Reject Action Plan
Tuesday, January 10, 2006

To master your fears, first you must fear your masterI downloaded and printed off New Labour's Respect Action Plan planning to give it a right old bollocking. To be honest, I'm now regretting the loss of the paper and electricity used to do so. I wonder if it's worthy of my time or yours.

The whole thing is peppered with nuggets of the most excruciating management-speak - "The Only Person Who Can Start The Cycle Of Respect Is You", "The Future Depends On Unlocking The Positive Potential Of Young People", "The Foundation Of Our Future Is Our Young", and my personal favourite, "Everyone Is Part Of Everyone Else". I mean, what happened? Did the fortune cookie industry go tits-up and New Labour take up the slack? All it needs is "Take A Swim In Lake You" and the true cringing horror would be complete.

From the outset, the document doesn't say who it's targeted at. Journalists? The poor work experience kids are the only ones who've read it, feverishly précising it in between doing the photocopying. Joe Public? Who has the time to read twenty-odd pages of tightly-spaced text? Me, if I'm honest, but I resent the monopoly on my time. I started reading it but couldn't escape the feeling I was the victim of some kind of elaborate hoax or plot to divert me from more important matters. I checked the last page just to make sure it didn't say "Congratulations on making it to the end, sucker. Did you know that 'gullible' isn't in the dictionary?" Maybe the plan is to eradicate anti-social behaviour by making every child in the country read the damn thing. There's no executive summary either - they want you to read every single word.

Admittedly, the printed document does drop onto a table with a satisfying thump. No doubt Tony and the rest will look impressive when it they bang it down at the next brainstorming session.

In his "Prime Minister's Foreword" to the document, Blair says:

If we are to achieve the vision of the Britain that we all want, then there is no room for cynicism.

The trouble of is, after nearly nine years of dossiers, initiatives, war, evasion, obfuscation and downright lies, cynicism must be hard wired into the psyches of half of the newspaper reading public. For me, at least, pure opposition to this shower is becoming a pavlovian response. I found myself thinking, "Did he write this himself? If he didn't then it's a lie to call it the 'Prime Minister's Foreword', isn't it?" I think I may be ill.

On page 3, in the "Summary: A Modern Culture of Respect", it says:

We are not starting from scratch. Since 1997 over 700,000 fewer children live in poverty, over two million more people are in work, educational attainment has improved at all key stages, the number of people sleeping rough has fallen by 70%, there have been reductions in crime and fear of crime, hospital waiting times are down and there are signs that the gap is narrowing between our most deprived communities and the rest.

To which the reply has to be: prove it. Show your working. Where are the footnotes and figures? If a student or researcher were to write the same paragraph in a dissertation or report without supporting data, they'd get hammered but we're still supposed to take this from Trust me Tony on the nod. Hasn't the government learned that there are many (journalists aside, naturally) who don't take this stuff at face value any more? We've been 45 minutes from doom too many times.

And "there are signs that the gap is narrowing between our most deprived communities and the rest" is so vague as to be practically meaningless. Is the gap narrowing up or narrowing down?

At the bottom of the same page comes:

There are significant resources in programmes supporting the Respect drive, including £155 million neighbourhood element of the Safer Stronger Communities Fund; £45 million additional resources for the Youth Justice Board and £140 million resources for the Single Non-Emergency Number.

In addition we will invest up to £80 million of new resources over two years.

That's just £80 million of new money for the next two years with no word of what happens after that. That only buys you half a Bloody Sunday Inquiry, for God's sake. So much for investing in the future.

Needless to say, the rest of the document is safely short on detail - nobody's going to lose their jobs if these vague promises (if that's what you can call them) aren't kept. It's also true to say that as well as little new money there are few new ideas in the document. The Safer Stronger Communities Fund? Announced April 2005. The Youth Justice Board? In existence since 1999. How many crackdowns on truancy have we had since 1997?

As to where the evicting anti-social families from their homes for three months and leaving them to fend for themselves - that everybody's gone tonto over today - came from, well, it's certainly not in the Respect Action Plan. The earliest reference to it I can find is - surprise, surprise - in an interview with the Prime Minister in The Sun on January 5:

Blair: I'll boot out louts
NEIGHBOURS from hell are to be EVICTED and left to fend for themselves in a crackdown on yobs planned by Tony Blair.

Obviously, Blair doesn't actually say in the interview, "I'm going to evict people for three months" - he's not stupid enough to say anything directly attributable. Others in the media dutifully picked up the story almost verbatim: here, here. By the time the idea reached the Independent yesterday, all mention of The Sun interview had gone. Blair didn't mention three month evictions in his launch speech today either (transcript here). It seems, and I'd be happy to be put straight, that this idea emerged from the single unattributed source. To, you know, try and make Tony look like a hard bastard for the new year.

(Incidentally, Blair's speech ideally needs a post of its own, particularly with regard to his his dangerous love of summary justice. His recurring, "we're fighting 21st century crimes with 19th century methods" schtick is just bizarre, as if theft, graffiti and drug addiction appeared on the stroke of midnight December 31 1999. Somebody blogged this in a fine fashion a while back but I'm damned if I can find the link. UPDATE: It was Chris.)

The nearest the plan comes to mentioning evictions is after the fact, on page 23:

ACTION: Consider sanctions for households evicted for anti-social behaviour who refuse help
One option would be to introduce sanctions for those people who have been evicted for anti-social behaviour and then refuse to take up offers of help. Sanctions could include financial penalties or housing benefit measures.

We've heard this before. "Welfare disincentives" were mentioned last May after the election when New Labour had a bee in its bonnet about hoodies. We're still waiting for an explanation of how making poor people poorer drives them away from criminality and anti-social behaviour.

Blair has called for a "genuine intellectual debate" on this issue. Who is supposed to be having this debate, what its formal parameters are, or where it's to take place he doesn't say. I'd argue it's also nigh on impossible to have a debate about this because there's no way of knowing what elements are merely kite flying and never to be heard of again. Much was made last year (especially by me) of the Delivering Choosing Health initiative to get children fitter and healthier via the use of matrons and pedometers. Try as I might, I can't find any recent reference to this initiative anywhere, nor of matrons and pedometers.

Similarly, I'll believe people are to be evicted from their homes when it happens. I'm prepared to admit that there might be some good stuff in the plan but all the so-called eye-catching stuff obscures any gold nuggets that may be in there.

I could go on but I've already devoted much more time than we both have. We've both wasted precious moments we'll never get back. To continue would be like having a drunken office bunk-up. It might be a good idea right now but would we, you know, respect each other in the morning?

UPDATE 11/01: "Hey presto, you can now take Tony Blair around in the comfort of your trouser pocket to listen to at your leisure."

Sorry if you're eating. You can now hear Tony Blair extol his masterplan and exhort Sun readers to "Shop A Yob"* on The Sun's "history-making" (in the sense that only Charles Kennedy and David Cameron have done it before) podcast. It's also historic in being the softest interview by a so-called independent journalist ever committed to the records. It manages to smash the previous record set by Andrew Rawnsley in The Observer only last Sunday which had set the bar incredibly high. George Pascoe-Watson sounds like a simpering, starry-eyed party hack permitted to join a brainstorming session. I urge you to listen for the full edifying spectacle.

Blair does mention evicting families here although, needless to say, there's no detail as to how these families are supposed to live once they're out on the streets and left to fend for themselves. He also talks about confiscating the assets of "suspected" drug dealers with "flash cars". It looks like black men can look forward to a few more years of, "is this car yours, sir?".

There was no mention of Hobbes' Leviathan though, as there was in his speech yesterday. Why not?

*How about this yob, for starters?

UPDATE (again): I will stop banging on about this soon - having belatedly realised that the real story here in the unsettling increase in summary justice that Blair wants to introduce - but this whole thing about evicting people has got me suspicious. Both The Independent and The Telegraph (who mention the unattributed three months again) talk about such families being placed in "Sin Bins" but something doesn't join up and I wonder if there's a mutually beneficial fiction being cooked up by the media and the Government - the media get a good story and the Government get to look tough. The principle here is that the public are being sold a line that I'm not sure exists and I doubt this is an isolated incident. This is probably a minority sport for conspiracy theorists only, but anyway...

ANOTHER UPDATE: The case for the defence. Take a deep breath.

It terms of low level punishment for low level crimes, it is BETTER to punish the innocent than to let the guilty go free.

Being innocent and getting a 100 pound fine is not the end of the world.

Maybe not to him. But to others it's the difference between eating and not.

YET ANOTHER UPDATE:

That’s a pure expression of the authoritarian mind. Spraying grafitti on a wall or demonstrating in Parliament Square: it all boils down to cynicism – a refusal to be harmonious. And just as demonstrating peasants are jailed for disturbing social order in China, demonstrators in Parliament Square are arrested under the Serious Organized Crime act.

Excellent, sobering stuff from Jamie K.

AND THERE'S MORE:

The policy implications are ignored: not Blair’s “Neighbourhood Renewal” or “the New Deal for Communities”, surely, but straightforward redistributive taxation. The dirty word of noughties politics. Could it be true? That the PM suspects the answer to this drip-drip of low-level criminality and disengagement just maybe lies somewhere in the gross and increasing maldistribution of wealth and power? That he isn’t bold enough to do anything about it?

Excellent, philosophical stuff from Jarndyce.


22 Comments:

On January 10, 2006 11:03 PM, Blogger ejh said...

To be honest, I'm now regretting the loss of the paper and electricity used to do so.

Is that a John Peel hommage?

my personal favourite, "Everyone Is Part Of Everyone Else".

In Yes Minister, Sir Humphrey quotes Hacker the line "everything is connected to everything else" and attributes it to Lenin.

I would have suggested that this episode was on the mind of the composer of the dreck you're reviewing, were it not for the likelihood that the New Labour fasttrack beneficiary concerned is probably too young to have seen it.  


On January 10, 2006 11:05 PM, Blogger lucien de la peste said...

Nice one, Justin.

One wonders how much this exercise in national navel gazing is going to end up costing us.

More pointless window dressing from "New" Labour.  


On January 11, 2006 12:40 AM, Blogger DFH said...

Excellent Justin.

It’s like David Attenborough said on ‘Life In the Undergrowth’ - “Here we have the web. There are spiders on the left, there are spiders on the right. Mention that cunt Blair and they'll all stick the boot in.”  


On January 11, 2006 1:21 AM, Anonymous Chris Applegate said...

His recurring, "we're fighting 21st century crimes with 19th century methods" schtick is just bizarre, as if theft, graffiti and drug addiction appeared on the stroke of midnight December 31 1999. Somebody blogged this in a fine fashion a while back but I'm damned if I can find the link.

I mentioned something along those lines a few months back...

Good post, though I haven't read the policy in detail, I'm fairly sure it's just another muddled kneejerk reactionary policy, like all the others have been. You start thinking - "Tony, where did it all go wrong? No-one could have imagined it would have come to this, eight years ago"

Somewhere out there, there is a book waiting to be written, analysing how badly New Labour have pissed it all away; how hollow the New Labour project has become, how the path it chose meant it eventually lost all the authority and, er, respect, it so desperately craves. It'll be a terrific read, though I doubt Blair's successors (from either side of the House) will pay much attention.  


On January 11, 2006 2:13 AM, Blogger Unity said...

Reactionary is not the word.

The bit that's missing from the 21st Century schtick is that Blair's solution to 21st Century crimes is 17th Century philosophy - Hobbes's Leviathan.

Underneath the bullshit and management speak there are some fucking scary ideas floating around this whole 'Respect Agenda'.  


On January 11, 2006 8:58 AM, Blogger Justin said...

Chris: That's the fella. Cheers - I've updated the post.

I'd say there's already a burgeoning industry in books trying to pin down just what's gone wrong with New Labour - Nick Cohen's Pretty Straight Guys is one of my favourites - but, as you say, there's a blockbuster to be written tying it all together.

Unity: I caught the Hobbes reference in his speech. It would have been an obscure reference for many listening, I thought. It again makes you wonder just who this is all pitched at. Not wishing to be anti-intellectual but I wonder just how many people listening had even heard of Hobbes. I've heard of it but haven't read it. I might be doing Blair a disservice - hell, why stop now - but I wonder if he has as well.  


On January 11, 2006 9:35 AM, Anonymous redpesto said...

"Welfare disincentives" were mentioned last May after the election when New Labour had a bee in its bonnet about hoodies. We're still waiting for an explanation of how making poor people poorer drives them away from criminality and anti-social behaviour.

Blair was trying this one on during his appearance on Newsnight last night - though he wouldn't confirm or deny whether it was a goer. You got the feeling that Blair really wants to go down this path, but hasn't worked out how to get away with explaining to Labour MPs how the Welfare State is now going be used as a tool of social control rather than a response to personal cirumstances/economic need. (This is quite apart from the inbuilt discrimination against welfare recipients.) The underlying 'philosophy' is not just that of summary justice, but that of the deserving/undeserving poor.  


On January 11, 2006 10:29 AM, Blogger ejh said...

I'd say there's already a burgeoning industry in books trying to pin down just what's gone wrong with New Labour - Nick Cohen's Pretty Straight Guys is one of my favourites - but, as you say, there's a blockbuster to be written tying it all together.

It can surely be traced simply enough to the decline in confidence (and then numbers and influence) of organised labour and the consequent replacement of its representatives and supporters by ambitious types from the managerial and professional classes.

I don't mean crudely that Labour people had to be blue-collar in origin - it would be asinine to say so - but that the people who are now crawling all over the party have no interest in organised labour or even any real understanding of why it exists.

This was quite well ilustrated by Decca Aitkenhead's interview with Ruth Kelly in the Guardian in which Aitkenhead observed that Kelly, when younger, had had no discernible interest in politics. Think of "politics" as meaning "the labour movement" and all becomes clear: the purpose of the Labour Party has become to provide careers for the ambitious rather than to further the cause of working people.

One could further observe that such a disinterest in organised labour (or "politics") from a Labour MP would have been quite exceptional even as recently as twenty years ago. One notable exception, of course, would be the Member for Sedgefield.

One other minor example of this trend and its consequences. I can't remember the chap's name, but recently a former education adviser to the Government became a teacher in a London comprehensive and wrote a book about it. A small fuss ensued about whether he was cashing in, whether he was really dedicated to the profession and so on, but I felt that a more important point was overlooked: that it was remarkable how he was an adviser, i.e. an expert, on education first and then gained his expeience of the field second! In days gone past surely Labour would have taken advice from people experienced in the field in order to make policy, perhaps even talking to people from the NUT or what you will. But now, the whole point is that a policy wonk should try and avoid having anything to do with experienced employees who constitute a "vested interest", and worse, one involving organised labour. I don't know what the late Ted Wragg said about this, but I can't imagine it was kind.  


On January 11, 2006 10:33 AM, Blogger ejh said...

Incidentally, I trust parenting classes will be offered to Jack Straw and Mr Blair himself.  


On January 11, 2006 10:56 AM, Blogger Ordinary activist said...

A clever - and cynical - analysis. I won't say it's easy to critique government policy because it isn't and you've done it well. But it hasn't progressed the debate one iota. We could argue whether £80 million new money is good or not; and there is evidence that rough sleeping is down for example blah blah blah. But you admit your hardwired cynicism and pavlovian response so I suspect it's not worth trying to persuade you. I can't even get a 20 page document to land with a "satisfying thump" - must have the wrong sort of table I guess.  


On January 11, 2006 11:02 AM, Blogger Justin said...

Adelante, why not try and persuade me instead of critiquing my critique? You never know your luck.

And the document is actually 44 pages but there's only 20 or so with text on them. The rest feature the big-fonted cod-philosophising padding.  


On January 11, 2006 11:42 AM, Blogger Friendly Fire said...

"I will stop banging on about this soon"

Don't.

You are doing a public service here above and beyond the call of duty.

ejh... good analysis, NL is management consultants who realised they could make bigger bucks screwing the taxpayers at the coalface.  


On January 11, 2006 1:46 PM, Anonymous pip said...

Great post, Justin. Thanks for the analysis and saving me the time to wade through this tedious bullshit.

It seems to me to be typical Bliar grandstanding and legacy building stuff. If the NuLabour project has been as successful as he claims (as you say with no verifiable evidence) then why are we in such a worse position now than in 1997 when these wankers took office? NuLabour haved fucked up the NHS, fucked up education, fucked up the Criminal Justice system, etc. ad infinitum. Really it is the reverse Midas touch - everything the Bliar and his fellow mobsters touch turns to shit. He deserves no respect and will get none from me!  


On January 11, 2006 2:45 PM, Anonymous redpesto said...

More on Blair's aim of docking welfare benefits from Matt Weaver of the Guardian. Short version: Blair appeals to worst instincts of British people. Soundbite version: 'New Labour: No Idea Too Stupid'.  


On January 11, 2006 2:53 PM, Anonymous Rochenko said...

To quote the speech: "From the theorists of the Roman state to its fullest expression in Hobbes’s Leviathan, the central question of political theory was just this: how do we ensure order?". Well, Mussolini, Gentile and Carl Schmitt would certainly concur. But all the non-fascists out there would probably prefer to talk about justice.  


On January 11, 2006 7:19 PM, Blogger Ally said...

I really get the impression that the entire government are sitting barricaded in Downing St, or wherever, making up policies based on what they see on the telly or read in the papers. It would be nice if we could be as removed from them as they seem to be from us.  


On January 11, 2006 7:56 PM, Blogger D-Notice said...

Isn't "Everyone Is Part Of Everyone Else" a quote from Brave New World?  


On January 11, 2006 8:00 PM, Blogger Justin said...

I'm not sure. I do know that Gwen McRae sang the ace "90% Of Me Is You", though. Maybe Tony just rounded up.  


On January 11, 2006 10:06 PM, Blogger matt said...

Did any of you lot see The Thick of It on BBC2 on Monday? Absolutely brilliant! It totally sums up the shallow and bullying heart of the Government in the most cynical and savage way imaginable. Once this kind of stuff becomes mainstream, it's only a matter of time before the whole edifice comes down. The only trouble is, and this is the frightening part, what the hell is going to replace it??!!  


On January 11, 2006 10:13 PM, Blogger matt said...

Oh, and another thing. I couldn't be arsed to even read all your post on this crap Justin, although I'm sure it's very good. I would normally have watched Newsnight just to see if someone could make Blair a bit awkward, but even that idea only lasted as long as it took to see his Cheshire Cat grin and I turned it off. No-one is listening to them anymore, no-one's surprised when a new scandal turns up and no-one cares when they come up with a new "initiative". It reminds me so much of the last days of the Major Government - trouble is we had something to look forward to then - what is there to follow New Labour?  


On January 12, 2006 5:54 PM, Anonymous Tim Neale said...

He also talks about confiscating the assets of "suspected" drug dealers with "flash cars". It looks like black men can look forward to a few more years of, "is this car yours, sir?".

We will all be hearing "Is this car yours? Well not any more, because I’m a New Labour hack who if fucked off by the lack of respect I’m getting. So any one with a flasher car than me is obviously a drug dealer”

“You will all be laughing on the other sides of your faces when we find the drugs and I’m proved right.. oh thats right - no longer any need to prove anything...”  


On January 13, 2006 3:28 AM, Blogger edjog said...

You're obviously right justin, to suggest that taking money from the poorest will only make us rely on crime more. I believe though that ever since this policy really started with the introduction of legislation that allows for benefit to be paid at half rate if you lose your job through some reason deemed to be your fault (in the early 90's sometime, i forget: i was wasted) for 6months, a major social change has been underway. The low-level criminalisation of the poor continues with the likes of ASBO's and now we hear this frankly fascist idea that it is somehow better to have innocent people found guilty than the guilty go free, for the minor crimes of the poor.

The trouble is that the change is in precisely the opposite direction to that which is it's stated intent. You say that a £100 fine is a lot if it would prevent someone from eating. This is actually nonesense to all but the most deluded of law abiding citizens. The plain fact is that when you have little or no disposable income, the amount the courts will set as a payment installment has to take this into account. Even then, if you are already inured to the process of criminal law, no longer cowed by media driven hype about prison rape or social stigma attached to being sent to prison, you simply refuse to pay.

Not to the magistrates face of course, but nonetheless, we don't pay. Eventually after several court appearances you get the idea that the next time you are summonsed it will be jail. The trick then is to fail to appear in court, wait for the warrant to be issued and then turn up at the Police Station on Thursday at 6am, penniless, brief in-tow, and surrender to custody. Later that day you get sentenced to less than a week in jail which writes off the fine. You automatically only serve half the sentence barring bad behaviour, but you can't have a half day inside so it's 3days tops. Jail releases don't happen on a weekend, but they cannot keep you longer than the set tarif so you are free Friday at 6am.

If you find yourself continuously in trouble, with a lot of fines, by evading capture for a while (claiming to be somebody else when a civilian comes to the house looking for you) these can all be dealt with in the same overnighter, because these offences are all the same and thus sentence is concurrent. We call it "a lie down." Even if you've really hammered it, the worst you'll get is "a long sleep" where you get released Monday or Tuesday at 6am. Half the people in the place are your mates, so who cares? You hit the streets well fed and rested, ready to have another crack at it.

In the 90's the attempt to shut down the party scene combined with social unrest made low-level criminals of a lot of people. As a hardcore criminal, it became possible to rely on the discretion of people who perhaps only 5years previously would have thought of me as the scum of the earth. The Police were still grappling with technology which was not fully integrated with all Forces and the sheer amount of petty crime being committed as part of the party scene gave us a smokescreen behind which to disguise our more concerted efforts. It was a mini-golden age of crime.

Now, i have to confess that one of the reasons my cohorts and i were so blasé about such things as survielance and private securuty measures was because we were off our heads on drugs, but the overwhelming factor was that we knew damn well that as long as we didn't do anything too outrageous, the Police might know exactly who was doing what, but they simply didn't have the manpower to do anything about it.

This is the social change i'm on about. Being a criminal is no longer seen as an 'us and them' issue to a growing section of society, but rather a case of it being that one person might be prepared to dare slightly more than another and is therefore a useful person to know. With the combined rising costs of caring for our ageing population and greater expectation from health care and education, there will come a time when this confluence of phenomena happens again.

The ugly truth of the matter however is that this time it will be far more about drugs like crack cocaine and guns. People will remember the times when they could rely on 'geezers' like i was, a little bit woo, i little bit weah, to help them out with something a bit dodgy as the golden age it was: when we see american stylee gun battles in the streets.

How long can the policy of prohibition of drugs which fuels gangsterism continue? As long as the costs to society can be spun bearing in mind the jobs it creates, the oppression it facilitates and the personal fortunes to be made by the very rich who are the only people who can actually afford to invest in high level manufacture and supply.  


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