All of the rave reviews that often accompany your work tend to say that you’re a great “crime” writer, that you are rewriting the “crime” genre – crime this and crime that, basically. It’s not something I wholly agree with – there are crime elements to your novels but I think your work is more literary than its given credit for. I just wondered if it irked you at all, the tag you have of being a “crime writer”?

David Peace:

Not really – Dostoyevsky wrote crime; Kafka wrote crime; Brecht wrote crime; Orwell wrote crime. Dickens. Greene. Dos Passos. Delillo etc. But anyway, to me, these days “literary” just means British writers with their Creative Writing MAs wanting to write the “Great American Novel” and filling bookshops with unreadable shite, with no plots, no characters, no balls, no heart and, above all, no British Voice. The best work is always done in the margins and the genres: Burroughs and Ballard in Science Fiction; Iain Sinclair and Alan Moore; and I’m proud to share the same section of a shop as Ellroy, Mosley, Pelecanos and Rankin.

(H/T: k-punk on the television adaptation of the Red Riding sequence.)

(Bonus: A Mindless One on why David Peace should be writing Hellblazer.)

Having been to a few of these events, I must admit to being less than convinced that the sessions are really breaking out of the comfortable groupthink that can so easily characterise futures work… For me, the really stand-out risk that barely got a mention in the events I attended was the possibility that serious erosion of states’ capacity and legitimacy undermines their ability to respond to all the global trends that we were discussing… there is nonetheless a worrying set of drivers on the table that raises questions about whether, in (say) 5 years’ time, we’ll be starting to think that states just don’t have the legitmacy and capability they need to manage 21st century challenges.

The problem is simple. The National Security Strategy is a state product, and these consultations are happening within the state framework – and this means that these discussions assume the state and proceed from there. Non-state actors (whether corporate, non-governmental, criminal or private individuals) don’t assume the state – they assume their own interests and start from there. Never the twain shall meet, and that’s why this round of discussions is leaving Alex cold.

The state is a means to an end. If it is no longer an effective means – if it’s not possible to reach your end solely within the state framework – then people are obliged and entitled to seek alternatives. Now that might (and often does) lead to outcomes that are not desirable for the state because they further undermine its legitimacy, but that’s a byproduct. The problem with state-led discussions of these challenges is that they mistake the byproduct for the main aim, and then proceed to treat the actors involved correspondingly.

Needless to say, there have been people who did not believe that states have “legitimacy or capability” ever since states began to form. That the state does have legitimacy and capability is merely a story that the state tells its citizens – it might be true or it might be false, but it isn’t an inherent feature of the state that it possesses either, and once the facade slips, there may be no going back…

Predictably Jacqui Smith, the Home Secretary, said that she was “disappointed”, and went on to claim that

DNA and fingerprinting is vital to the fight against crime, providing the police with more than 3,500 matches a month. The government mounted a robust defence before the Court and I strongly believe DNA and fingerprints play an invaluable role in fighting crime and bringing people to justice.

This is the usual line from the government – the law and order cover story always plays well to the tabloid gallery. Unfortunately her belief that a comprehensive DNA database will help to solve more crimes has – as far as I’m aware, and I welcome any correction – never been supported by any evidence, while the Nuffield Council on Bioethics consultation suggested that

Britain has the biggest DNA Database in the world, but making it bigger is not helping to solve more crimes. Collecting more DNA from crime scenes has made a big difference to the number of crimes solved, but keeping DNA from more and more people who have been arrested – many of whom are innocent – has not. Since April 2003, about 1.5 million extra people have been added to the Database, but the chances of detecting a crime using DNA has remained constant, at about 0.36%. (via Genewatch)

If you want to do something about this yourself, I strongly recommend joining NO2ID, who pursue this issue tirelessly, although not in a creepy stalker-ish way, and watch out for people who claim that they’re going to keep you safe by treating you like a criminal.

If you did not know whether the government proposing this measure was a benign liberal democracy or a malign totalitarian dictatorship, then would you want this measure to be implemented?

All is well when cuddly-wuddly New New Labour proposes these measures, and people nod and hum and let it slide. If it was the Burmese military regime, I wouldn’t be so bloody sanguine about it, would you?¹ The question to ask is not whether your government is benign or malign, but whether this is the sort of information that you think the government should have in the first place.

1. Perhaps you would.

Not only has The Sun removed the skipper on the left, they’ve also removed the boat’s engine. Prince William, drifting around the Caribbean during a hurricane. Extra laughs:

Prince William’s campaign to try on every uniform Britain has to offer is a wow - next week it’s baker, then butcher, then cub scout, before a week as a traffic warden in Slough, then a few days as a Beefeater before ending the summer as a lap dancer.

HT: The Daily (Maybe)

This is very moving – that plane looks positively distraught as it turns away from our accusing eyes – but it’s not entirely clear what they’re sorry for. Are they merely sorry for the inconvenience to passengers, a casual expression of solidarity which extends as far as a 260×140 pixel graphic on their website? Or are they more deeply sorry – perhaps filled with sorrow at being so utterly incompetent – an existential cry for forgiveness from the gods of aviation?

Willie Walsh, BA’s Chief Executive (but not for long *cough*), had this to say:

We are sorry for the disruption and inconvenience caused to customers whose flights have been cancelled or whose bags have been delayed.

Question answered. Slap a graphic on the website and pray those 400 “volunteers” show up to sort the 15,000 bags we’ve got in “temporary storage”. The gods of aviation can suck my – I’m sorry, is this microphone still on?

What burns me up is that the chaos at T5 may jeopardise the chocolate fountain that I was promised by Executive Club Manager Sarah Keyes in a personal email to me. Let me add that this was only the latest in the long string of personal emails that we have exchanged, and leave it there. Never let it be said that I allow my personal feelings to affect my harsh but fair judgment on the affairs of man.

Too much detail.

Anyway, religion was on my mind last week as I joined the discussion on euthanasia at Cranmer and OurKingdom – and thanks to everybody who contributed to those discussions, particularly David at Britology Watch. As I said in my original post, this is one of the few areas where the religious insist that their views on life be taken as the standard for everybody else, but to their credit most of the commenters on those other threads presented credible non-religious cases against legalising euthanasia.

Paying a visit to Britology Watch, I revisited the “controversial” statements by Bishop of Rochester Michael Nazir-Ali following Archbishop Rowan Williams’ prolonged bout of stupidity “controversial” statements. Have you noticed that comments by the clergy only get labelled as controversial when they try to say something about politics? That’s probably because of the separation of church and state that we have – no, wait, that’s the US I’m thinking of.

In an interview with Bishop Nazir-Ali, I was greatly amused by these lines:

The real danger to Britain today is the spiritual and moral vacuum that has occurred for the last 40 or 50 years. When you have such a vacuum something will fill it.

That “moral vacuum” metaphor should be put out of its misery as soon as possible, since it manages to be simultaneously banal and meaningless.

Is morality something that can be pumped out of society as if we lived in a bell jar? Is there an optimal level of morality that we should be striving for? If it’s possible to have too little morality, is it possible to have too much morality? What people like Nazir-Ali mean when they say this is that they don’t like the morality that they see around them.

Unfortunately this is a common meme amongst Christians and Christian nostalgia buffs who long for a time before the 1960s, when apparently we didn’t live in a spiritual and moral vacuum. It’s strange that anybody thinks that prior to the 1960s we lived in a more “moral” time, back when we thought crushing the natives underfoot, firebombing German cities and winning at football were morally justified. Quoth Nazir-Ali:

Do the British people really want to lose that rooting in the Christian faith that has given them everything they cherish – art, literature, architecture, institutions, the monarchy, their value system, their laws?

The article then points out – with no apparent irony – that he is “a Pakistani-born immigrant who has suffered racist abuse – he was called a “Paki papist” by Anglican clergy.” So apparently I should be taking my moral cues from bigots – good to know. While these thoughts were percolating through my brain, clogging it up like coffee grounds, the Rev Dr Peter Mullen weighed in with his thoughts. Guess what? He feels similarly to Nazir-Ali:

We might have expected the Church to resist the decay, but instead it has connived with the destructive sexual and social revolution begun in the 1960s. Back then, I voted for homosexuality to be decriminalised. But this meant “between consenting adults in private” – where “between” meant two, “adults” meant men over 21 and “private” meant behind locked doors. I did not foresee the obscene and coercive “Gay Pride” pantomimes that now disfigure our high streets.

The Reverend should probably have thought more carefully about what he was voting for; in any case, the 1967 Bill decriminalised homosexual acts, not homosexuality. Criminalising homosexuality (i.e. the state of being homosexual) takes us into the land of crimethink, which isn’t somewhere I particularly want to go. The Reverend isn’t upset by homosexual acts (as long as they’re kept behind locked doors, of course) but by the sight of buttless chaps; and I’m not certain that buttless chaps are a moral issue.

I don’t particularly like Gay Pride marches (although I do like pantomimes) but you know how I deal with that problem? I DON’T GO NEAR THEM. It’s a controversial approach, but I’ll stick to it.

Mullen’s opinion piece is entitled “Without Christianity, our society is doomed”, but neither he or Nazir-Ali seem to have noticed the slight problem with their thesis. When Mullen says “We might have expected the Church to resist the decay” – well, wasn’t that his job? When Nazir-Ali laments the spiritual vacuum that’s magically appeared, does he stop to ask which institution usually addresses spiritual issues? It was their job, and they failed to do it, failed so badly that CofE attendance has fallen precipitously even while other denominations have risen.

Nazir-Ali says

If people are not given a fresh way of understanding what it means to be a Christian and what it means to be a Christian-based society then something else may well take the place of all that we’re used to and that could be Islam.”

Well, it could be. It could also be Christianity, which has approximately 26 times more adherents than Islam, a comprehensive network of churches and other institutions across the country and a privileged position in the establishment. I would rather that the UK celebrated its religious heritage, and I would rather that Christianity continued to inform our social and political development. However if the pair of them – and all the others that follow their view – don’t want to live in a “spiritual vacuum” or an “Islamic theocracy”, then I humbly suggest that you fill it with something more substantial than a love letter to pre-1960s Britain, the era that brought us two worlds wars, institutionalised racism and sexism, and spam fritters.

Bah. I wanted to be the Lord of the Dance, but it turns out I’m the Scrooge of Easter.

What’s the problem with all this? For people like ourselves, interested in researching population trends here at Demography Matters and elsewhere, this sort of rhetoric creates yet another set of myths that have to be debunked. It is interesting to trace out some of the likely population futures of different regions, countries and continents, as is determining the different factors operating in different communities within a given territory. Turning a field that could be filled by an ongoing stream of productive research into an endless cycle of disproved popular mythologies would be boring. More to the point, the constant repetition of myths like the ones enunciated by Romney — that the European continent is declining, that Europe is threatened by foreigners — poisons public discourse by legitimating ever more radical statements. If Europeans at large are concerned about the extent to which communities of recent immigrant origin are or are not acculturating to the norms of a wider society and want to influence public policy accordingly, how likely will the debate be calm and rational if many the people who participate seriously believe things scarcely more sophisticated than “OMG the Muslims are going to P3WN Europe”?

My thoughts exactly. Imagine if, in the real world, every discussion you tried to have was dominated by somebody who did nothing but shout in your face about how it was all the Muslims (or Jews, or Hispanics, or blacks – take your pick). It would be utterly unbearable, and people would eventually stop talking about those issues because they couldn’t face the prospect of being harangued by a incoherent belter. That’s Steyn, right there, riding his hobby-horse and protesting that he’s just misunderstood.

These are interesting and important issues which need a healthy public discourse, see? Specifically, what it needs is more people like Randy and fewer people like Steyn, otherwise we’ll all end up like the poor benighted souls that Johann Hari wrote about in his classic piece on The National Review cruise. While acknowledging that Johann was always going to be biased against the sort of people who would go on the cruise on the first place, he wasn’t making any of that stuff up:

But facts, figures, and doubt are not on the itinerary of this cruise. With one or two exceptions, the passengers discuss “the Muslims” as a homogenous, sharia-seeking block – already with near-total control of Europe. Over the week, I am asked nine times – I counted – when I am fleeing Europe’s encroaching Muslim population for the safety of the United States of America.

Look, it’s 2008 – forget about my jetpack, all I want is an internet that isn’t an echo chamber for people who would previously have been confined to their bedrooms, where they could safely fulminate about how their genius has never been recognised by ignorant fools such as myself. They were better off there, and so were we.

But Dr Williams said an approach to law which simply said “there’s one law for everybody and that’s all there is to be said, and anything else that commands your loyalty or allegiance is completely irrelevant in the processes of the courts – I think that’s a bit of a danger… There’s a place for finding what would be a constructive accommodation with some aspects of Muslim law, as we already do with some other aspects of religious law.”

No there isn’t. People who predict the Islamopocalypse are barking idiots, and my problem isn’t with Williams’ saying that we should accommodate aspects of Muslim law into our legal system. My problem is his assumption that religion has any place in our legal system at all, apart from in measures to protect the freedom to pursue those beliefs – and protect others from those beliefs. Without that separation, the entire legal system is undermined, as we all merrily pursue our own ideas of what the law should constitute and who it should cover.

Of course, that’s a completely separate question to why Rowan Williams, the head of the established Church of England, feels the need to advocate for Islamic law. Perhaps he misread the job description?

UPDATE: I find more intelligences more subtle and profound than I writing about the same issue at Cranmer and Our Kingdom, while Stumbling and Mumbling emphasises that “civil society” has a place in this discussion that goes mostly unnoticed.

So far, the campaign has resulted in the Government changing its policy – but the changes weren’t comprehensive enough and are not being implemented quickly enough to make a difference to many of our former employees. So there’s a need to keep up the pressure on the government in order to secure further changes and a more rapid response. Dan has therefore proposed the following:

Your MP’s address is The House of Commons, Westminster, London, SW1A 0AA. His or her email address is probably SURNAMEINITIAL@parliament.uk (eg BROWNG<at>parliament.uk ). Please use the talking points below to send an email and a print letter to your MP, and chase them for an answer. And be courteous: an insulted MP will not raise this matter with Ministers, and that will lead to more avoidable deaths. When you get an answer, email me at danhardie.blog<at>gmail.com and let me know what they said.

I agree that it seems egocentric for me to ask you to put your MP in touch with me: but what alternatives do we have? I am in direct contact with Iraqi employees pleading with me to do something to help them. I cannot help them. Members of Parliament- including David Miliband- need to read what these Iraqis are saying.

If you want to take part in this campaign, then you may find the following information useful. However I urge you to read up on the situation for yourself and make your own judgement – this is important not just for individual lives but for the precedent it sets.

• On October 9th David Miliband announced that the British Government would assist former employees in Iraq, so long as they had worked for it after 1st January 2005 and for 12 months or more. That abandons several hundred Iraqis who have been targetd for murder because they worked for the British before that date- and in 2004 fighting between the Mahdi Army and the British was at its peak- or because they worked for less than that period, often leaving their jobs at the end of a British battalion’s six-month tour. The British Government must help Iraqi employees on the basis of the risk they face, not according to an arbitrary time stipulation. This only affects a few hundred Iraqis, whom we are well able to shelter, and for whom we have a direct moral responsibility.
• Even those Iraqi employees who qualify for assistance are not being properly assisted. Iraqis in Basra are not able to apply via the British Army in Basra Interational Airbase, since it is ringed with militia checkpoints. Iraqi ex-employees in Damascus are being screened by Syrian policemen guarding the British Embassy and delayed by lengthy bureaucratic procedures when they apply for asylum, although many of them are illegally overstaying their Syrian visas and face deportation back to Iraq.
• A blogger called Dan Hardie is directly in touch with a number of Iraqi employees via email and phone. He is willilng to brief MPs- as concisely as possible- either over the phone or via email. He can be reached at danhardie.blog@gmail.com.

With all that in mind, what exactly is at stake here? Who are these people that we’re campaigning for? Below the fold, you can read about some of the discussions that Dan has had with former UK government employees in Iraq who have been affected by this situation – and who are not being helped by the current government policy.

I’ve had emails from three people who claim to be – and who almost certainly are- Iraqi former employees of the British Government. All three say that they and their former colleagues are still at risk of death for their ‘collaboration’.

We’ll call the first man Employee One. He worked for the British for three years: ‘I started in the beginning of the war with Commandos (in 30 of March 2003) then continued with 23 Pioneer Regt, and in 08 / 07 / 2003 I have joined the Labour Support Unit (LSU)’. His British friends knew him as Chris. The British Government has announced that he can apply for help if he can transport himself to the British base outside Basra, or to the Embassies in Syria or Jordan. It doesn’t seem to occur to anyone that there might be problems with this. I can email and telephone this man: so can any Foreign Office official. It should not be impossible to verify his story and then send him the funds he needs to get to a less unsafe Arab country. But that is not happening.

Here’s an email exchange we had the other day. My questions are in italics.

1) Are you still in Iraq?

‘Yes, I’m still hidden in somewhere in the hell of Basra.’

2) Is there any reason you cannot travel to the British Army base at Basra Airbase to ask for asylum?

‘Of course, we cannot travel to BIA (Basra International Airbase) due to the militia keep watched all the ways to BIA and they got their own fake check points there although, we claimed for asylum through the internet (we sent our application to the claim office at BIA) . But we afraid that the British are going to take a long time to process our claims also we are very worried if they will offer just some money instead of asylum, please sir inform all the British people that we looking for asylum and just the asylum will save our lives, also we can’t travel to Syria anymore to claim for asylum there as the Syrian government issued new conditions for Iraqis who want to travel to their country.’

3) Can you tell me how and when the militias threatened you?

‘In 2006 I have threatened by militia that hated me because I work and help coalition forces in Iraq, I told my bosses about that but they said we can’t do anything for you because we have nothing to do with civilian and we don’t have any army rules or orders to help you, then I continued my daily work with British army, few days later the militia attacked my house trying to catch me but I was at the work at that time, they beaten my family and told them: we want your son or we will kill all of you!!!!

‘Since that day I decided to leave my job and change my home place but until this moment the militia trying to find and kill me, I’m always changing my place trying to hidden from them, they know that I left my job but they don’t care, they just want to kill me they called me collaborator and traitor and they asked everybody know me about my place, they told them: anyone know anything about (name) he should tell us immediately and also they said: we will never give up until we catch (name). They work for ministry of interior so they controlled most of government departments and they work under that cover.’

4) Do you have any family members who are also threatened by militias or who depend on you? If so, how many of them are there and how old are they?

‘Of course, my family depends on me especially in the finance side as I’m the older son between seven sons and daughters they got, on other hand my parents cannot working as they are very old.’

Employee Two is in Syria, and is applying for aid from the British Embassy in Damascus. He can prove that he has worked for the British for over 12 months, after the magic date of 1st January 2005. But he still isn’t safe.

He is staying illegally in Syria, having considerably over-run the 15-day visa on which he entered the country. He’s been obliged to get forms for asylum or resettlement aid from the Syrian Government security men who guard the British Embassy. He tells me ‘If I see any syrian officer i really get fear , becuase of my expired visa.’ The British Government, which asked us to accept that it was invading Iraq in part because of its horror at the brutality of the Ba’athist dictatorship, is now perfectly happy to leave its own former employees to the mercies of Syrian Ba’athists.

Colleagues of this man are also hiding in Damascus and are even worse off than he is, because they don’t meet the perverse and arbitrary time stipulations. He writes: ‘I know 4 former interpreters worked less than a year (for the British: DH), but they went to the embassy and they filled the paper with out telling the guards we had worked for less than a year. The syrian guards have got instructions from the embassy (British Embassy in Damascus: DH), that (they) do not give that form to any interpreter who worked for British less than a year or any former interpreter who worked in 2003 and fled to syria before 2005.’

Employee Three sent me copies of his Army ID card and photos of him with smiling Scottish soldiers. He worked for the Army in 2003, who then recommended that he work for Erinys- a private security firm which the British Government hired to form an Oil Protection Force. Both when working for the Army and when working for the British Government’s proxies, he was identified as a target by the militias. The British Government made him a death squad target.

That same British Government will not be giving him any kind of assistance; not even a small cash handout to help him live elsewhere in the Middle East. It has announced that it will not help any Iraqi whose direct employment ended before the 1st January 2005: that Johnson Beharry was awarded the Victoria Cross for acts of courage in May and June 2004, when the Mahdi Army attacked the British and were fought off with many hundreds of casualties.