Dear Sarajevo, I’ll never forget the first time we met…

The first time I saw Sarajevo was from the window of a train, having spent a sweat-soaked three days travelling across Europe in the late-June heat.  Our compartment was air-conditioned by way of a spare bootlace tying the window open.  We had left Zagreb at 9 that morning and it was now approaching 6pm as the hills fell away to reveal the outskirts of the city.  We disembarked the packed train and the crowds dissipated into the city, leaving us standing bewildered in virtually disserted plaza outside the station.

I was finally there, in the city I had spent four years studying and many more obsessing over.

It was all a little surreal.  Here were the landmarks I’d seen on archive TV news footage burning and shattering into dust, whilst shells and sniper fire echoed around.  In the peaceful evening sunshine, it was hard conflate the two images.  The tram we took to our hostel passed under the Holiday Inn, still towering in garish ochre over the expanse of Sniper Alley.  That day, cars, trams and pedestrians made their way untroubled along the wide road out to Ilidža.  I looked up at the surrounding hills, clambering down into the town at this point, orientating myself in this strange new reality.

My friends and I stayed six days before heading south to Mostar. I could have stayed for six weeks.  You can devour everything there is to read about somewhere, but until you visit, you cannot appreciate the taste, the touch and the sound of a place.  The random juxtaposition of Euro-pop and the call to prayer; the bitterness of your first Bosnian coffee, drunk in a tiny front room up a spiral staircase; walking barefoot home from a mountain-top restaurant in a summer storm.

I was just eight years old when the war ended in 1995, so my vague memories are limited to the coverage on Newsround.  My curiosity about Bosnia was piqued at a much later age and my visit served only to cement the country's place in my heart.  I am not arrogant enough to presume that because I have visited Sarajevo I can even begin to imagine how they suffered during the siege.  I do not pretend to know the city like a local.  Far from it.  There is so much more to learn, to experience and discover in this fascinating European capital.  I highly recommend a visit.

Sadly, all too often, Sarajevo is associated with war.  The Latin Bridge spanning the River Miljacka, on which Gavrilo Princip shot Archduke Franz Ferdinand, is a stark reminder that this is the city in which the war to end all wars began.  And if they are unaware of that connection, many people automatically connect Sarajevo with the horrific images of the 1990s.

But despite spending three-and-a-half years under almost constant fire from encircling forces in the mountains around the city, Sarajevo survived.  In the summer months, the BSA turned off the water; in the winter, they cut off fuel supplies.  They arbitrarily sniped at pedestrians as they sprinted across road junctions and landed shells at random.  Against this backdrop, Sarajevans held a film festival and classical music concerts.  They dug a tunnel under the airport to bring supplies in from beyond the frontline.  And when the war was over, they quietly picked up the pieces of their lives and rebuilt their multicultural city, where East meets West.

Being the only student of the war in the group, I didn’t inflict too much history on my fellow travellers.  We visited what remains of the airport tunnel and the siege exhibition in the historical museum.  But, to the informed eye, the signs of the conflict which was raging just twenty years ago are everywhere.  Pavements and buildings are pock-marked with bullet holes and shell craters.  I watched in a dumbstruck trance as my friends shopped in the Markale marketplace.  The only sign of the shell that fell there in February 1994 is a memorial along the back wall bearing the names of the 68 who died there; you’d miss it if you weren’t looking for it.  A market trader accidentally knocked his sack trolley into it the glass casing around the shell crater.  And there were the railings over which I had seen the image of a mutilated body slumped.

Yet it felt necessary not to be seen noticing these things.  Whether it was due to my own awkwardness, being intimately acquainted with the pusillanimous efforts of the British government to end the war, or a sense of intrusion, it seemed somehow inappropriate, or at the very least impolite, to mention the war.

Aside from one moment of tension on arrival, when, confused and tired from travelling across seven countries and dealing with four different currencies in one weekend, we attempted to pay for our room with Croatian Kuna and were curtly informed that Bosnia was a different country, it was not apparent from the Bosnians we spoke to that a war had taken place.  We were accepted on face value as tourists and the people we met were eager to show us the delights of their beautiful country.

There was a sense almost as if the people were holding their breath.  The government buildings were set apart from the rest of the vibrant city, shrouded in a fearsome quiet.  Sarajevans were reclaiming their lives through hospitality, culture and congeniality, not through politics, which, since Dayton, have become toxic in the capital which suffered so much during the siege.  Declarations of political intent could tear apart a city which has restored itself to peace so successfully.

Over the last month, however, Sarajevo has awoken.  Sparked by the political stalemate over legislation governing the allocation of ID numbers, which has left babies born since February without numbers and therefore without access to insurance and passports, protesters have come out in force onto the streets of Sarajevo. The demonstrations have been further fuelled by the story of baby Berina, whose life-saving medical treatment in Serbia was delayed because she could not be issued a passport.  An emergency 180 day law was passed on 5 June allowing ID numbers to be allotted, but it was too late for Berina, who passed away on 13 June.

The sticking point is that politicians from the Republika Srpksa, the Bosnian Serb entity within Bosnia-Herzegovina, want the ID numbers to contain a signifier identifying the bearer’s region.  Bosnian Croat and Bosnian Muslim politicians want the numbers to be allocated randomly.  As a result, Parliament is at an impasse.  The protesters set a deadline of 30 June for the government to break the deadlock, but that date has passed and the vote on the new draft law has been postponed until next week.

The public’s prior reluctance to protest is perhaps understandable.  The last mass protest in Sarajevo was a peace rally in April 1992.  Snipers shot into the crowd and killed two civilians.  Three-and-a-half years of war followed.  The Dayton Accords, signed in November 1995, left Bosnia-Herzegovina in a state of limbo, governed in an uneasy peace by the Federal government in Sarajevo and the Republika Srpska, with its de facto capital in Banja Luka.  The Bosnian Serbs want independence, whilst the Federal government wants unification and so the political system remains balanced on a knife edge.

Bosnians are now beginning to come out of political hibernation and exercise their democratic rights.  There has been plenty to inflame tensions in the last few weeks – the returning of 405 recently-identified bodies to Srebrenica on the 18th anniversary of the massacre, the reversal of Radovan Karadžic’s acquittal on charges of genocide in The Hague and the posturing of Bosnian Serb politicians boycotting Parliament and claiming that Sarajevo is not a safe place for Serbs.  But in Sarajevo the people have not reacted with violence but with a resounding demonstration that they will not allow the political elite to drag them back into conflict with one another.  Ethnicity has not played a part in the protesters’ message.

The recent of accession of Croatia to the EU has further highlighted the petty infighting amongst Bosnia’s politicians.  They had five years to prepare for it, but the Bosnian government still managed to miss the 1 July deadline for reforming legislation in order to allow its farmers to continue exporting food to neighbouring Croatia once it joined the EU.  Bosnia has now lost its largest export market worth 22 million euros annually.  Even if the legislation can be passed, it will take EU inspectors up to six months to give the exports the seal of approval, whilst Bosnian farmers search desperately for markets elsewhere.  Dissatisfaction with bickering politicians who appear more concerned with furthering their own personal interests than those of the Bosnian people is mounting.

It is true that the root of Bosnia’s current problems lie in the poor construction of the Dayton Accords, which left the country over-reliant on the international community and nationalist political parties.  But part of the blame lies with the people who have buried their heads in the sand and elected these politicians back into power time and time again.  With Croatia joining the European Union, perhaps the Bosnians now have a realistic goal to strive towards.  Croatia was also devastated by war twenty years ago, though admittedly not to the same extent as Bosnia, and has now recovered to a point where it can be accepted into political union with the rest of Europe.  Bosnia has a long way to go – it is predicted that they won’t be joining the EU until 2015 at the very earliest – and a lot of changes to make, but a resurgent political consciousness amongst Sarajevans may just be a start.

“Little did I dream you could be so reckless and cruel”: Surveillance and the Abuse of Power

McCarthy and assistant Roy Cohn during the hearings

On 9 June 1954, in a packed Senate Caucus Room in Washington, D.C., televised live to 80 million Americans, a historic subcommittee hearing was reaching its climax.  Senator Joseph McCarthy was taking his anti-communist crusade to the United States Army.  Beginning on 17 April, the hearings had been broadcast in their entirety, and, 30 days in, a now famous exchange took place between McCarthy and Army special counsel Joseph Welch.  McCarthy, who had been revealed as a crude bully, repeatedly shouting “point of order” to cut off people when he didn’t like what they had to say, irrelevantly revealed that a member Welch’s staff had been a member of the National Lawyers’ Guild, the only lawyers willing to defend those accused of being communists during the period.  Welch responded by calling McCarthy “reckless and cruel”, asking “have you no sense of decency, sir?” Welch’s response was met with cheers from the gallery.

Though they concluded no wrongdoing on his part, the Army-McCarthy hearings are widely perceived to mark the beginning of Joe McCarthy’s downfall.  The junior Senator from Wisconsin had first come to prominence in February 1950, when he made a speech in which he claimed to have the names of numerous individuals in the State Department “who would appear to be either card carrying members or certainly loyal to the Communist Party.”[1]  McCarthy’s claim made headlines, and despite a Senate Committee concluding that none of the names on McCarthy’s list had links with the communist party, he became a household name in America.  Having assumed the chair of the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations in 1953, McCarthy was able to widen the target of his attacks, holding 169 hearings throughout 1953 and 1954.  Taking on the US Army proved to be a step too far, however.  Following the Army hearings, McCarthy was censured by the Senate in December 1954 and in January 1955 lost his position as the Subcommittee chair.  His influence declined from this point onwards until his death in 1957.

Surveillance by official bodies is by no means a 21^st century phenomenon.  Whilst McCarthy leant his name to the age of McCarthyism, his activities constituted only a fraction of the anti-communist movement in the US, which had begun in the 1940s.  As World War II ended and the Cold War began, the communist threat posed by the Soviet Union, and subsequently China, to the American way of life became a major concern for the US government.  The prominent convictions of Alger Hiss, Klaus Fuchs and the Rosenbergs on espionage charges served only to fuel the American people’s paranoia.  In the name of protecting the US from this threat, the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) and the FBI, under the directorship of J. Edgar Hoover, conducted widespread surveillance of US citizens and thousands were added to blacklists which ended their careers.

There are no longer reds under the beds.  Nowadays the bogeyman is not the communist but the terrorist.  Contrary to the popular view of McCarthyism, many of those accused were, or had been, members of the Communist Party.  Many had links to the Soviet Union.  Whether or not they can be deemed to be ‘innocent’ victims depends on your view of communism.  In advocating the overthrow of the government, communists would doubtless argue that their actions are intended for the betterment of mankind.  Doubtless fundamentalist terrorists would argue this too.  The crucial difference for the average citizen is that terrorism directly threatens their lives and communism does not.  There are a large number of people in the UK who probably feel that not voting for the Tories was their contribution to the betterment of mankind.  Does that give the government the right to label them a subversive threat and monitor their communications?

The leaks about the NSA PRISM programme released over the last month have stirred up arguments about the right to privacy and the nature of surveillance carried out by the government.  On the surface it would seem reasonable to argue that openness can only be good for a society, if it prevents more expenses scandals, regulatory body cover-ups and police smear campaigns.  Openness is the key to combatting corruption.  As McCarthyism teaches us, we enter dubious moral territory when those in power are left to their own devices to decide who constitutes a threat to the government.

On the other hand, we understandably rely on our governments to keep us safe.  In his defence of PRISM, Obama argued that we “can’t have a hundred per cent security and also then have a hundred per cent privacy and zero inconvenience”, and maybe he’s right.  I want to be safe.  And I know that terrorists of all guises couldn't care less about me as an individual, and my views on privacy, when they take a bomb onto the London Underground or fly a plane into a skyscraper.  It would be fantastic if there was no requirement for security services, but the fact remains that there are people out there who want to kill, indiscriminately, as many others as possible.  Some level of surveillance is necessary and the intelligence services cannot protect us if our enemies know exactly how they are doing it.

I am undecided as to whether Edward Snowden is a champion of civil liberties or simply a nobody seeking notoriety.  Everybody likes a guy who knows a secret and despite our apparent outrage we have an insatiable appetite for government conspiracy theories.  But, traitor or not, Snowden’s actions have certainly highlighted the need for serious debate on this topic.

If there is a lesson to be taken away from all this it is that our privacy laws are outdated and desperately need reviewing in order to catch up with developments in electronic communication.  To say that we should not expect anything on the internet to be private ignores the fact that huge portions of our lives are lived online nowadays, from banking, to shopping, to passport applications.  We would not expect our post to be intercepted and read and our electronic communications should be treated with the same respect.  There is a difference between that which we choose to make public, our Twitter posts for example, and those communications (emails, text messages) which are intended for specific recipients.  The law has not caught up with technology and it badly needs to.  Unfettered, warrantless access to our emails, internet browsing history and mobile phone records is completely disproportionate.  Under existing legislation in the UK the police can demand communications data for terror and serious crime suspects, and these powers have been widely used already.  Judicial oversight can be given to accessing electronic communications without compromising our security, in the same way a search warrant can be obtained to enter a suspect’s house.

I am more than happy for my government to develop the tools to keep me safe from terrorists in the cyber age, but as the excesses of McCarthyism demonstrate, the abuse of power is not purely the purview of totalitarian states.  This is a universal truth that can be transposed from phone tapping in the 1950s to email hacking in the 2010s.  The solution is an urgent review of legislation accompanied by robust regulation; terrorists will not be defeated by the creation of a police state.  Sending back the McCarran Security Act in 1950 (a veto which would be overridden by Congress), President Truman wrote that “we will destroy all that we seek to preserve, if we sacrifice the liberties of our citizens in a misguided attempt to achieve national security.”[2]  The leaders of the ‘free world’ should take note.

---

[1] Ellen Schrecker, The Age of McCarthyism: A Brief History with Documents, (Bedford, 2002), p.240.

[2] Ibid., p.220.

World Elder Abuse Awareness Day (15 June 2013)

Growing old is an inescapable fact of life.  Old age awaits us all, and when it arrives, surely we would expect to be treated with the same dignity and respect that we have experienced throughout the rest of our lives.  And yet, disgracefully, for many older people, this is not the case.

In a departure from my usual genre, I want to take this opportunity to draw some attention to a topic which will come to be important to us all.

Today is World Elder Abuse Awareness Day.  It was launched on 15 June 2006 by the International Network for the Prevention of Elder Abuse (INPEA) and the UN’s World Health Organization.  On 9 March 2012, UN General Assembly Resolution 66/127 established 15 June as a UN International Day.

Much work has been done to raise the protection of vulnerable older people up the political agenda, but there is still more to do.  No one questions the need to keep our children safe, but when it comes to adults, the issue becomes more complex.  It is assumed, for many, that because we have knowledge of our rights and are able to speak for ourselves, we do not require assistance in securing these rights.  However, as we grow older, we may find ourselves physically unable to do the things we once did for ourselves.  We may find that we deteriorate mentally, leaving us unable to advocate for ourselves and totally reliant on others.

Many elderly people are extremely vulnerable.  They may not have relatives; they may live alone and be unable to leave the house unaided.  They may feel ashamed to report abuse, fearing it will be an admission that they are vulnerable and are no longer as capable as they once were.  For many elderly people, this results in them being taken advantage of, neglected, treated with disrespect and indifference and left in conditions that would cause outrage were it to happen to a child.  We know this is happening and yet society turns the other way - our growing elderly population is an inconvenience to us.

Sixty percent of all adult safeguarding alerts raised in 2011-12 involved people over 65.  The majority of this abuse takes place in people’s own homes.  According to the charity Action on Elder Abuse:

-      8.6% of older people living in our communities are subject to elder abuse (in excess of 500,000 people)

-      60% of victims are over 80 years of age and more than 15% are over 90 years old.

-      Nearly a quarter (23%) live with their abusers (66% of abusers are relatives) and 19% of victims have dementia.

The truth is that the vast majority of abuse arises out of ignorance – an inability on the part of perpetrators to see that their actions are abusive.  Financial abuse of older people is commonplace, with relatives helping themselves their “inheritance” early or selling off belongings without permission.  Many elderly people who are reliant on others to provide their care are simply neglected, either wilfully or due to time pressures.  They are left in the same position for hours, sometimes in soiled continence pads, put to bed in the afternoon or left without access to food and drink, as evidenced by a Care Quality Commission (CQC) review of dignity and respect in care homes and an Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) report, published in 2012.

Many older people, especially those with dementia, are not included in decisions about their own care.  Many, particularly those who cannot independently mobilise, are not provided with social stimulation.  No effort is made to support older people to take part in the activities they enjoyed when they were independent.  Often they spend the majority of their days sitting in lounges or in bed, not even offered the opportunity to access homes’ gardens.  It is a moral imperative that everyone should be able to enjoy the best quality of life possible until the end.  Too often providing anything beyond basic care is seen as simply not worth the effort.

Care provided by domiciliary care agencies in the home is frequently rushed, and is accordingly of poor quality, sometimes even unsafe.  In order to fit into schedules, customers are put to bed in the afternoon and are expected to stay there until the next morning.  Carers do not stay to ensure the clients are eating or drinking properly.  A CQC report into home care published in February 2013 found that the people they spoke to “felt that they lacked choice with regard to the number of new or unfamiliar care workers who arrived at their home.”  Imagine how you would feel your personal care was delivered by a succession of strangers?  This is the reality for many older people across the UK.

It cannot be denied that much of this has its roots in the current economic climate.  Staffing levels in many care homes and nursing homes are low, putting staff under pressure and leaving residents with their basic needs unmet.  Domiciliary care staff are paid minimum wage (sometimes less, as they are not paid for travel between calls) and are expected to deliver care in sometimes as a little as 15 minutes.  A United Kingdom Home Care Association (UKHCA) report, published in July 2012, found that “73% of homecare visits in England appear to be 30 minutes or shorter and a staggering 87% in Northern Ireland (42% in Wales and Scotland).

There is evidence of the use of visits which are 15 minutes or fewer in all administrations, and as high as 28% in Northern Ireland.” 

Providers report frustrations at how little local authorities are prepared to pay them to provide care, whilst the local authorities, in turn, protest that they are facing budget cuts and cannot afford to pay more.  This week the Care Minister Norman Lamb called home care providers to a summit, as he fears (quite rightly, as it turns out, given the revelations about the poor care delivered to an 83-year-old woman exposed by the BBC on Thursday) that the crisis in home care funding is “a scandal waiting to happen”.

The Care Bill

The Care Bill currently making its way through the House of Lords does much to ensure that current adult protection measures are made statutory, but it also has a number of shortfalls.  Of main concern is the fact that the Bill does not allocate adequate funding to cover the costs of the new statutory safeguarding work, nor does it touch upon provision of funding to prevent local authorities resorting to low cost care options.  The Bill also does not comprehensively protect vulnerable adults from abuse by people in positions of trust.  There need to be greater safeguards around social care staff accessing vulnerable people when the abuser is controlling access, with appropriate legal constraints to stop local authorities abusing this power.  The Bill does not provide guidance on exactly how Safeguarding Adults Boards should be funded once they are statutory, which could leave them underfunded and ineffective.

Action on Elder abuse would like to see a criminal charge of elder/adult abuse included in the Bill, which would “cover circumstances where an adult uses their relationship or position to cause or allow an older person or dependent adult to suffer unnecessary physical pain or mental suffering, or injures their health, or steals, defrauds or embezzles their money or property.”  MP Nick Smith is calling for an amendment to the Bill which will make corporate neglect an offence, in order that care home companies take responsibility for the poor standards in their homes.

The Care Bill will be going through the House of Commons later this year, so you can help by writing to your MP and highlighting some of the Bill’s weaknesses.  Please feel free to contact me for more information.  Action on Elder Abuse are also lobbying for many of these changes – visit their webpage for further details.

Raising Awareness

It is vital that a spotlight is shone on the widespread abuse of vulnerable elderly people in our society.  There are thousands of carers and relatives out there who provide excellent care, but there are too many who do not.  It is unacceptable.  Adult Safeguarding should be far higher on the government’s agenda.  It will be costly, but it should be, because this is an investment for all our futures.  We as individuals also have a responsibility for instigating a change in attitudes.  One of the first steps towards this is to spread awareness of what constitutes abuse, to make abusers to stop and think about the impact of their behaviour and to ensure that victims recognise it as abuse, and not just something to be suffered in silence.

What constitutes abuse?

Financial abuse: taking money or welfare benefits without your permission; belongings or property being withheld or stolen by another person.

Physical abuse: as well as intentional physical harm, this can include assisting you to move in a rough manner, forcible restraint, and even locking you in a room.

Emotional abuse: shouting, swearing, bullying, teasing or humiliating you or making threats.

Neglect: ignoring medical or physical care needs, whether maliciously or not.

Sexual: being made to do things of a sexual nature against your will.

Discrimination: comments or jokes about a person’s disability, age, race or sexual orientation.

Where to go for help or advice?

There are a number of places to go to get help and advice around adult safeguarding:

-      If someone has been seriously injured or is in immediate danger, you should call 999.  If you suspect a crime has been committed, it should be reported to the police.

-      Contact Adult Services, a department of your local council.  You can find out who your local authority is on the DirectGov website. Contact numbers can be found in the phone book.  Tell them you want to report an Adult Safeguarding issue.  They will be able to advise and support you.  Most councils will also have further information on adult safeguarding on their websites.

-      If the concerns are about a care home or domiciliary care service, you can contact the regulatory body to report any concerns:

o   If you live in England, this is the Care Quality Commission - 03000 616161

o   If you live in Scotland, this is the Scottish Care Commission - 0845 603 0890

o   If you live in Wales, this is the Care and Social Services Inspectorate for Wales - 01443 848450

o   If you live in Northern Ireland, this is the Northern Ireland Department of Health, Social Services and Public Safety - Social Services Inspectorate  - 0289 052 0500

-      These bodies also offer a service for raising about concerns about a care that you work for, which can be raised anonymously if you wish.  The CQC advise that before contacting them with a whistleblowing allegation, you consider:

- speaking to your line manager or a senior member of staff about your concerns.

- reading your employer's whistlebleblowing policy which will give you information on       what to do next.

-      Mencap also run a free confidential whistleblowing helpline for all care staff working in the UK – the number is: 08000 724725

-      From October 2010 the Local Government Ombudsman has been able to consider complaints from people who fund their own care through Direct Payments. It is a free service, but in most cases they will only consider a complaint once the care provider has been given a reasonable opportunity to deal with the situation. You can contact their advice team on 0300 061 0614

-      You can speak in confidence to your GP, practice nurse or dentist if you are being harmed.

-      The Citizens Advice Bureau is a good source of advice around financial matters, if you have any concerns in this area.  They can be contacted on 08444 111 444

-      Domestic abuse can occur at any age and is never acceptable.  If you are scared of someone you live with, you can call the National Domestic Abuse helpline on 0808 2000 247

-      Action on Elder Abuse has a free confidential helpline which provides information, advice and support to victims and others who are concerned about or have witnessed abuse. This helpline is available Monday to Friday, 9am to 5pm on: 080 8808 8141

-      Age UK also has an advice number you can call: 0800 169 6565

-      You can also call the Samaritans if you have any concerns you want to discuss on 08457 90 90 90

The conditions under which we allow our some of our elderly people to live are appalling.  We would not tolerate it for ourselves, so how can it be acceptable for those who have lost the ability to provide and speak for themselves?  Please take the time to share some of this information with the people you know.  If you have elderly friends, relatives or neighbours, you may want to consider printing out the numbers and details above to give to them.  We must do more to raise awareness of these issues, to keep them on the government’s agenda and end the abuse of our older generation to whom we owe so much.

Ripples of Hope: The Legacy of Robert F. Kennedy

Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring those ripples build a current which can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance.

     -  Robert F. Kennedy, “Day of Affirmation”, University of

      Cape Town, South Africa, 6 June 1966.

The starkest depiction of unfulfilled potential can be found in the simple, unadorned results of the 1968 California Democratic Primary:

                Senator Robert F. Kennedy                         Senator Eugene J. McCarthy[1]

                                46.3%                                                                    41.8%

Just hours after the results were announced on 4 June, Bobby Kennedy’s path to the Democratic nomination and the White House was cut tragically short when he was shot in the head by a mentally disturbed young man in the kitchens of the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles.  After hours of surgery by top neurosurgeons, Kennedy succumbed to his wounds and passed away in the early hours of 6 June 1968; forty-five years ago last Thursday.

This November marks the fiftieth anniversary of President John F. Kennedy’s assassination.  Doubtless much will be written about that fateful day in Dallas, which has captured the imagination of conspiracy theorists around the world.  A young liberal President cut down in his prime, with so much work left undone and so many questions unanswered – the man on the grassy knoll, the sixth floor of the Texas School Book depository; the assassin silenced before he could stand trial; who and why?  In contrast, Bobby’s assassination was a cut and dried affair.  The assassin was a 24-year-old Jordanian immigrant who was arrested, convicted and is still serving a life sentence today.  And yet, for its effect on the course of US politics and the disintegration of American society, Bobby Kennedy’s assassination is unquestionably the more significant of the two.

Born in 1925, Robert Francis Kennedy was the seventh of Joseph and Rose Kennedy’s nine children, eight years younger than John and born after four girls.  Bobby’s affluent and privileged upbringing was dominated by two currents - the sense of determination possessed and encouraged by his father and the strong moral character instilled by his mother.  Like his mother, Bobby was a more observant Catholic than his brothers, which shaped his sense of right and wrong throughout his political career.  He married young, to Ethel Skakel, and the couple had eleven children; Bobby was an affectionate father to them all, save his youngest daughter whose birth he did not live to see.  After graduating from Harvard and gaining a law degree from the University of Virginia, Bobby worked as an attorney in the Department of Justice, but advancement of his brother’s career was always his main concern.  Bobby ran both JFK’s successful senate campaign in 1952 and his presidential campaign 1960 and was appointed Attorney General shortly after President Kennedy took office.  He became his brother’s closest confidant in the White House, and his foremost advisor on both domestic and foreign policy.

The seeds had been sown during his time as Attorney General, but it was after the assassination of his brother that Bobby came into his own, as a politician and a man.  After a period of indecision and mourning, Bobby shunned a quiet life and, in 1964, took the opportunity to run for the vacant New York Senate seat, which he won.  As the decade progressed, RFK became the champion of the grassroots left wing, a passionate advocate of African American civil rights and the leading critic of President Lyndon Johnson’s escalating military campaign in Vietnam.  RFK was young and a charismatic orator, who was able to speak to and for the disadvantaged and the disenfranchised.  He used his unique position and reputation to exert influence far beyond that of the average junior Senator.  His speeches drew large audiences and his words inspired.  His entry into the 1968 presidential race galvanised minority groups and created an atmosphere of optimism across the United States.  His death, at the age of forty-two, was a crushing blow to those who saw in him a better future, at home and abroad.

RFK had not always been a champion of the causes he came to be associated with.  When JFK first took office, Bobby had hoped that the race relation issues in the US could be brushed under the carpet to allow his brother to concentrate on the Cold War and stopping the spread of communism.  As he became acquainted with the plight of African Americans, his views began to change.  In June 1963, RFK faced off against Alabama Governor George Wallace and called in the National Guard to escort the first black students to the State University.  Following the incident, RFK was the only member of the cabinet to recommend that President Kennedy send a civil rights bill to Congress, which would eventually become the 1964 Civil Rights Act.

RFK came to be most prominently associated with the anti-war movement during the sixties, which gathered momentum as the decade went on.  His acrimonious relationship with President Johnson had originated in their clashes during the 1960 presidential campaign and had worsened during JFK’s time in office.  The press made much of the feud, which was only heightened by Kennedy’s criticism of Johnson’s escalation of the Vietnam War.  Although uneasy about the direction the war was taking, Kennedy was inspired in his opposition to the conflict by correspondence with pacifists, academics, veterans and even officers serving in Saigon.  In linking the war in Vietnam with the US-backed action in the Dominican Republic, Kennedy was among the first to question US foreign policy and the country’s right to impose its will upon other nations.  “Can we ordain to ourselves the awful majesty of God,” he asked, in a speech at Kansas State University in March 1968, “to decide what cities and villages are to be destroyed, who will live and who will die, who will join refugees wandering in a desert of our own creation?”[2]

Bobby Kennedy’s strength lay in allowing others to shape the causes he fought for.  He saw suffering and used his privileged position to do all he could to right it, combining political acumen with a strong sense of morality.  Speaking in South Africa in 1966, where apartheid would not be ended for another twenty-five years, Kennedy told his audience: “We must recognise the full human equality of all of our people – before God, before the law, and in the councils of government. We must do this, not because it is economically advantageous, although it is; not because of the laws of God command it, although they do; not because people in other lands wish it so.  We must do it for the single and fundamental reason that it is the right thing to do.”[3]

Words are easy to manipulate and speeches are easy to give.  Many on the left of American politics in the 1960s felt that RFK was exploiting minorities to use as foot soldiers in his campaign; that he would abandon them and head for the middle ground if he took office.  But Robert Kennedy had substance as well as style.  He embodied both traditional values of integrity and steadfastness as well as the progressive thinking required to address the growing social divisions in 1960s America.  He promoted women’s rights and was among the first politicians to emphasise the need to conserve the environment.  He advocated for the poor – working-class whites, African Americans, Latinos and young people – uniting them in a vibrant grassroots coalition; impressive in a decade characterised by its divisiveness.[4]  Kennedy gave them a figurehead - a politician they could trust, who understood their problems and had a plan to fix them.  He was not afraid to go and meet the people he was representing; to speak to them and find out what they needed and wanted for their communities.  He made himself accessible to the voters; his hands were bloodied and scratched from people’s desire to get close to him during his presidential campaign.

Historians cannot deal in hypotheticals.  We are also supposed to avoid romanticising historical figures.  But there are some so truly significant that we can allow ourselves this indulgence.  It is impossible to say for certain what a Robert F. Kennedy presidency would have looked like.  Perhaps, despite his forward momentum in winning the California primary, he would not have secured the Democratic nomination.  If he had gained the nomination, perhaps he would not have won the election.  What is certain is that the Democratic National Convention descended into chaos in Kennedy’s absence, with rioting in the streets, and that Richard Nixon won the general election, comfortably beating Vice President Hubert Humphrey.  With the solitary exception of Jimmy Carter’s single term, the Democrats would not be back in the White House for over two decades.  The war in Vietnam continued to escalate, until the US pulled out and left South Vietnam to the communists in 1975.  Fifteen years and hundreds of thousands of senseless deaths had not, as RFK had predicted, prevented what the US had been seeking to deter.  Race relations deteriorated further in the 1970s, fuelled by Nixon’s “Southern Strategy” of exploiting white racism to reinstate the South as a Republican stronghold.

Had Robert F. Kennedy lived, whether or not he had been elected President, the United States would have been taken in a very different direction.  There is no doubt that Kennedy and the alliance of progressive social movements he embodied would have been challenging the Republicans every step of the way.  He was a politician who recognised that reaching down to help others up was not merely a political expedience but a moral imperative, fighting for justice with a perfect balance of humility and tenacity.  “Let us dedicate ourselves to what the Greeks wrote so many years ago,” Kennedy proposed, speaking after Martin Luther King’s assassination, just months before his own death; “to tame the savageness of man and make gentle the life of this world.”[5]  We should take the time on this sobering anniversary, in an age of sleaze and scandal, to be inspired by his words to lend a voice to those who do not have one and to remember a man who used the privileges he was born with to try and leave a better world than the one he entered.

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[1] http://www.ourcampaigns.com/RaceDetail.html?RaceID=36010 – Accessed 29.05.2013

[2] Robert F. Kennedy, “Ending the War in Vietnam”, Kansas State University, 18 March 1968.

[3] Robert F. Kennedy, “Day of Affirmation”, University of Cape Town, South Africa, 6 June 1966.

[4] Joseph A. Palermo, “In His Own Right: the Political Odyssey of Robert F. Kennedy” (New York, 2003), p.257.

[5] Robert F. Kennedy, “On the Death of the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.”, Indianapolis, Indiana, 4 April 1968.

Are We Not All Human Underneath?

The events of the past week have reignited the debates on immigration and racism whose embers have been glowing for some time.  The brutal murder of a British soldier in Woolwich was purportedly revenge for the deaths of Muslims in Iraq and Afghanistan.  In response to the attack, the English Defence League sent out a rallying cry to its members, galvanising them into organising anti-Islamic demonstrations across the country.  Viewed from some angles, the Woolwich murder and the subsequent EDL protests might suggest that white westerners and Muslims are further than ever from understanding one another, masking the more hopeful reality that extremists on all sides represent only a minority opinion.  Today’s Britain is a truly multicultural society, yet tensions between the myriad cultures are omnipresent.  Thirty-five years after Edward Said’s seminal work was first published, is it pertinent to ask whether Orientalism is alive and well in 21^st century Britain?

The central tenet of Said’s Orientalism was that Western discourse about the East (the Orient) was, and always had been, inherently prejudiced and based on a false assumptions.  Said defined ‘Orientalism’ as a “Western style for dominating, restructuring, and having authority over the Orient”, describing the Orient as an almost “European invention…a place of romance, exotic beings, haunting memories and landscapes, remarkable experiences” (Said, Orientalism, (Penguin, 1978), p.1-3).  Said argued that a European or American studying the Orient could not escape the fact that “he comes up against the Orient as a European or American first, as an individual second” (p.11).  In the third and final chapter of Orientalism, “Orientalism Now”, Said asserts that “human societies, at least the more advanced cultures, have rarely offered the individual anything but imperialism, racism, and ethnocentrism for dealing with ‘other’ cultures” (p.204).

Discussion of Orientalism resurfaced in 2011, with the arrival of the Arab Spring.  It appeared that, contrary to the expectations of the western experts, the people of Egypt, Tunisia and Libya were taking their future into their own hands. The results have been uncertain, chaotic and far from perfect – everything that is to be expected of emerging democracies.  The recent high turnout for the elections in Pakistan, including large numbers of women, despite threats and violence by the Taliban, should be a lesson for us in the West not to impose our own values on other countries, nor to assume them incapable of shaping their own civil society.  Pakistan’s fledgling democracy is being built by Pakistani people.

Said touches on the dangers of “self-congratulation” when representing your own and “hostility and aggression” when representing another (p.325).  Immanuel Kant believed that “partiality, the tendency to make exceptions on one’s own behalf or one’s own case” was “the central human weakness” from which all others flowed, and that this could be applied to nations too (quoted in Ernest Gellner, Nations and Nationalism (Oxford: Blackwell, 1983), p.2).  Human beings also appear to have a predilection for defining themselves as different to the ‘other’.  Indeed, it has been argued that a sense of British identity was forged following the Act of Union, joining Scotland with England and Wales, in 1707 on the basis of being 'Not French' (Linda Colley, Britons: Forging the Nation 1707-1837 (London: Pimlico, 1992).  These concepts – warped love of one’s own nation and seeing oneself in contrast to the other – sit at the heart of the EDL’s twisted ideology.  The same can be said of Islamic extremists.  And our response, in no uncertain terms, should be to reject Said’s assumption that we will never truly understand one another.

Despite being an atheist, I can appreciate the values enshrined in Martin Luther King’s interpretation of Jesus’ command to love your enemy.  “It is love that will save our world and our civilization," King said; "love even for enemies” (Montgomery, Alabama, 17 Nov 1957).  King went on to add in a speech on Christmas Day, 1957: “Returning hate for hate multiplies hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.”

The thirty articles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights unequivocally define a common humanity, recognising that “the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world.”  There are many different ways to see the world, but none of them excuse the mistreatment of others; subjugating women, persecuting minorities, or resorting to violence and murder.  Education has a role to play in teaching us about other cultures, in bringing the people of the world together, and in combatting Orientalism in all its guises.  Western capitalist democracy, with all its overindulgences, is certainly not the only way, nor indeed is it the best way.  There are many things we can learn from the other – from all others – which will enrich our world views, but there are other lessons, of cruelty and oppression, that we should abandon by the wayside on humanity’s journey toward enlightenment.  The values we share are far greater than those on which we disagree.  Universal tolerance will be humankind’s greatest triumph over extremists of all shapes and sizes.  In 2013, this goal is a distant dream, but the more people believe it to be achievable, and refuse to fall prey to the call to arms, the sooner we will accomplish it.

One nation...in isolation?

Thursday’s local election results have an eerily familiar ring to them.  An electorate dissatisfied with the establishment, in the throes of an economic crisis, looking for someone to blame, votes for the party which claims to represent the frustrations of the average citizen.  In the 1930s, when Germans were pushing their life savings around in wheelbarrows just to buy a loaf of bread, a vote for the National Socialists seemed like the only way to make a change.

Outsiders make easy targets for election campaigns.  Why can’t you get a job?  Because the foreigners are taking them.  Why are your benefits being cut?  Because the government is handing out houses and healthcare to immigrants.  What’s the solution?  Send them back and cut loose from the control of the European Union and the floods of workshy scroungers that come with our membership.

It’s an argument that goes down well with people frustrated by a seemingly endless recession perpetuated by a remote and duplicitous political elite.  In taking an average of 25% of the votes in the seats in which it stood, UKIP registered itself as a serious force on the British political landscape, sending a clear message to the old guard.  A vote for UKIP was a protest vote – but a dangerous one.  As purveyors of “I’m not racist, but…” ideology, UKIP’s leadership know exactly how to target the susceptible.  Though not explicitly racist, political parties which advocate intolerance as a solution to economic difficulties, can conduct a creeping and far more worrying advance into the national psyche.

UKIP, by putting the United Kingdom in its party name, plays on misplaced notions of patriotism.  Patriotism in itself is not necessarily a negative concept, but when it spills over into nationalism, it becomes a dangerous force.  Albert Einstein called nationalism “an infantile disease.”  What are nations, after all, but arbitrary lines drawn on maps?  Imagined communities, as Benedict Anderson once argued, created by man as a method of controlling others.

Immigration, sometimes on mass, sometimes in small groups, has taken place voluntarily (and not so voluntarily) throughout history.  Immigrant communities have brought their own cultures, mixed them with local customs, and created unique new traditions.  They have become part of the landscape, absorbed into the national character, no longer questioned.  Things change.  Populations move.  Communities shift and adapt around them.

Peering out from behind Rawls’ ‘Veil of Ignorance’, one might ask why anyone should be denied the right to settle where they choose.  After all, it is generally acknowledged that a person should be free to move wherever they choose within their own country.  Joseph Carens, in making his influential case for open borders that would have Nigel Farrage choking on his celebratory pint, argues that this should be applied on a global level; after all,  “whether one is a citizen of a rich nation or a poor one, whether one is already a citizen of a particular state or an alien who wishes to become a citizen” is just as morally arbitrary as your sex, race or class (Joseph H. Carens, ‘Aliens and Citizens: The Case for Open Borders’, Review of Politics,  Vol.49, (1987), p.256).

Free movement across borders would not necessarily signify the erosion of national character.  I like to use football to support this theory.  I like football.  I support West Ham United.  I do not live in West Ham, and never have done.  I support West Ham because my Dad does.  He’s never lived in West Ham either.  He supports West Ham because his father did.  My joy at West Ham’s successes and despair at their defeats is not diminished by my distance from the East End of London; nor is it detrimentally affected by the presence of rival team supporters living in the area.  Over a hundred years since the team was formed, the players still play in claret and blue and the supporters will be forever blowing bubbles.  Why can this principle not be applied at the global level?

Membership of the European Union is not the poisonous domination of our laws and national freedom that UKIP and many Tory backbenchers would have us believe.  In this day and age we need greater integration, not isolation.  Isolationism, as a foreign policy strategy, hasn’t worked all that well in the past, as the US learnt in catastrophic manner on 7 December 1941.  As Signor Ferrari asks in Casablanca, Hollywood’s most iconic critique of the White House’s isolationist policies, “My dear Rick, when will you realize that in this world today isolationism is no longer a practical policy?”

This is true more than ever.  In an increasingly globalised world, to withdraw from the European Union would be a foolish move.  Eric Hobsbawm warned that “nothing stimulates nationalism on both sides as much as international conflict” (Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism Since 1780 (CUP, 1991), p.91).  At the most pragmatic level, greater integration prevents wars.  Nations are less likely to declare war on nations with which they are politically and, most importantly, financially entangled.  The EU is not perfect; it’s a work in progress.  But human history is, despite how it might appear, on an upward trajectory.  Less than 70 years ago the nations of Europe were at war with one another.  The key to maintaining the upward trajectory is to move towards greater openness and integration.

The Conservative Party will undoubtedly run to the right on immigration and the EU to win back its supporters from UKIP.  Labour, wishing to avoid being seen as soft on immigration, will toughen its stance too.  The Westminster clique would do better to come down from on high, stop fiddling their expenses and granting privileges to the highest bidder, and learn how real people live.  Leading by example and preaching a little tolerance would be a good start.  We can only hope that calmer heads, and perhaps, cynically, traditional British apathy, will prevail.