parade in Ferguson, Missouri – NOCO magazine

Middle Image: Police in riot gear advance through clouds of tear gas in Ferguson

Closing Image: Statue of Reconciliation, Coventry Cathedral, Coventry, UK

  

John Major’s Immigration Comments, And The Tory Dilemma

Samuel HooperLeave a comment

John Major Immigration

 

In a blast from the past, former prime minister John Major, continuing his recent trend of interventions in the British political debate, has made headlines for supposedly contradicting David Cameron’s stance on immigration.

The Huffington Post reports:

In an apparent snub to David Cameron, the former Conservative Prime Minister said it was admirable that people coming to the UK had the “guts and the drive” to travel thousands of miles to Britain in order to improve their lives, not just to “benefit from our social system”.

Speaking to the BBC Radio 4 programme Reflections with Peter Hennessy, he continued: “I saw immigrants at very close quarters in the 1950s and I didn’t see people who had come here just to benefit from our social system.

“I saw people with the guts and the drive to travel halfway across the world in many cases to better themselves and their families. And I think that’s a very Conservative instinct.”

Of course, John Major is absolutely right. People who make the long journey to Britain in order to build a better life for themselves and their families are highly likely to have drive, ambition and work ethic in greater degrees than the average sedentary Brit. But in seeking to create a story in the middle of political slow news season, many media outlets (including the BBC) have been somewhat disingenuous in the way that they presented Major’s remarks.

The former prime minister was quite specific that he was talking about the kind of immigration that he saw first-hand, growing up and living with his family in Brixton, London. The immigration profile at that time was light years away from the current breakdown of immigration in the 21st century, and crucially did not include large numbers of European immigrants coming to Britain availing themselves of their rights under the EU’s common market. In John Major’s youth, the EU and the dream of ever-closer union was but a twinkle in the eye of the era’s political leaders.

The 1950s did see a period of mass immigration, but it was not of the same scale in absolute numbers and was mostly immigration from the Commonwealth as British passport holders born overseas took advantage of their right to settle in the mother country. To speak in praise of immigration from this era is not necessarily to contradict the government’s efforts to reduce net immigration in the year 2014. Thus it is disingenuous for the British media to take John Major’s praise of a 1950s phenomenon and translate it into criticism of 21st century policy.

The one area where John Major is absolutely right, and was not misrepresented by the media, is his claim that many immigrants do indeed have quite conservative instincts at heart. This instinct can be broken down into two types – social conservatism (particularly the case for immigrants from heavily Catholic countries) and fiscal conservatism. The worry for the Tories is that they are completely failing to tap into either of these sentiments or to build meaningful levels of support among recent immigrants.

But how can the government go about doing this while honouring its pledge to reduce overall net immigration? There is a narrow tightrope to walk between responding to public concern about the current immigration rate and making it clear to existing immigrants that they are welcome, encouraging them to assimilate as quickly as possible and then reaching out to them to turn them into Conservative voters. The margin for error is small, but it should still be possible.

Many recent immigrants come from countries that only a few decades ago struggled to escape from under the heavy yoke of Soviet communism – think Poland or Slovakia as prime examples. There is a love and appreciation for capitalism and the free market among many Poles and Slovaks that is often absent from indigenous British people, who tend to take our system for granted or focus only on its faults. And at a time when Ed Miliband’s Labour party seem to offer heavy regulation and re-nationalisation as their only policy prescriptions, the Conservatives have a ripe opportunity to show that their vision of lower taxes and greater freedom will deliver for everyone in the UK, immigrants firmly included.

There is also political capital to be made in toughening up the rules around access to benefits for newly arrived immigrants. The notion that newly arrived immigrants should be allowed to claim support from a system which they have never contributed towards is just as galling to a Polish family settled in Britain for five years and paying taxes as it would be to any UK citizen. But successfully arguing this point would require deft and precise use of language so that the media has no opportunity to run with the false trope that the evil Tories believe that all immigrants are benefit-scrounging parasites.

In short, the areas where the Conservative party (and indeed UKIP) currently alienate immigrants tend to be around the semantics and tone of the debate, whereas their actual policy prescriptions (maximum freedom, low taxes) make an ideal fit for many prospective immigrant voters.

But the Conservatives should have absolutely no expectations that the media, or the Labour Party, will lift a finger to guide immigrants toward this truth. In fact, if the twisting of John Major’s words today is anything to go by, the opposite will take place – the Conservatives will be painted as heartless and cruel in wanting to enforce stricter entrance criteria, while the many negative ways that Labour policies have the potential to hurt economic migrants will be glossed over and excused.

The irony is that British immigration policy tends to only affect new immigrants once – at the point they enter the UK to settle and work. From that point onward, once they are safely settled and working in Britain, the issue becomes largely irrelevant. Ed Miliband and the Labour Party have thus far managed to coast along on the assumption that they will win the lion’s share of the recent immigrant vote because they tend to advocate for a more laissez-faire border policy. But there is absolutely no reason why this should be the case.

The Conservatives have a compelling message to offer those recent immigrants who will go to the ballot box for the first time in 2015. It is a message of liberty and personal responsibility which should resonate strongly with just the type of people who took a huge risk in packing up their lives and moving to Britain. But for all his well-intentioned words, John Major failed to deliver that message in a way that cut through the skewed agenda of the news editors.

David Cameron and the Conservative Party urgently needs charismatic MPs and councillors to step up, refine and then start sharing this new message, this Conservative pact with recent immigrants. If they do not rise to the challenge, Labour will win the immigrant vote by default once again.