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TMP regular, Tim Caswell ,reviews Saturday’s “Born Free and Equal” Compass conference.

When a young colleague joined the Labour Party last year, bringing down the average age of his constituency party by fifty three years, I wondered if he felt like a rat joining a sinking ship. Obviously a glutton for punishment, he asked my advice recently about whether to join Compass (Direction for the Democratic Left) or the Fabian Society (no slogan on their website, suggestions on a postcard please).

I told him that I thought that Compass was younger, more vital and dynamic but The Fabians where more mature reflective and cerebral, and suggested that you might visualise Compass as an ambitious activist in a linen suit in search of a safe seat and a Latte, compared to a Fabian who is an ambitious policy wonk in a dark suit in search of a safe seat and a library. I may have used the phrase, “complete wonker” but it was said with affection.

Then I suggested that he come with me to the Compass (Born Free and Equal) Conference, by far the biggest gathering on the centre left as a visitor, and decide on the day? His dilemma was postponed as Compass was not accepting new members on the day and The Fabians were too busy wonking when we arrived late to staff their stall.

Our arrival coincided with Harriet Harman’s departure reminding us of Churchill’s joke that an empty Taxi pulled up and Attlee got out, except she got in. We missed Ed “brother of brains” Milliband too, although he stayed all day to listen and talk to people.

At a seminar led by Searchlight’s brilliant editor, Nick Knowles, the audience seemed to think that the rise of fascism in Rome and Denmark is New Labour’s fault. We heard from a prospective parliamentary candidate from the north who still thinks tax and spend is a universal panacea and from a brave activist from Barking. Both illustrated that Labour being an electoral party not a political party limits and defines its response to the BNP and that we are too introspective. The former prevents us from making electoral pacts to defeat them; the latter inspires us to write sad looking leaflets calling for resistance, “by any means necessary” (something the SWP and BNP have in common).

After a bacon Bagel (and Trevor Phillips who was present said that multi culturalism has failed) we went to see a national treasure without walking all the way to the British Museum. Tony Benn was youthful, charming and funny. His supporters are from the “traitors sneer” stanza of the Red Flag and cannot conceal their glee that New Labour is in decline. They have opposed everything for so long that they are very good at it, and together with their principled stand against the war in Iraq and Trident their main distaste for Blair stems from their suspicion that he won three elections. They prefer the good old days when the 1945 Labour government failed to win a second term!

Benn said if two million Trotskyites had really marched through London. “We are in a better position than I thought”, for some reason he did not quote Trotsky saying that he supported Labour, “like a rope supports a hanged man”, but Benn’s representatives on earth, Labour Briefing, are keeping that spirit very much alive. Like us, Tony Benn had obviously not seen the size of the plenary session, when he made the discourteous and sectarian quip that next year Compass might like to hold an event on the fringes of his meeting.

The afternoon concluded with a question time and rapturous applause for the left’s lost and lamented Leader, Ken Livingstone and a keynote address from Polly Toynbee. Nicknamed Polly Technic by Private eye and courted by Cameron, Toynbee is now presumably a new University? If she is, enrol as soon as possible - her evidence based defence of progressive taxation was a masterpiece. How do you follow that? You ask Compass’s patron Saint Jon Cruddus to wind up and he does it so brilliantly it feels like listening to a modern day epic poem, Prometheus unbound in Essex. He is a throwback to the era when Mardy Colliery in Wales had one of the best libraries in the world, a working class intellectual. He mentioned Shumpeter in his manifesto for Labour Deputy Leader last year and got more first preferences than any other candidate. Today he mentions: fair taxation; no age limit to the minimum wage; a level playing field for agency and full time workers and more, with the simple rhetorical flourish before each item of posing the question, “Why don’t we?”

Gordon Brown stands accused amongst other things of flogging off the gold reserves. Jon Cruddus is enlightened social democratic solid gold. Put him in the Cabinet? Why don’t we? If Brown does not do something dramatic soon starting with a major reshuffle, New Labour will be sleep walk into electoral defeat and political oblivion. If he does nothing or too little too late, at least one modern day Fabius has a compass to guide us in opposition.

Tim Caswell is a Labour Party member of over 30 years standing and a writer. His radio play, Extra Time was produced by the BBC and he has written for the film, Nineliveslondon.

Now I have been selected as Labour’s parliamentary candidate in Streatham I am looking to focus my energies on Streatham from hereon.  I am therefore looking to divest myself of several other activities I am involved with, one of which is running TMP.

To all our regular readers, apologies for the less than regular postings of late – I simply have not been able to devote the time to TMP that I did before being selected. Until we find a new editor I’m afraid new posts will appear, at most, on a weekly basis on this site.

Who are we looking for to take on the mantle of TMP?  In short, someone who identifies with the values of TMP, can write (preferably they will have journalism experience), is well versed in the workings of the British Labour Party (though membership of the party is not a prerequisite), and has a good grasp of policy issues, in particular those touching on ethnic minority communities.  It is an unpaid post but would be a good stepping stone for anyone looking for a career in journalism and/or politics and is immensley rewarding.  It does not involve a huge time commitment.

If you would be interested, please drop me a line using the “contact” page on this site.

Otherwise, you can read my thoughts on national issues, on www.streathamlabour.org.uk and on the Guardian’s Comment Is Free site where I post stories on a regular basis.

Chuka Umunna
Editor

MPs should vote down 42 days detention without charge. The innocent will suffer, the basis of law will be threatened and terrorism aided, as Brown follows Blair in counter-productive defiance of one of the fundamental principles of democracy writes Anthony Barnett, founder of Open Democracy.

It is not hard to imagine the situation. The police have uncovered a network of young, would-be terrorists and their supporters. It may be just after a murderous outrage they failed to prevent, or when they bust a conspiracy before anyone is murdered. As they round up suspects three innocent young men are included. They are relatives or friends of the plotters or maybe they are just around when the raids take place. Naturally, the police focus on gathering the evidence to charge the ringleaders. They hold the three on the basis of proximity and as they are not charged they can’t make a case for their lack of guilt.

A month goes by. Perhaps one of the three is unable to attend his exams and loses his place in his college. Finally they are released - resentful and fearful. They are exactly the sort of people who might have been persuaded to alert the security forces to future plots. Now they are unlikely ever to speak to the police again if they can help it. “Justice”, they will say to their friends, family and future children, “you won’t get it here! I was imprisoned for four weeks just because they didn’t like my face - I was completely innocent, I wasn’t charged, then they threw me out”.

Where does this take place? Is it in Egypt, with its notoriously casual use of jail; or Mexico where drugs are rife; or Bulgaria with its mafia fuelled economy? No it is in the UK, more specifically England. I am not saying that it could happen here. As we will see, it has happened here, and, therefore it does happen here.

I suggest it should be stopped.

- it undermines the fundamental principles of the rule of law;
- it weakens the historic basis of Britain’s rights-based democracy;
- it destroys the serious, measured consensus that is the best aid to containing terrorism;
- it strengthens rather than weakens those who seek to organise terrorist outrages by ensuring greater support for their views;
- it aids a climate of fear; and
- there are other ways of ensuring essential evidence is acquired.

Instead, Gordon Brown’s government is currently tweaking its proposal to permit it to lock up people for even longer than a month, without telling them why. Anti-terrorism powers have already been extended so that people can be held prisoner without charge, from 3 to 7 to 14 to the current 28 days. A further extension to 42 days is being laid before parliament, supposedly wrapped around with safeguards whose concession is likely to win over just enough MPs to ‘save’ the government. A vote is likely in the next week or so.

How should we respond to this, not just in Britain but abroad? The issue has international importance. The House of Commons is still seen as, if not the ‘mother of parliaments’ then at least a symbol of parliamentary democracy and a historic place where fascism was defied. Tyrants in their palaces across the Middle East and Africa will smile at the protestation of “safeguards”, and will note the permission now granted to them by the behaviour of the United Kingdom. Across Asia, from Burma to Beijing, where once Europeans saw “oriental despotism” rulers will enjoy the further demonstration of Albion’s perfidy and note the useful example they have been offered.

In such circumstances it is important to set out a full case, in terms of the principles of justice and democracy; in terms of the fight against terrorism; and in terms of the politics of Britain, for saying that there must be no extension of detention without charge from 28 days to 42 days.

To read the full article, click here.  A social entrepreneur of wide experience, Anthony helped launch Charter 88 in 1988 and was its first Director. Anthony is also a writer and journalist. He is the author of Iron Britannia; Soviet Freedom and This Time; and co-author and editor of among other books, Aftermath: the Struggle of Vietnam and Cambodia; Power and the Throne, Town and Country and a considerable range of articles and pamphlets covering politics and culture, such as (with Peter Carty), The Athenian Option – radical reform for the House of Lords (Demos, 1998) and the television film, England’s Henry Moore. He founded openDemocracy, and regularly contributes to many of its debates.