There is much to admire in André Aciman’s Shadow Cities, a ‘classic’ New York Review of Books essay.  For Radhika Jones, it is the way the writing evokes her own memories of New York.  As for me, I like the concept of overlaying imagined cities and long-lost viewpoints:

New York is my home precisely because it is a place from where I can begin to be elsewhere—an analogue city, a surrogate city, a shadow city that allows me to naturalize and neutralize this terrifying, devastating, unlivable megalopolis by letting me think it is something else … Straus Park allowed me to place more than one film over the entire city of New York, the way certain guidebooks of Rome do. For each photograph of an ancient ruin comes a series of colored transparencies. When you place the transparency over the picture of a ruin the missing or fallen parts suddenly reappear, showing you how the Forum and the Coliseum must have looked in their heyday, or how Rome looked in the Middle Ages, and then in the late Renaissance, and so on. But when you lift all the plastic sheets, all you see are today’s ruins.

I didn’t want to see the real New York. I’d go backward in time and uncover an older New York, as though New York, like so many other cities on the Mediterranean, had an ancient side that was less menacing, that was not so difficult to restore, that had more past than present, and that corresponded to the old-fashioned world I think I come from. Hence, my obsession with things that are old and defunct and that seep through like ancient cobblestones and buried rails from under renewed coats of asphalt and tar. Sealed-off ancient firehouses, ancient stables turned into garages, ghost buildings awaiting demolition, old movie theaters converted into Baptist churches, old marketplaces that are now lost, subway stops that are ghost stations today … Going to Straus Park was like traveling elsewhere in time.

This is a marvellous evocation of why I enjoy much of the literature and imagery that I do.  I have discussed the idea of overlaying of invisible worlds onto a physical space quite a lot on this blog.

To wit: The human ideas imposed onto China Mieville’s The City & The City, and the secret Londons described in Un Lun Dun and Kraken; The transnational societies in Cory Doctorow’s For The Win; the myriad wifi networks on Exmouth Market; my idea for a London Underground game, marvellously realised by Chromaroma; and overlaying a fantasy narrative onto Edinburgh in Ghost.

Releated: there is the leaving of a digital breadcrumbs trail we saw in Stalking Shawn; andPulling echoes of the past into the present space in [murmur];

And finally, there is the fascination with the organic nature of cities: Buildings in a state of constant alteration and repurpose (the Free Word Centre where I now work is one such building); Medieval cities that persist in the twenty-first century, like Fes; The way buildings can take on a personality, when plugged in; the way a city can seem to be a jungle; and buildings that make you feel as though you are already a part of history, such is the weight of their (future) iconic status.

Anti-fascist poster

My inaugral post on Labour List (cross-posted here) elicited a few responses which highlight some subtlties in the ongoing discussion around the limits of free speech – specifically, the point at which it is appropriate for the state to ban political demonstrations.

First, this from Ben Singleton:

I have no problem at all stopping the EDL marching. Ever heard of Cable Street? This is nothing new. When it comes to fascists the response has to be No Pasaran!

I do however agree that the argument about costs is a bad argument and leads us into dodgy territory. The EDL march should be stopped because they are a bunch of violent racists, not because policing is costly.

While this appears to be quite bolshy and uncompromising, it does draw an interesting distinction – between what it is appropriate for the police to do, and what it is appropriate for other citizens to do.  There is something about the fact that Cable Street was not an act of state censorship, but of citizens standing up to repell the fascists, that makes it feel somehow morally better, and I think this is the reason why it has become part of modern folklore.  However, this is purely an emotional feeling, and its a bad philosphical argument.  If we adopt Robert Peel’s idea that the police are in fact just a particular and peculiar type of citizen, then there seems to be very little distinction between the police stopping a march, and An Angry Mobb doing the same.  The question of “At what point do you step in to stop the march?” still remains, something I’ll return to in a moment.

The mention of Cable Street reminds us of Skokie, Illinois, site of a controversial march by American Nazis in 1977. A correspondent of mine e-mails to say:

[The EDL march] resembles the classic Skokie march in America. The issue there was whether or not the fascist marchers should be allowed to wear the swastika: did this constitute ‘fighting words’, which even the first amendment does not protect?

The politicians opposed to the march aren’t saying that the EDL should be banned, or prevented from meeting; they’re against a manifestation of its members beliefs which could constitute ‘fighting words’. It’s a really interesting area of first amendment law. Fighting words are different from incitement, because they are calculated to inspire a reaction, not an action.

I think this reveals my position in the Labour List article as being quite close to absolutist about Free Speech.  Could such a position work in the real world?  Well, with concepts such as Satyagraha and Christian non-violence (Luke 6:28, for example) in the mix, I do think it is possible to resist the urge to react to ‘fighting words’.

In suggesting this as a way out, there will be those who who accuse me of gross naiveity, but I think that just shows a lack of imagination and political ambition.  It expects very little of human beings.  For example, ‘A Cleo’ says:

Tower Hamlets is a complex and peaceful community with a lot of pride. If it is provoked by a bunch of thugs, it wont take it lying down. How can it?

This implies that the people of Tower Hamlets are no more than circus animals, incapable of not reacting when insulted.  But the easy or obvious response, the one that surrenders to base emotions, is never the only course of action.  Moreover, when a group reacts violently to ‘fighting words’, it always means they lose some of their moral high ground and offer a propaganda victory to the provocateurs.  By contrast, there is nothing more politically powerful than dignified non-violence.

George Orwell said:

Pacifism is objectively pro-Fascist

I don’t think that refusing to react to ‘fighting words’ is the same as pacifism.  There is nothing in what I suggest to say that the EDL (or any other far-right group around now, or in history) should be just left to get on with it.  A counter-demonstration, a physical presence, is essential – it signals to the communities they seek to intimidate that their views are not shared by ordinary people.  And it breaks the ‘epistemic closure‘ suffered by the far-right themselves, offering an alternative viewpoint they cannot turn their eyes from.

Nor is there anything wrong with offering your fists, if and when your community is physically attacked.  But – and it is a big ‘But’ – you only retain the moral high ground and win public opinion if you do this after the other side have taken the step from ‘fighting words’, to actually ‘fighting’!

So what we are left with is a form of Brinkmanship, Chicken, Who Blinks First, Eschaton.  It is tense and it costs money to put the police in between the two sides, and we all wish we didn’t have to bother. But to my mind, it is essential to the political project of repelling the far-right, that they be given precisely the right amount of rope to expose themselves as the thugs they are.  Pre-empting this, however good and just it feels, will only be counter-productive.

English Defence League / Unite Against Fascism protest, by Matthew Wilkinson on Flickr

Here’s a post first published earlier today on Labour List (a new venue for me).  I hope there will be comments to which I can respond in a follow-up post.

The riots seem to have brought out the worst in our politicians.  You would think our political class would be well aware of the perils of knee-jerk responses and short term expediency, but apparently not.  First, a few Conservative MPs (the Prime Minister among them) have called for social networks to be interfered with in times of crisis – an astonishingly cynical and hypocritical idea, given our condemnation of the Iranian and Egyptian regimes when they did the same thing.

Not to be outdone, a group of Labour politicians have now put opportunism and short-term thinking above the principles of good democracy.  The leaders of thirteen London Boroughs, together with John Biggs AM and MPs Rushanara Ali and Jim Fitzpatrick, called for a proposed EDL march in Tower Hamlets to be banned on account of the cost of policing, which they say “would simply be too great”.

The potential cost of policing the march wass half a million pounds, which is be no small sum to remove from London’s clean-up effort.  But the costs of banning the EDL march will be much higher in the long term.  It will fuel resentment among those wishing to march, and award them the status of ‘free speech martyrs’ that they crave, but do not deserve. Their warped view of immigration and their fantastical idea of what constitutes ‘true’ British culture will remain unchallenged once again.  This will only lead to more tension and conflict that the police will have to spend time and resources to contain.

Citing costs as a reason to deny political or artistic expression is a classic argument used by despots abroad to suppress internal opposition.  Of course, there is no comparison between our democracy and their tyrannies… but that’s an argument that carries zero weight when you’re campaigning for human rights in those places.  Cameron’s suggestion that we censor social media, and the Labour call for the banning of this EDL event, will hamstring the fight for free expression elsewhere: “You do it, so why shouldn’t we?”

Worse, this excuse also puts the power of censorship into the hands of the mob.  For example, in 2004, a small and unrepresentative group of youths were able to stop performances of Behzti at the Birmingham Rep Theatre (which they found offensive), by threatening to cause chaos that the police were unable to stop, on grounds of cost.   Six years later, another theatre had to fight tooth-and-nail to ensure that the police would guarantee the safety of performers in another play by the same playwright.  If this precedent persists, then we give extremists like the EDL, the BNP, or Islam4UK an ongoing permit to shut down any gathering they disagree with.  Already we’ve seen local councils bullied into withdrawing Moonfleece, a play that challenges far-right extremism… because those same extremists threatened ‘trouble’!  Arguments that seek to ban the EDL, however well-intentioned, slide inexorably into the banning of others, and eventually, banning everyone.

When the riots erupted across our cities earlier this month, we rightly saw them as a threat to our way of life.  We demanded the police throw all their resources at the problem, regardless of the cost in these austere times.  The right to freedom of expression must be protected by the police with equal vigour, and it’s odd that our London councillors have forgotten this.

To argue that the EDL must be allowed their right to march is only the beginning of the discussion.  Those who advocate the right to free expression have a moral obligation to challenge those who preach hate and division.  No one is arguing that an EDL march will not exacerbate tensions in Tower Hamlets, but these can be diffused without trampling on the right to association and assembly.  This is where we need leadership, from those very same elected Labour representatives who signed the letter in the Guardian on Monday.  I met and campaigned with Rushanara Ali and Jim Fitzpatrick when I lived in Tower Hamlets – They are both deeply respected in their constituencies.  They, together with the Mayor of London and the Metropolitan Police, have both the wit and the standing to co-ordinate and lead a peaceful response to the EDL.  Why did they not playing a central role in the Unite Against Fascism counter-protest?  So far it has only garnered support from the unions and the mosques.

It is down to our politicians to present the contrast between the thuggery of the far-right, and the vibrancy of multicultural inner-city life, all while respecting free speech.  Granted, this is not as simple as just banning the march. But we elect our Members of Parliament and Councillors to take on these difficult tasks, not to engage in easy, knee-jerk letter-writing.  Time for Labour to lead.

Police prepare for an EDL march in Leicester. Photo by robotswanking on Flickr

The prgramme can be viewed online via the BBC iPlayer (available until 16th August).  In a debate about why young people have joined the riots in London, student Yohanes Scarlett said:

First of all, I would like to say, earlier, during your newsclip here, you had a recording of a gentleman with a bandana across his face and sunglasses on, and I would like to point out right now right from the beginning that the BBC have cut out his original statement.  I was there.  He gave an original statement which he wanted the people to hear. It has been cut out, this is a misrepresentation.

Scarlett’s speech begins at about 15 mins 35 seconds on the iPlayer recording.  The clip he referred to is at 7 mins 23 seconds.

Chairing the discussion, Gavin Esler immediately asked Yohanes Scarlett what the chap with the bandana said, but Scarlett said he couldn’t remember it by heart and was reluctant to paraphrase.  He went to to say that the BBC should play the full clip.  “Perhaps we will” replied Esler.

@Magic_Torch: @robertsharp59 @BBCNewsnight Just because they were accused it doesn’t mean it was true #justsaying

There is probably a simple reason why the interview was cut.  Reporters have a strict time slot and the subject Liz MacKean was reporting on was very broad.  However, it was an edit which a Newsnight interviewee – someone credible enough to be invited into the studio to talk specifically about the concerns of urban youths – thought was an unwarranted.

@Eastmad: @robertsharp59 @GavinEsler agreed – selective editing of people who you know don’t have much of a voice is egregious

Youths without a voice causing violence; youths causing violence because they have no polical voice.  This context is important.  This is not simply a case of a politician complaining about selective editing (which actually happens very rarely). Politicians have ample opportunity to clarify and expand upon what they say to broadcast journalists, and they are trained to talk in soundbites anyway.  This is not true of the underclass, the submerged.

So fairly or unfairly, the BBC’s reporting has been called into question.  If rebutting this criticism was in any way difficult, then maybe it would be appropriate for the BBC to shrug off Yohanes Scarlett’s comment, and the news cycle would move on.  But in the age of YouTube and iPlayer, there is really no excuse for uploading Liz MacKean’s entire interview with the masked youth.  It only takes a few minutes, and will give those who want it a deeper insight in the psyche of those causing chaos on our streets.

Of course, there are legitimate concerns about giving crimminals a platform, but in the case of the Newsnight package, I think that ship sailed when the anonymous looter was invited to give an interview in the first place.  And it was only last week that I outlined my view on whether to censor the words of criminals: we are best served when the ideas of wrongdoers are openly discussed and rebutted.  And it is in the BBC’s best interests to prove to their critics, over and over again if necessary, what responsible reporting looks like.

Update 12th August 2011

I’ve just received this response via e-mail from Newsnight’s Deputy Editor, Liz Gibbons:

With reference to your tweets about why we didn’t put the full interview and statement of the man who claimed to have some involvement with rioting on Newsnight on Tuesday night – it is standard televisual journalistic practice to choose clips from interviews in filmed pieces, rather than run interviews in full. This individual asked to make a statement to camera, but also agreed to do an interview in which our reporter was able to ask him some robust questions about why he thought it was justifiable to loot. I am sure you understand that it would be odd for the BBC to allow a statement from someone justifying criminal behaviour to be aired unchallenged, without us asking the individual some robust questions which the public would expect us to ask. We gave this individual no undertaking or promise of any kind that we would run his interview in full or that we would air his statement at all.

I have spoken to the reporter about the content of the statement that the individual made to camera and I am content that there was nothing he said in that pre-prepared statement that was not reflected in the subsequent interview exchange that was aired on the programme. Nor did he claim to represent any group, or organisation, or offer any insight beyond that which was reflected in the interview about why people were committing acts of violent disorder and criminality. You may have noted that Yohannes Scarlett who appeared in the studio, and was present when this interview was filmed, couldn’t actually recall what this individual even said in his pre-prepared statement.

I hope that allays your concerns.

In protest, several hundred cyclists rode together over the bridge, in full compliance with the Highway Code. I was able to take a little bit of footage of the happening.

Without wishing to boast or come across as some kind of syncophantic Mac fanboy, I must note how easy it was to capture and edit the footage. I was able to whip out my birthday iPad on the central reservation, take a couple of minutes of HD footage, and then cycle off down The Cut and homeward. It took all of ten minutes to edit the footage in iMovie and the longest part of the process was the HD upload to YouTube. The speed of ‘broadcast’ and ‘publication’ these days is truly revolutionary – causing a genuine shift in power away from elites.

Nor is the career of the Editor of a Newspaper attended with moral responsibility alone, it is encompassed with dangers; dangers against which the best and purest intentions furnish a preservative. In the present state of the libel law, his duty to his country and himself will often be at variance. Circumstances may imperiously call for a prompt and fearless exposure of deliquency in high places. In the ardour of laudable indignation he may pass those “metes and bounds” which the discretion of the Attorney General assigns to the freedom of the press – he is not permitted either to prove the truth of his allegations, or to negative the averments of the charge against him. In short he is asked to defend himself, where the law (or at least the practice of the Courts) renders defence impossible – he is convicted, and banishment presents itself to his mind as the penalty of a second involuntary or even laudable transgression.

For ourselves, we are enemies to surrility and slander on either side, and though we will not compromise the right of making pointed animadversions on public questions, we hope to deliver them, as that even our political opponents shall admit the propriety of the spirit in which they are written.

Did lettered people really use the word animadversions in everyday discourse? (I promise to do so from now on.) Apart from the flowery nineteenth century language, these are sentiments that could be written today. In fact, a scrutiny committee is takings evidence in Parliament this week on the government’s draft defamation bill. I went to yesterday’s session, chaired by Lord Mahwinney, and the arguments put forward by the Libel Reform Campaign yesterday each find an analogous complaint in the Manchester Guardian’s editorial.

“Circumstances may imperiously call for a prompt and fearless exposure of delinquency” captures the need, still essential today, to firm up defences of public interest. “He is not permitted to prove the truth of his allegations” speaks to the long held complaint that truth is very often irrelevant in high-stakes libel cases (the draft bill has a very welcome clause to rectify this). The phrase about “banishment presents itself to his mind” pompously captures the terrible self-censorship that most publishers, journalists and bloggers routinely engage in when choosing to report on powerful people.

Even some of the critics of the current campaign find their words mirrored by the campaigners of 1821. Professors Alistair Mullis of UEA and Andrew Scott of The LSE also gave evidence to the scrutiny committee yesterday. Their claim is that the libel chill is purely a function of high costs. 190 years ago, The Manchester Guardian article rightly complained about “the practice of the courts”. The costly process by which libel cases are fought – always in the High Court, never in less expensive fora – is undoubtedly a major part of the problem… and has been for nearly two centuries!

I’m glad that the editorial does not neglect to mention a crucial message of the Libel Reform campaign – that reputation is important and responsible journalism must be encouraged. The Manchester Guardian writes this as “we are enemies to scurrility and slander”, which I like.

In one respect though, the short-sighted and unimaginative leader writers of 1821 failed miserably to predict future concerns, and that is with regards to protections for Internet Service Providers. Nowhere in that first editorial can I find an analogy for the “privatisation of censorship” that occurs when lawyers send takedown threats to ISPs hosting controversial content. Measures to protect ISPs from this kind of liability are also absent from the government’s draft bill – a curiously nineteenth century omission. I hope readers of Liberal Conspiracy will instinctively support the inclusion of such a clause into the defamation bill, ensuring that authors take responsibility for their content, not the distant ISPs that provide the server space. A good way to signal your support would be to write to your MP. The Libel Reform Campaign would be exceedingly beholden to those in our number that undertake to do so.

Crowds assemble to celebrate the death of Osama bin Laden, 1st May 2011. Photo by thisisbossi on Flickr.

Micah in Kansas City is uneasy about the celebrations surrounding the killing of Osama Bin Laden:

The backlash of ignorant commentary and opinion about the death of Bin Laden on Twitter tonight was disheartening, and I’m so very glad I deleted my Facebook so I didn’t have to gaze upon the even more ignorant statuses of “patriots” glad about the death of another human being.

For me, it was impossible not to make the mental link between the celebrations in America, and the recent flag-waving down on The Mall.  Both events have been obvious moments of unity for the respective countries.  Both events mark symbolic endings to a particular period of national history.  In the British case, the confusion of Princess Diana’s marriage, the sorrow of her death, and perhaps the end of a particular type of monarchy.  In the American case, it is the ending of something much more significant (what Emily Maitliss on the BBC just called a “psychological watershed”), a decade of fear, insularity and a sense of revenge not yet wrought.

Moreover, the Royal Wedding and Osama’s death both signal much more optimistic new chapters.  A pared down, modern and middle-class Monarchy for us.  And for the Americans, a reassertion of their primacy in matters military.

I wonder whether these events can sustain this symbolism.  Wills and Kate are but two individuals getting hitched in a country that has massive economic problems and not a few social and cultural challenges ahead of it.  And in the American case, the death of a figurehead will not in itself stop the Al Q’aeda threat, nor reverse its economic decline relative to the Asian super-powers.  Time will tell whether these outpourings of national confidence, on both sides of ‘the pond’, mark a new period of success or a patriotic dead-cat bounce.

Regardless of the final significance, Micah’s post highlights an crucial difference between the two groups of cheering crowds: On The Mall in London, the flag-wavers were celebrating life;  On The Mall in Washington, they were cheering a death.  I wonder how this essential difference between these two moments of patriotic punctuation will affect the two nations in years to come?

Keith Vaz MP is quoted in a BBC report:

I hope that they will give their full support to my bill which is currently before Parliament.

If they do so we can resolve this matter before any child of Prince William and Kate Middleton is born, not afterwards. The clock is ticking. We need to act fast.

Ignoring the distasteful idea that legislation has to race against one woman’s fertility, this is still not quite right. The legislation will only become awkward after a second child is born to Prince William and Princess Catherine. When their first kid is born, he or she will become 3rd and directly in line to the throne (bumping Prince Harry off the podium and, probably, into drunken obscurity). Only when a second child is born, and only if that second child is a boy and the older child is a girl, will there be any awkwardness. Assuming Wills and Kate do want kids, and assuming they want more than one kid, and further assuming this is biologically possible (because for some women it is sadly not) then it’s a 25% chance, and will likely take at least half a decade to occur.

So there is no urgency to this, just a bizarre set of sensibilities to spare the feelings of Royal toddlers who probably wouldn’t care anyway. Altering the law right now would mean demoting Princes Andrew and Edward and their offspring in favour of Princess Anne and her issue, and we don’t seem to worry about that.

Interestingly, had full cogniatic primogeniture prevailed, Queen Victoria – our longest serving and one of our greatest monarchs – would not have ascended to the throne. It would instead of passed to the family of Princess Caroline, a sister of George IV and William IV who was older than Victoria’s father, Edward. And since our current Queen is a direct descendant of Victoria, she would not have reigned either! This is doubly true, because Queen Victoria’s oldest child was a daughter (also named Victoria) who died in 1888. Had full primogeniture been law by the time Victoria died in 1901, the throne would have passed to Kaiser Wilhelm II and the Great War would probably have been avoided.

On the other hand, that other great queen, Elizabeth I, would have ascended to the throne at exactly the same time, on the death of her sister Mary. However, since Catholic Mary would have have had an extra six years on the throne (with the sickly Edward VI being passed over) she may have maneuvered to exclude her Protestant sister from the succession.

In the last century however, Royal succession has been indifferent to gender. The eldest children of all the monarchs since 1901 were male, except for George VI who had only daughters, so questions of gender primacy never arose. Had a more equitable law of succession been passed when (say) women’s suffrage was introduced in 1918, there would have been absolutely no difference in the Royal lineage.

Its not an idle point about Women’s Suffrage. I would say that the argument over women’s equality was settled when they won the right to vote, so legislation on women having equal right to the Throne is at least 93 years overdue! I find it amazing that anyone in Britain or the Commonwealth needs to think about this. When Nick Clegg says that the issue still requires “careful thought” he is being utterly disingenuous… and I really don’t understand why.

You can listen to my dulcit tones right here.  If it leaves you inspired, you can always head over to www.libelreform.org to find out how you can help the campaign.

Royal Courts of Justice. Photo by Yrstrly off of Flicker.